I have the unfortunate trait of saying out loud what is on my mind, which you will have gathered over time from these scribblings. The sort of situation where X says Willie Mullins should only have three runners at Cheltenham, and I tell X that not only is he wrong, but that he is an…
CULTURE
A little bit of French, a touch of Swahili and a dollop of nag. Here’s a lot of tips
Back at 2:00am, from a delicious dinner in London at Le Colombier next to the Royal Marsden. Super service, a sensational wine list, a good collection of Chelsea’s finest 70-somethings who patently regarded the place as their caff, and some excellent food, including a very good Fricassée de Rognons de Veau à la Dijonnaise. The…
Saturday – a time for quiet reflection
As we seem to be surrounded by retired football managers all screaming, “Gitonmason” (I’m interpreting the accent), I too want to give a loud “Oooochaarrr” for the wisely invested Kneesup hours, which led to today’s results showing a 90.17pt profit. Over the four days, we recommended bets totalling 147.5 points, which delivered an ROI of…
LAMBOURN – WHERE THE OSCARS ARE ACTUALLY DECIDED
It’s been a week when as much caught the ear as the eye. The Chancellor (how quickly we forget he once saw himself as The PM) said in his Jam Tomorrow and The Day After deceitful Budget speech: “We believe that in a free society the money you earn doesn’t belong to the government. It…
Off to Longchamp via Warmington-on-Sea
As the weekend looms, it’s difficult to know how to divide one’s time. The TV alone will be providing: The Singapore Grand Prix (Sunday 1:00 pm), Saturday and Sunday at Longchamp, the decider in Pakistan between them and us in the T20 (Sunday after the Arc), all the racing as shown below, and finally the…
Claudius The Bee, by John F Leeming
John Leeming seems to have been a remarkable man. Born in 1895 into a middle-class Mancunian family, Leeming was an accomplished glider pilot by the age of fifteen. Some sixteen years later, and already a successful businessman, he founded the Lancashire Aero Club, the UK’s first-ever aero club for enthusiastic amateur pilots. In the 1930s,…
Old Soldiers Never Die – by Private Frank Richards. DCM MM
This extraordinary memoir catalogues the experience of the author as he underwent four years in the western front trenches without even being wounded – an outcome that he himself rates as a twenty thousand to one shot. Private (he refused many offers of promotion) Frank Richards was born in 1883 and, according to Google, was…
GBH by Ted Lewis
Published in 1980 this was Lewis’s last book before he died of the drink aged 42. A very large proportion of my (male) friends would put Get Carter into their list of top ten films, the Michael Cain version that is. Lewis wrote the underlying novel in 1970 first published as Jack’s Return. This book,…
Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes
I have a friend who owns an original, signed photograph by Robert Capa, it is one of his most precious pictures. It shows three women walking across an arid landscape that one presumes to be Spain(from the date and the title). The woman in the lead is the oldest, followed by a girl in her…
Major Thompson Lives In France and Major Thompson and I – by Pierre Daninos
Contributed to Raceweb by “High Rise” First published in 1955 then again in 1957 – this is a musing on the differences between the French and English as seen through the eyes of the Major himself. Daninos first came across the English when acting as a French army liaison officer with the BEF during its…
Theatre Notes
When Raceweb’s Editor said: “I’m thinking of adding a new literary review and wondered whether you would be prepared to knock me out a thousand words on some highbrow theme? Don’t you live in London? Could you do something on any plays you’ve seen recently?” My immediate response was: “Of course, no problem”. But then…