IT WASN'T REALLY a part of my original grand scheme of things, but life in England has proven particularly delightful because the land is chockablock with gambling loonies who will bet on anything that moves or might happen, even at 14 million to 1 odds against.

At first glance, there would seem to be something awry here. As a race, the British are noted around the world for their reserve as much as for their boiled beer, a taste for jellied eels and other inedibles, and their surplus of "U's" as in "favourite," "honour" and "cauliflower."

(Well, maybe not cauliflower, but that paragraph was about things I hate, and there are few things I despise more than cauliflower - except maybe borscht cooked in yak butter and the 8:42 Sunday train from Bicester North.)

Nor are the British particularly famed for their daring in a world constantly in change. They are, for instance, on record as dismissing the telephone as a "passing fad," and it is one of history's everlasting misfortunes that they weren't right.

The Brits also weren't all that keen on wasting money and time on heavier-than-air gadgets called "airplanes," and they lost out on an opportunity to lead the world into a grand new era when the people who build propellers persuaded them that jet engines were jolly useless, not to mention quite noisy over the suburbs.

That being said, the British are nothing if not stoic and steadfast in the face of disaster - pip pip, stiff upper lip and all that. Of late, they have been sorely tried by misfortunes that would have driven the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses to kick a few more Israelite butts if he could have caught them before the Red Sea did its thing.

The British have had an almost unprecedented run of bad luck, including months of floods, a string of train crashes, a government that spends most of its waking hours dreaming up ways to save foxes, and an outbreak of mad cow disease that has turned eating hamburgers into a culinary version of Russian roulette.

But now has come an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease among their cows and sheep and pigs, and all that reserve and stoicism and steadfastness have begun to crumble. It has hit the folks hereabouts where it hurts most - at the betting windows.

As I've said, the British will wager their wages on almost anything bettable, up to and probably including whether Elvis will be wearing silver or gold spangles when he shows up at McDonald's in downtown Nashville, or whether the next dog that you run across will try to establish a sexual relationship with your left leg or the right.

At the top of the betting league here is horse racing. Now it is my considered opinion that, except for those in Connecticut, horses make their major contribution to mankind inside cat food cans or inside the double-entry ledgers of bookmakers.

But the British betting unwashed are not wont to see it that way. As a national pastime, wagering on the nags ranks second only to beer barfing on Saturday night and well ahead of porn flicks, dreams of bedding Linda Evangelista and having high tea with Prince Charles.

Now a great anguish has swept the land. Horse racing - and thus betting on the ponies - has been wiped from the country's slate. Scientists say all animals, whether they are susceptible to foot-and-mouth or not, can carry the disease, and banning horse racing is considered necessary to foil the virus's garrulousness.

(This ignores, of course, the scientific fact that the infection can travel up to 150 miles on the gentlest zephyr of a wind, which is considerably swifter than most horses, or at least any that I've ever put a bet on.)

But British bookmakers, ever wary of any attack on their purses, are an imaginative lot. The folks down at Ladbroke's and William Hill and the rest of the bookie establishment, stripped of local equine talent, are now offering odds on horse races elsewhere on the planet, from Italy to South Africa.

(Back in the bad old days in Beirut, bookies were no less inventive. When the city's only racetrack was closed down after the bombs threatened to make mincemeat out of Trigger's relatives and spectators alike, they retired to the local penny arcade and began making book on the horses in the machines.)

So are betters concerned that they no longer have access to the form sheets that have made their sort of wagering a minor art form? Not a bit of it. They still choose which nose to put their hard-earned on by other methods, whether throwing darts at numbers, or drawing from jars or from the names of ex-girl friends or pet dogs or the neighbor's gerbil.

For many the results remain much the same as in the pre-foot-and-mouth days. They go on losing. And playing. And losing more.

Gambling in Britain is something in the national blood, or psyche, or perhaps down somewhere in the funny bits. Whatever, they are rarely at a loss for something on which to wager any funds left after the drinks rounds down at the pub (but often before financing food for the family table).

Take Paul Khanna of London. With no ponies to put his cash on, he chose the occasion of his 28th birthday to place a one-pound bet - about a buck and a half - at odds of 10 million to 1 that he will live to collect on his 127th birthday.

A workaholic named Steve Gledhill stands to collect 1,000 pounds - close enough to $1,500 - if he manages to work until January 16, 2004, without missing a single day at the job. It should help pay for the stress counseling.

At the height of the recent spate of Elvis "sightings" around the globe, bookies were so inundated with bets that they shortened the odds to 1,000 to 1 against old swivel-hips popping into a burger restaurant in Nashville any day now. This probably is a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records when it comes to bet hedging.

Mind you, I'm not averse to a little flutter now and again. I put down four pounds a week on Britain's National Lottery. The odds against winning the jackpot are 14 million to 1, or slightly longer than those against getting struck by lightning nine times. I've been doing this for five years now. No jackpot, but now I do worry every time a thunderstorm rumbles by. -0- Thought for the Week: If everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

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