A call from a Mate, (not not him, the other one), brightened the morning. Someone else’s catalogue of woes is always heartening, and his first-world trials and tribulations are truly tear-inducing. In no particular order, the livery, hunting stables, eventing yard and all-purpose equine money drain that is home is now surrounded on three sides…
Chester
Chester May Meeting Day 3 – plus Marmalade, Greek girls and American fakes
This morning, a propos of absolutely nothing, I spent too much time pondering over the essential matters of modern living that had grasped my attention in the last 24 hours – quite apart from the wretched draw at Chester. The first was whether The Savoy or Claridges makes its own Marmalade from scratch, on-site. I…
Chester May Festival Day 2
It was a sad day yesterday at Chester – but also pretty weird. The weirdness emanated from the results, which even my late Nanny knew enough to exclaim as she made our breakfast after a night out with her friends from Liverpool: “You need to have your draws down very low at Chester” In the…
Chester May Meeting Day 1.
There’s a line in Peter Pan which goes: “In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.” I suspect, too, that many of my regular readers have become incapable of going after their wind-tossed racing trilbys because…
Doncaster St Leger Day 3
I was going to tell you some fascinating gossip I heard yesterday about two trainers in York who were apparently entertaining Ms. X, the daughter of another trainer with the modern equivalent of some Sherbert dip. Papa was deeply unamused when he walked in on the home science experiment and pistols at dawn were discussed….
Is The Age of Unreason here yet?
An interesting week, that started with my reading the findings of an Employment Tribunal. It was, in brief, the report of a chap who had worked at a bank in management for almost 30 years, and who dutifully attended an HR exercise in Race education, laid on by his employer. In that session, and as…
Maintain justice, for it will not maintain us.
What a joy – sunny weather, the start of the Ashes series and a solid start to The US Open. Sitting outside, listening to TMS, a glass of recovery juice in my hand after a brace of croissants and some coffee. Not a hint of breeze to move my papers around on the table as…
I am struggling with cabbages and bad butchers.
A balmy summer’s evening and some catching up, plus menu planning and other bits and bobs. Firstly, those of you who follow the Golf will know that we had our second Majors win of the season – the winner was not a huge surprise… but then we also tipped the 3rd and 5th with Cameron…
The looming of a long weekend.
I’m still slightly reeling – as indeed is The Hon. – at the result of Man City, Real Madrid. We had both been given free £5 bets on the game by Bet365, and both of us had opted for the Draw-Draw in the ½-Time Full-Time Result market, at 6/1. The first half was tense, but…
I’m frightened for the people of Marlborough
By the time I left Marlborough today, I was convinced that scientists from the Pavlov Institute had, under the orders of Perfidious Putin, invented a nerve agent that slowly removes all common sense in the general population over a period of time. This inevitably leads to mass hysteria and the breakdown of all law and…
Chester May Meeting Day 1
Many years ago, Brough Scott, the late great Tony Fairbairn and I went to see Woodrow Wyatt the late and not very great chairman of The Tote. The meeting was to discuss one of my rarely brilliant ideas, which I had discussed with Brough and Tony. We had agreed on a partnership in principle but…
Lord Tissue of Reputation in Tattersalls offers an apology…
Recently it has become obvious that our reputation here at Raceweb Towers for providing honest and scrupulously researched racing tips, political opinions, and other racing-related material has been tainted by a series of corporate failures. Unbeknownst to me as the Chief Executive in the days before my much-deserved ennoblement, it transpires that we did not…
St Leger Day – Doncaster Day 4
Four winners yesterday including a 40/1 shot and a 17/2 (backed down from 10s), heralded the beginning of a busy weekend of top quality racing action, both here, Ireland, France and Germany. The 40/1 shot was trained by Nigel Tinkler, whose father Colin effectively rewrote the rules on syndication, with Full Circle, which at one…