Racegoer Tracy Rose and her multicoloured
headgear. Photograph:
Kirsty Wigglesworth/PAIt's day one of Royal Ascot and I'm in a field in the middle of nowhere and it's raining. Huh. That's what they said would happen if they were daft enough to bring the premier event of London's social season all the way up to York, writes Martin Wainwright.
But hang on. That was an hour ago. Now I'm in a sort of Arabian tent eating strawberries and cream. The sun's shining and the Queen's just trotted past in her landau (Charles and Camilla just behind). We waved at one another, me with the Guardian, she with her glove.
It only took that long to lift the Curse of Bringing Ascot North; and that's the general view of racegoers as we dawdle contentedly with our buck's fizz and wait for the start of the 3.45 St James's Palace stakes.
You couldn't get more metropolitan than Tracy Rose from London who's just been chatting to me from beneath her incredible hyperbolic paraboloid hat in pink and lime green satin.
"We've been here since Sunday and York's lovely," she said. "It's lovely even in the rain."
Kay Hyde from the York tourist bureau is meanwhile sucking blood from her finger which she nicked while putting up her exhibition stand. But who cares? "We reckon we're going to clear £25 million from this just in York," she says. The regional development agency Yorkshire Forward is confident that wider Yorkshire will be £60 million in the black.
The much-touted crying-off by southerners from the supposedly distant and barbaric venue simply hasn't happened (though the dodgy weather meant that touts were cutting grandstand prices in half by the time the royal procession clattered by). Mind you, there are plenty if vignettes of the north-south divide to savour.
My favourite so far: two Dales farmers up for a modest flutter looking open-mouthed as a huge posse of Middle East owners marched into the royal enclosure. "Al-Qaida in toppers," whispered one. "Shush," said his mate.
