Warning: Some of this content may trigger anxiety, panic attacks or boredom
Issues such as a sense of entitlement, lack of charm or people skills, and the realities of living in a world where people do not always like each other, are some of the things that might be covered in these notes. Other phrases to cause distress might include Bad Luck (despite the jockey dropping his […]
A Very Happy New Year to all and some very brief tips.
What Ho, I have just returned from a very splendid 24 hours of quietly understated all-round excellence. I have drunk well, eaten brilliant food, sat in the company of kind and charming friends, been cossetted and pampered, and generally come back feeling loved and needed. What better way is there to start a New Year? I […]
Move over Nostradamus – The SPAD v2.0 is here!
The COVID inquiry has, thank the Lord, identified and widely publicised the least efficient ways for Government ministers, advisors and Special Ones to be potent forces of efficiency by replacing the language of the Mandarins with fifty ways to say Ferk on Wassup. As a result, it misses many key points of evidence, such as […]
GOOD FRIDAY – JOLLY SATURDAY – HAPPY EASTER
If you’re doing nothing and the weather looks pleasant, and you’ve never seen Tony McCoy up close, or Francesca Cumani, or Mick Fitzgerald or any one of hundreds of famous racing faces, then leap in the car and pole over to the Lambourn Open Day. Francesca to be fair might not be there, but there’s […]
A snapshot of our times
What an exhausting week. By way of example and mindful as ever of this Government’s leadership of the nation, I spent yesterday trying to find some Turnips in line with Ms Coffey’s exhortation to embrace the root vegetable. We don’t have many shops besides the Coop and a very nice Butcher in Lambourn. Neither had […]
The Spectacular, The Not Bad and the surely unacceptable
Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible. Mea Maxima Culpa – I would have had more success at selecting Ascot winners if I’d simply opened the Rand Corporation’s, “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates“, and pulled stall numbers out at random. (I recommend the book as the hygienic alternative to keeping […]
Cheltenham could be another Russian target!
There can’t be many occasions during the year when an enemy could inflict maximum damage on Blighty in a single strike. But if you wanted to eliminate large sectors of the four estates, Legislature, Executive, Judiciary and the Media, in a single act, Cheltenham would be your best bet. Historically, even if the English and […]
Up the Amazon, without a cooker.
All in all a pretty good week, certainly in terms of my sitting for a few moments of respite on The Moral High Ground. This week’s MHG is the Amazon Basin which, it turns out, has a large plughole at the bottom, through which the Dunfermline workers hurl perfectly good bits of kit. As their […]
AWT Championships? Hasn’t Jesus suffered enough on Good Friday?
Good Friday, and Europe is awash with Fiestas and Fetes celebrating Holy Week. It’s a time of year when I might reasonably consider that the seasons were changing and that I needn’t be in-country a moment longer. It’s a much-hackneyed phrase, but this year I really do get the feeling that “spring is in the […]
The Fighting Fifth and a drop of Hennessy
A cracking race in the Berkshire saw the Memsahib’s grey get up, although she hadn’t backed it because she was busy rallying the troops on the parliamentary front line. Sadly it did Lostintranslation’s chance in after a gallant battle. We’d backed Clondaw Castle for 8s and he went off 11/2 and saw his race out […]
I’m in no rush to get to the beach today
Am I alone in thinking that the thousands of people on Bournemouth beach, of which at least 25% appeared to be children, might perhaps have been missing the point? Am I going mad when the real news tells me that a very decent primary school headmistress is suspended, because she declared in public that not […]
Astonishing how a few winners bucks up the soul
Well, that actually went pretty well. We saw a couple of decent maidens and marked some notebook performances; we had a couple of decent results and – thanks entirely to Alex “But-er” Hammond, we discovered after the first that they had harrowed the Tapeta very deep and the ground was running soft. Sadly I didn’t […]
What’s got 720 legs and has just come back?
Yup – it’s racing. After months, and with sobbing flat trainers down to the last dozen of that jolly Burgundy they picked up at Cagnes-sur-Mer; with owners getting sticky with the sobbing trainer, and with Lambourn 90% convinced that social distancing was a binary option, we have 10 races for our edification tomorrow. Unsurprisingly and […]
Good exciting racing on Friday and even better to come on Saturday
The mighty O’Tool posted minutes after myself – I was unaware o didn’t notify you dear readers – and while not on fire, I think it safe to say that we are both pretty well in tune – maybe even on song. The records speak for themselves: POT 12.15 TRINCOMALEE 16/1 3rd 12:45 KHAGE Lost […]