Some Saturdays in Britain seem to plan themselves without too much effort. No messages are sent, and no plans are discussed, yet somehow everyone knows where they will be by the time the afternoon rolls around. The day is spent in a leisurely fashion, perhaps with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and before you know it, everyone is talking about what is going on later in the day. These are weekends that feel like they have been done so many times before that they don’t even need to be discussed.
Living in London and particularly around areas like Marylebone, where old and new seem to get along easily, one sees how easily these weekends fall back into place. A walk around the high street, a visit to a café, and the usual conversations about sport and weather and where to meet later. It is all very casual and unplanned, and yet somehow by lunchtime on these sorts of Saturdays, there is always one suggestion that comes up around this time of year. The suggestion is about the racing and then about meeting in a pub, and somehow by then, the plan for the afternoon is established.
The sort of Saturday everyone recognizes without asking
One of the things about these sorts of Saturdays is that they do not need to be discussed. Everyone knows what is supposed to happen. The morning is for taking it easy, the early part of the afternoon is for meeting up with friends, and then the rest of the day is for whatever comes next. It is a relaxed pace of life in a city where nothing ever happens slowly, and maybe that is the reason that everybody loves these kinds of Saturdays so much.
It is not only old traditions that keep this routine alive, however. It is also younger crowds, the passed down traditions and talk and the same things that their parents did years ago. The grand national betting habits of the older generation became a shared event within households. Discussion of favourites, runners and the odds amongst friends and family. There is something about a shared event that makes the day feel different, no matter how closely or loosely you are paying attention, even as you talk to the people around you.
By the time the afternoon rolls around, however, the same small rituals start to emerge. Someone is looking at the runners, someone is talking about the form, and before you know it, the talk has turned to national betting in much the same way that people might talk about the weather or the results of a football match. It is not always about winning, however. It is sometimes just about the day, something that is a part of the day in much the same way that the first drink is a part of the day, or the first laugh when everyone sits down together.
Why some afternoons organize themselves
There is a certain comfort in the knowledge that some days will follow a certain routine. Weekends in a busy city need to be planned. A table needs to be booked, a time agreed upon, and everyone needs to pull out their phone to check that nothing has changed. Some days, however, feel different, like they fall into place without any particular effort. You step outside, expecting very little, and suddenly find yourself somewhere that you had expected all along.
Events that occur once a year tend to have this effect. They reside in the back of people’s minds until the time arrives, and then they seem to organize themselves around them. The Grand National has always been like this. People who do not particularly follow racing events seem to know when the event is on. This is enough to organize their day.
You see this in pubs being fuller than usual, in conversations that start off on a different subject and end on one they have been following on television, and in people who did not have plans for the day ending up staying out longer than they meant to. No one makes a point of saying that this is how the day should be spent. It just is.
The London version of an old routine
The routine has its own style in London. However, it is still very similar. It may start with a walk in Regent’s Park in the morning, a coffee, and one’s time to look around the shops. However, by mid-afternoon, everybody is talking about where they are going to be later. Marylebone has always been good for holding onto this mix of old and new. It has modern cafes and pubs that seem to have been there for decades.
What makes the afternoons so memorable is not the racing itself but everything else that is going on around the racing. The noise of the bar, the argument over whether one picked the right horse or not, the general feeling that no one is in a hurry to leave the place for the next few hours. Even if one does not want to be there, one finds one is looking at the screen when the racing finally starts, if only because everyone else is doing the same.
There is also something rather comforting about the knowledge that the whole routine happens every year. The location may be different, the faces at the table different, but the basic form of the day remains the same. It starts without any plan, and ends with the knowledge that the day has somehow worked out exactly as it should.
Why these days still matter
There is something rather refreshing about the knowledge that, in a world where everything is carefully planned, this day somehow plans itself. It reminds people that not everything that is good needs to be carefully organized. The best things may well be the result of doing the same as everyone else, at the same time.
It may well be for this reason that the Grand National remains firmly on the calendar year after year. It gives people the excuse to do something that they would otherwise do anyway, meet some friends, find a seat, talk about the race even if you have no idea what is happening, and stay longer than you wanted to. The details are simple, but the feeling is impossible to recreate.
These afternoons also show the ways tradition lives on. No one enforces the idea that the day must be spent in a certain place, yet the pubs are the same ones that are full, the same conversations are had, and the same laughter is heard long after the result is no longer remembered. The routine does not feel forced because it has come to feel natural.
When the day feels familiar before it begins
As you get older, the more you realize that these Saturdays are easy to spot before they even arrive. You wake up on a Saturday morning with a sense of knowledge that the day will be a slow one, that you will be making plans without really making them, and that by the afternoon, you will be exactly where you knew you would be all along.
It isn’t the excitement of the day that makes it so enjoyable, but the comfort of knowledge about how the day will be.
In a city as frenetic as London, familiarity is difficult to find, and it is all the more reason why it is so important to hold on to it. The walk, the café, the pub, the race on TV, and the long conversation afterwards are all part of a tradition about which nobody needs to remind anybody else.
