The other day I was on the bus heading out to Chingford in East London to visit my friend's mum, when I saw this outside the window. So this is it. I remembered all the uproar two years ago when the closure of the tracks was imminent. Radio shows interviewed pensioners who remembered the old days before the national lottery when they would go to 'the dogs.' David Beckham - or was it his dad? - grew up in the area and worked at the track as a boy. It was the death of an icon, a tradition, a certain nostalgia that softens the edges of memory. We choose to forget the ugliness of gambling and absent parents. Instead, dog racing - like fox hunting for the upper classes - becomes something for which you must take a defensive stance. You see its plight, you defend it as a part of your identity and you mourn it when it's gone.
