As a couple, my husband and I aren’t into grand gestures, and spending lots on each other for birthday’s and at Xmas’. However Xmas 2017 was fast approaching and I had decided to splash out a little and buy the hubby a bean to cup machine, he loves his coffee. As a result I was dropping hints that he may need to spend a little more on me than just a pair of socks, or a fancy box of teabags ( he has a history of inadequate gifts!). As all good wives do, I planted the seed that what I’d really like was a share in a racehorse. The easiest, and cheapest way to do this was for me to join a syndicate. So in Colin’s usual style I had a home printed voucher of indeterminant value to join a syndicate!
There are plenty of syndicates out there, some you can join for as little as £79, but they are mostly down south, and if I was going to be a “racehorse owner” I at least wanted to see the horse run. I hummed and ha-ed for a couple of months before eventually contacting George Godsman at The Tay Valley Chasers. The annual cost was a little more than Colin had had in mind but I had a little stash put away from my winnings after backing One For Arthur in the 2017 Grand National. So April 1st 2018 I joined The Tay Valley Chasers. The syndicate was the perfect choice for me, they had two horses in training, Maraweh, a good ground hurdler, and Orioninverness, or Borris to his mates, a chaser, but the biggest draw for me was that they were trained by Lucinda Russell. I had always followed Lucinda’s horses, and had been fortunate to be in her company when I had attended The Cheltenham Festival a few years ago. Added to this a good chunk of my syndicate membership monies were from backing a horse that she had also trained, it was kismet!
As most girls do, I started to wonder what I should wear when I did go to watch the horses run. I started to trawl the internet looking for inspiration, and whilst I could see things I liked, they were either in the wrong colour or out of my price range, so what I decided to do was to put my skills to good use and make myself something. Easy, right? I bought some tweed and Liberty fabric off of eBay, and found some buttons I really liked too. These all sat in a pile for about 6 weeks, and my first race meeting came and went. A successful one too, Maraweh was beaten into second in a photo finish. This was enough of an incentive for me, so on 10th May 2018 I eventually got the sewing machine out. Colin had bought me a new machine the year previous, and it was still in the box, fortunately once you’ve used one machine you’ve used them all. Within the day I had sewn a couple of capes together, albeit they weren’t finished, had taken photographs of them, and had posted them to my Facebook page. The response was staggering to say the least, within 3 hours I had over 200 likes and 100 comments, lots of friend asking if I could make one for them, and admiring my fabric combinations. Without even pausing for breath I started to order more fabrics, and set about trying to find a name for my new venture, before the sun had set I had my first orders and @RebelGD was created.
