The experience of the Cessnock TAB began with the tinny click of its big door handle, followed always by the smell of old cigarettes and the racket of 2KY racing radio turned up full blast.In front of the TVs was a long table and behind the table were four bar stools, their padded tops covered in red pleather. Enter any time during business hours and three of the bar stools would probably be occupied by the same three men, all in their 60s at least.Sometimes the fourth stool would be occupied by my father.My father was not a good gambler and didn’t seem to take it particularly seriously. But he was compulsive. He gambled money we didn’t have, usually either given to him by my mother for something else or taken out of her purse when she wasn’t in the room, in the almost always doomed hope she wouldn’t notice it was gone.For most of my childhood my mother worked Saturdays and Sundays, and that meant I spent quite a lot of Saturdays and Sundays at the Cessnock TAB in a state of almost unendurable boredom. The only flecks of stimulation there for me were the newspapers, which didn’t chew up too much time as I only read the sport sections, and the single small TV playing Channel Nine, always on silent, and only any use during cricket season. My sister, three and a bit years younger than me, showed more imagination – my mother was told more than once that she had been seen clambering around on the carpet playing with the lawn jockey that stood with a jaunty expression in the shopfront.I can’t remember seeing many other kids there, if any, but I also don’t remember seeing many young adults there either. This was a domain for men aged between 35 and 75.The regulars all knew each other, and it was a noticeable thing when a non-regular wandered in. The only women there, mostly, were the tellers. I remember part of the betting windows once being coloured over with “WELCOME FAY ON HER FIRST DAY”, painted on in big fluoro letters.