A New Zealander At Ascot: “New Look” And Those Extensive Boxes

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 75, 30 July 1948, Page 5

A New Zealander At Ascot: “New Look” And Those Extensive Boxes

(By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist)

At Ascot you can at least see the horses. This may bring some sort of pleasure to punters whose wretched beasts are running anywhere near the front. I wouldn’t know. Pleasure or not, it is a sight, as may be recalled, denied them at the Derby. This is not to- say Ascot is any great shakes as a course near a city of London’s size. The setting is rich and green, and the totes are really good.. On the 24 races of the recent meeting, one million pounds, a British record, wont through them. How much went through the books there is no telling. But the stands. A second year student architect with an axe tc knock out the partitions between the boxes, and a carpenter to put up forms after him, could double the seating accommodation with no new buildings. Boxes may be in order in the Members’ Stand, but when half the total accommodation of the course is taken up with boxes, it strikes a Trentham Old Boy as too much of a good thing. While it can get wearing trudging

about the lawns and the heath (inside the track) for an afternoon, Ascot is no doubt a splendid meeting if spent' beneath a grey topper, in a reserved box, nibbling on a bottle of wine out of the lunch basket. And now some snooper from the Inland Revenue is looking into a matter of the rent for some of these boxes being claimed as tax free business expenditure. Just what do you think of that? Royal Ascot is renowned as the fashionable meeting. “Women certainly wear clothes there,” I -was briefed. I v/ent along all the same. The area was generously garnished with new look frocks, several of which together with contents, drew the old look from your correspondent. Others appeared to be a bad. case of broken shoulder straps. I can only sum up this well informed fashion survey by observing that not a few of the clothes Horses looked faster than the hacks I backed.