So you hear you have the grandstand but what first runs through your head with relation to it without any prior knowledge or research, just the object you would drive past on an everyday trip.

To the word itself I imagine gambling, old men smoking cigars whilst their trophy wives parade around in their new dresses (I am aware this is a very 1920’s imagining). The desperate man that bets it all on that one last horse with the ridiculous name like Thunder’s Fury and then watch as the chance inevitably does not pay off. The crushing of hopes and dreams and then that one person who shouts for joy as his unlikely win has paid off in money some only dream of. Then of course everyone who just lost stares at him debating how to steal and to some extremes kill him for the money he has just won when he finally leaves the stand.

I personally imagine the horses and dogs used to participate in the races, the small rabbit that the dogs chase around the track, not because they are stupid but rather hungry (Not that a fluffy rabbit on a runner would fill any dogs appetite). I think to the jockeys required to run the horses and that for once the issue is not you must be above this height but rather you must be below this height to enjoy this ride. It also makes me consider the levels of animal cruelty that must be taken into account when staring at these animals, yes I’m sure throughout the rest of the year they are pampered and well looked after but during racing season it is every man for himself. How the horses are whipped to race that tiny bit faster and if they fall short at a hurdle out comes the gunman to have the horse put down due to the extreme pain it must be in. Forgive me if I am being to harsh but when a Formula One racer crashes because he took a corner to hard you don’t take a gun to his head, you get the safety car out and all other racers must take a slow pace so that the driver can be recovered.

Now throw Lincoln in front of the word Grandstand and a whole new world opens up, dillusions of grandeur begin to fall apart and become something entirely different. A derelict ground comes into play, a space of land that now just stands there as a relic doing very little and serving no actual purpose but rather acting as a reminder to those who drive past of what use to be and that right now they are driving across a racetrack. Not only this but it makes me think of the golf course behind it where horses would be shown off and roam free but now people have the opportunity to swing a club at a ball (admittedly I am not a huge fan of golf either).

That leads to me to finally think of the site itself, the once stables, the architecture that must run underneath the Grandstand into nooks and crannies of darkness. The stables that one use to hold the horses an opportunity to show off their pretty silk fur and outhouses that would be used for various miscellaneous items. Maybe then it acts as a warning that everything decays after a while, perhaps as an idea people should be made to run around the track and whipped whilst horses sit happily in the stand enjoying gambling away and eating and drinking.

So in an overall view it makes me think of money, odds stacked against one another, relics and the thought that everything must come to an end.

Authors Note: Please bare in mind that this is everything off the top of my head and I actually know very little about Grandstands or in fact Horse racing.