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…
Punchestown Festival
Punchestown and The Guineas. Col. Tufty Bufty tells Lawrence what he thinks of the entries
45 runners declared for the whole Newmarket card… what can I say? At Goodwood in the 3:50, there is £40k in guaranteed prize money, with five runners. Why?? It can’t be on the ground conditions; it was G/S when the final decs were called. Its – Its… what is the word??? Meanwhile, the frantic social…
Punchestown Day 3
It’s a terribly busy week, so straight in and on. I have popped the dismal results under each post. I shall surely hit form soon! I had started to write about dinner last night, but it was so ghastly, and one or two of the crowd were so deeply sanctimonious, ill-informed and self-opinionated in the…
Punchestown Day 2 plus Ascot
You will have seen that my sources led me astray and that EMBASSY GARDENS ran like a dog, and not a very well one at that. I am waiting to hear what exactly went wrong. If that had been our only disappointment yesterday, I could have coped, but overall, in financial terms, it was a…
Punchestown Day 1
I am always caught unawares by the arrival of May and the vast voids of public holidays and people doing zip that it brings. Any interrogation of any service, engineer, tradesman, driver, cleaner, stone waller, thatcher, or bottle washer comes with a sharp intake of breath as though one has just made an accidental pass…
The last day of a pretty decent jumps season
I don’t think anyone can argue that the jumps season, which closes today, has been at the very least interesting. It was a game of three halves as David Coleman might have said, Political, Sporting Horses and Tales of Racing People. We had endless chatter focussed on the race programme and the abysmal entry levels;…
Bueno Dias, Hola and I’m delira and excira to be back
Perhaps from my lapse into Dublin slang, you will gather that my world clock has quickly adjusted from Mallorca to Punchestown time and that the Craic is well imbued in these typing bones. The spirit of Punchestown washed over me on Tuesday when I saw Facile Vega clatter a couple and still win by 7½l,…
Punchestown Day 4
This looks like a day for favourites – or certainly top of the market players. I have suggested doing an accumulator at the bottom of the page, but I quite like the look of the last race, where I can see surprises being sprung.
Punchestown Day 3
Unlike other racing columns, this one is totally transparent in keeping its readers abreast of its own follies. Yesterday, and not to put too fine a point on it, finding winners was easy peasy if you simply stuck to Mullins and ignored most previous form. We had one winner in the outstanding Facile Vega and…
Punchestown Day 2
Not the worst day I’ve ever had at Punchestown, helped by a winner and a couple of places, which in turn were helped by the resurgence of Elliott and the skills of Jack Kennedy who was riding brilliantly. I was cross at my own dismissal of Mighty Potter as a third-placer, when I only mentioned…
No time to spare
I once had to write 1000 times Procrastination is the thief of time: Anon Today has been nothing but a sea of procrastinators delaying me from important business. I hope all their horses are rated 58 and only race at Chelmsford. The last and some would say the best of the Spring Festivals starts today.