The first time I went to the races, it was my second week in Edinburgh. I went as an over-excited, slightly nervous fresher. By that point I was starting to get the social politics of life as a University of Edinburgh student, and a Pollock Halls resident at that. It became clear to me that there was a certain cultural code that only a select few speak, although in Pollock that few might have felt like the majority – a group composed of Londoners or people from Southern England in general, all linked by their experiences of attending boarding school, taking a gap year, and sharing a common net of acquaintances. They all wore clothes from charity shops but somehow made them look chic: their upper-class background wasn’t overtly displayed, but to the trained eye, very decipherable.
The races were something else entirely. At the races all of the subtlety was lost and the code became much more overt, but also much easier to mimic. Everyone could put on a flat cap, a trench, or in my case a fur coat, and look in place. But, at the same time, to me, a non-Brit, the event seemed somewhat ridiculous. It was 12 o’clock in the afternoon, and everyone around was getting obscenely drunk in outfits appropriate for middle-aged mums and dads.
This time, however, as a seasoned second-year, I was prepared, and because by now I was used to the obnoxious nature of the event, I was more equipped to see through it. The spectacle fell quickly. When my friends and I regrouped after a quick trip to the bathroom, my friend reported that in the male bathroom, a guy next to him was so drunk he couldn’t aim at the urinal, and instead pissed all over the floor. Minutes later another guy came in and, unable to hold his balance, fell to the floor, to which the first drunk guy exclaimed “That’s my friend!” Soon after, as my friend was waiting outside of the bathroom, someone ran up to him, took two used straws from an empty Pimm’s jar he was holding, and ran away. The pretense of propriety was beginning to unravel more quickly than I expected. When we sat down, and saw a guy at the bench next to us take out his penis and urinate under the table, it was all but gone.
The races are a grotesque mirror of life at university: everyone is trying to win something (in this case, money, betting on horses), dressed in the exact same outfit, putting up a persona that begins to unravel as the drinks continue to flow.
That being said, I did have an extremely entertaining day and won £96, so who am I to complain?
Image by Zosia Jastrun for The Student
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Horse races — the perfect spectacle
The first time I went to the races, it was my second week in Edinburgh. I went as an over-excited, slightly nervous fresher. By that point I was starting to get the social politics of life as a University of Edinburgh student, and a Pollock Halls resident at that. It became clear to me that there was a certain cultural code that only a select few speak, although in Pollock that few might have felt like the majority – a group composed of Londoners or people from Southern England in general, all linked by their experiences of attending boarding school, taking a gap year, and sharing a common net of acquaintances. They all wore clothes from charity shops but somehow made them look chic: their upper-class background wasn’t overtly displayed, but to the trained eye, very decipherable.
The races were something else entirely. At the races all of the subtlety was lost and the code became much more overt, but also much easier to mimic. Everyone could put on a flat cap, a trench, or in my case a fur coat, and look in place. But, at the same time, to me, a non-Brit, the event seemed somewhat ridiculous. It was 12 o’clock in the afternoon, and everyone around was getting obscenely drunk in outfits appropriate for middle-aged mums and dads.
This time, however, as a seasoned second-year, I was prepared, and because by now I was used to the obnoxious nature of the event, I was more equipped to see through it. The spectacle fell quickly. When my friends and I regrouped after a quick trip to the bathroom, my friend reported that in the male bathroom, a guy next to him was so drunk he couldn’t aim at the urinal, and instead pissed all over the floor. Minutes later another guy came in and, unable to hold his balance, fell to the floor, to which the first drunk guy exclaimed “That’s my friend!” Soon after, as my friend was waiting outside of the bathroom, someone ran up to him, took two used straws from an empty Pimm’s jar he was holding, and ran away. The pretense of propriety was beginning to unravel more quickly than I expected. When we sat down, and saw a guy at the bench next to us take out his penis and urinate under the table, it was all but gone.
The races are a grotesque mirror of life at university: everyone is trying to win something (in this case, money, betting on horses), dressed in the exact same outfit, putting up a persona that begins to unravel as the drinks continue to flow.
That being said, I did have an extremely entertaining day and won £96, so who am I to complain?
Image by Zosia Jastrun for The Student
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