Slack Jawed Babbling

“That might be nice”, said Mrs A. “Find a nice little B&B up on the South Downs for an overnight stop”. It did indeed sound appealing. Tough going, but over a couple of days, probably achievable. Bryn had e-mail me a link to a British Heart Foundation page about a London to Brighton walk over a Summer weekend. On further investigation, the challenge seemed a tad tougher than Mrs A and I had initially thought.   The idea was to depart from south London on Saturday morning and arrive in Brighton on Sunday afternoon, having walked through the night. The walk was filed under their ‘extreme events’ section: ‘The ultimate walking challenge. Up to 30 hours to walk 100k from London to Brighton’. It was either trepidation about rambling across Box Hill in the dark with only a head torch to stave off an 80 foot plunge that finally put Mrs A off; or the prospect of me, Bryn, Ad and Ben talking about cricket averages for a day and a half. Either way, she instead decided to volunteer

The flat. I’m not feeling it. Not yet anyway. I’ve let the Guineas and the Dante go with barely a ripple in my Bet365 vat. So maybe I’ll indulge in a little look back over the completed jumps season before the need to thrash around in the nether regions of the Carnarvon Stakes formbook takes hold of me.    The Punchestown Festival is technically the first big meeting of each new jump season. For all practical purposes, of course, it is the final monster meeting of the old one. Punchestown’s five days of top quality Grade 1 action, competitive handicaps and a bottomless well of bumpers became yet another stage for the Willie Mullins showcase. A Festival he has plundered with ease in previous renewals, this season his dominance hit new heights and crowned a majestic season. Un De Sceaux.  These are easy words to tap out on a tired old laptop. What do such glib phrases mean? For starters, he banked €4.2m in prize money and handled 187 winners in Ireland. More than twice the