Some people manage to acquire an uncanny knack of being able to walk into a betting shop in any town and place money on a horse which is destined to be pipped at the post into second place. Skills like these take years to cultivate.
Wads of money have been siphoned from our modest rented prefab into the splendid detached
house with a long winding gravel drive that is owned by the There Is One Born Every Minute bookmaker in Peterpoint Street. The old man takes his losses on the chin and says betting on horses is "just a bit of fun." It certainly is a bit of fun for the bookmaker in Peterpoint Street.
On Saturday mornings a small platoon of There Is One Born Every Minute gamblers assembles in the saloon bar of Smith's Wine Vaults. At hourly intervals eighty-six year old Harold - the oldest and most frail member of the group - is dispatched to Peterpoint Street with a batch of betting slips in his trembling hands. When he was away in the merchant navy Harold memorised hundreds of quotations from Immanuel Kant. This was one of his favourites:

It frequently happens that a man delivers his opinions with so much boldness and assurance that he appears to be under no apprehension as to the possibility of error. The offer of a bet startles him, and makes him pause.

There are no startled pauses in Smith's Wine Vaults.

When we heard an enormous thud against the front door late one Saturday afternoon we knew that the old man's legendary betting system had finally struck gold. Although his horse had come in second, the 'winning' horse had been subjected to a technical disqualification. The winnings had been promptly 'carpeted' and an enormous thud-making Persian carpet purchased.
The Smith's Wine Vaults' betting squad include Arthur Load (a postman), 'Monty' Trolley (a hospital porter), and Jim Smith (an 'industrial grade' civil servant.) After placing all his rent money on a rank outsider called Rent Boy Jim hit the jackpot and has been bought free drinks on the tale ever since. If you have been asked to supply the name of a referee on some official form then Jim Smith ('industrial grade' civil servant) is your man. He is employed at a top secret Ministry of Defence underground arms depot which will serve as an impregnable bunker retreat for key Government and military personnel in the event of a nuclear attack. We cannot reveal its location but a six mile long underground passage which runs in an esaterly direction from the Empire Hotel will take you there in no time.
In 1940 Jim Smith was taken to one side by the authorities and told to "watch his step." His hard-heeled shoes make a piercing rat-tat-tat sound whn he walks on a hard surface - you can hear his approach a mile off - and he had been half expecting to be told that this repeated rat-tat-tat sound was getting on the authorities' wick. So he was quite astonished to hear that the formal reprimand he was given was for remarks he had made about the German origins of the Royal Family.
Jim Smith once lived on the Blackway Estate which towers over Twiverton. On Saturday mornings he would rat-tat-tat his way down the hill and call into prefab number twenty-four for a smoke and a cup of tea. Prior to taking what Laurel and Hardy called an "egress" he would take a shiny silver coin from a trouser pocket and place it in the palm of my hand with a resounding "and the best of luck!" This sequence was as predictable as the back garden water butt filling to the brim after a heavy downpour of rain. And then - quite out of the blue - a Saturday morning came which lit no silver lights. The civil servant from the secret arms depot donned his overcoat and was half way out of the back door without even a hint of making the obligatory cash donation. (Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic of prefab number one calls this a "Black Swan Day" when "well established patterns and sequences turn out not to have been well established at all.") After flouting custom and precedent Mr J.Smith then had the nerve to look offended when I shouted out: "Got any money then!"
Although no shiny silver "and the best of luck!" coins ever came my way again, our contact in the civil service still allowed his name to be given as a referee/witness in any official applications. In prefab circles finding the name of someone with a half-credible claim to a coveted 'professional'
(albeit 'industrial grade') status is no easy matter. Dublin-born Jim Smith also acted as a referee/witness on political matters as well. Gamblers in Smith's Wine Vaults are kept well informed about the conduct of the British State in Ireland. "For the people back home 1649 was only yesterday" says Jim. "It is just ten generations since Oliver Cromwell's atrocities at Drogheda and Wexford were carried out." On one occasion a Protestant from Belfast wandered into Smith's Wine Vaults at the very moment when Jim Smith was in full flow. "Your friend has 'got it all wrong!" he told the assembled horse race betters. "Cromwell's actions were 'reprisals' for the events of 1641 when thousands of Anglo-Scottish Protestant settlers had been
slaughtered."
You might have thought that Jim Smith's stance on the Irish Question ("Or the British Question" as the James Joyce figure in the corner of the bar would say) might incline him to take a sympathetic stance on the plight of other peoples who have been subjected to colonial domination. The crooked timber of political emotion follows a different logic. After leaving the Blackway Estate for a flat in inner city Walcot Jim Smith started to make derogatory comments about people of colour. This did not impress the old man. "Pack in that show-off race talk!" the old man told him in the Empire Bar. "Or I will be putting my money on the Norfolk-reared horse called Oliver Cromwell!"