Slack Jawed Babbling

Arguably, as racing years go, 2014 was not a rumbustious cartwheeling of champagne moments or as packed with giddy achievements as some previous years. Neither did it attract so many damaging and controversial headlines either. Maybe a solid year is no bad thing. It was, however, thrilling, emotional, notable, absorbing and, yes, some dispiritng or concerning aspects too. Here are a few of the peaks, valleys and plateaus that have contributed to the geography of my punting year. Four good Cheltenham 2014 I sometimes crab and scowl a little about this fair isle’s finest racing festival: too many amateur races, too much domination of the season, too few decent facilities… And yet it remains the pinnacle of my year. Rightly so. The Cheltenham Festival is a place to make memories and celebrate equine excellence. And maybe find a winner or two as well. Fitting then, that Edward Gillespie who spent 32 years as the managing director at the course has been awarded an OBE in the

So. We've ended up with a bunch of workman crawling around inside and outside the house in the already fraught Christmas run in. With the inevitability of Santa's once a year coming, the projects we'd foolhardily agreed to be done in December have overrun. Madness, I hear you say, to willingly invite in such mayhem at this time of year. Well yes. And no.   The idea of having everything sorted by the end of the year is seductive, but we didn’t push for this. Businesses are only happy to overprogramme, leaving the tightest of margins. They can’t wait to get all the filthy lucre in their mits before the break. I ran away at the end of last week. The house was filled with blokes spreading rubble and brick dust far more liberally than any festive cheer. I couldn't get past the ponderous patio man to my office and the dining room was livid with sooty wood stove fitters. Mrs A had the back room baggsied. So I fled to the sanctuary of the Double Six cafe on Eversholt

I hadn’t been to Catterick Bridge racecourse for about 25 years. My previous experiences weren’t particularly positive. My formative punting years were scarred by ramshackle grandstands, fizzy beer and crap racing, as this chunk of Mug Punting makes clear: “….Catterick was worse. The track was surrounded by towering piles of unwanted spoil from the adjacent quarries carved disrespectfully out of prime Yorkshire moorland.   An ugly, crusty and polluted lake covered much of the inside of the track which served to encourage the feeling of dereliction. It was a hole of a course with no facilities to speak of. I stumbled across a gem of a book called ‘Cope’s Racegoers Encyclopaedia 1962’. Leafing through its mottled pages I discovered that ‘in January 1961 Catterick Bridge opened a £30,000 new stand which provides facilities previously undreamed off at this small Yorkshire course’. That must have been the twisted pile of rusty iron and crumbling grey brick that I could see across

I’d never been to Twickenham before. The largest stadium in the World devoted solely to Rugby Union. Not even to see Lady Gaga or Rihanna. So when Bryn, via Steve, offered up a ticket for England v Australia in the Autumn Internationals, I jumped at the chance. Another iconic sporting venue ticked off the list. (I have lists of lists, just in case you are wondering. Alphabetically and chronologically organised.) The game and indeed the stadium did not disappoint. Bryn and I had a sweeping view from the Upper East tier that enabled a perspective on the shape of the match, the gaps and overlaps and territorial advances that you can’t get off the telly. Identifying the individual protagonists was a little more tricky, however. As was interpreting the many refereeing decisions. The big screen helped out here a few times, but there were some random infringements that even the video boys struggled to nail. Up with the Gods This was mostly good, open action though. The Wallabies