Outside Bet

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

*** Résumé en anglais seulement *** A cold Sunday afternoon in Camberwell, South London. The year is 1985 and at a table in the Horse Shoe pub, six men gather. They are close friends, ages ranging from 20 to 70 and as is their custom, the boys are suited and booted, ready for their weekly session of bonding and banter. As one of them notes, 'if taking the Mickey was taught at universities, these guys would be Professors.' Their names are Bax, his father Threads, Mickey, Sam the Sole Man, Alfie and Smudge and this afternoon their lives will change forever. A man will enter the pub and offer them the chance to buy a racehorse. Naturally, they automatically assume that someone is setting them up. Then they think the seller is 'off his rocker'. After all, as one of them asks, 'what do we know about the king of sports except how to lose a week's wages at the bookies?'. Except Bax doesn't think it is such a bad idea. In fact the next day at his new job at a News Agency the idea takes such a hold it prevents him taking note of the conversation around him concerning a certain Rupert Murdoch's plans to relocate the workforce from Fleet Street to Wapping. On his way home, Bax stops off to see Sam the Sole Man and persuades him to 'buy in' to the idea. When he arrives home his father delivers the devastating news that he has cancer and only months to live. Over the next few days, as Threads' family and friends try to make sense of this terrible blow, Bax makes a major decision. At their next Sunday get together he announces to his friends that he wants to form a syndicate and buy the horse in honour of his father. Life is too short not to take risks. His friends and the barmaid (and secret admirer) Katie agree to form a syndicate and the following week trek up to the horse's country stables to negotiate a price with the owner. With a deal in place the team name the horse The Mumper, after a local slang word. Forever fashion conscious, for his first race the boys over estimate the owner's dress code and make quite a spectacle at the smaller than anticipated race course. The horse comes nowhere but the trainer convinces Bax that the horse continues to show promise and will come good. Having in turn convinced a now more skeptical syndicate to continue to spend their savings on The Mumper's training, Bax returns to work where the word redundancy is now in the air. Again, Bax shrugs his shoulders. After all once you are on 'the Print' you have a job for life!