Slack Jawed Babbling

For a while over the Summer I thought I was falling out of love with the game. Back in August at Sandown, Mrs A and I met up with a few pals to see Nile Rodgers and Chic after racing. The evening was spectacular. Mainly because of a cataclysmic thunderstorm that broke the heatwave; and the unearthly light that followed it. For the first time I can remember, the racing was overshadowed by extraneous stuff. In the last race on that card, I backed a winner that prevailed by a neck. Data Protection won at 7/2 and I had backed it at 6/1 earlier in the day. William Muir’s charge had been unearthed through a system I’d been working on with varying levels of application for a couple of years. I’ve written about it elsewhere . The system seems to work. But for effective results, the beast needed feeding with attention most days. Big priced winners are found inconsistently and to maximise the return, there is a compelling need to shortlist the horses from each handicap each day. That sho...

Mrs A and I are quite getting in to the idea of sneaky weekend trips away without the rest of the fam. We’ve just booked another. Flushed with the success of last year’s wet and windy visit to Westport on the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland with The Johnsons, we then followed up with a more genteel destination. Bruges didn’t require the same extreme hiking mentality, nor square-jawed, stiff-upper-lipped resolve to enjoy-despite-the weather as Westport. Neither did the Belgian town have the cacophonous accompaniment of Storm Brian. What both trips did have in common, however, was unquenchable thirsts and raging hungers. We ate and drank well. Bruges is spectacularly able to meet both these needs. Days (and nights) were spent ambling through the medieval city’s pretty streets; exploring the canals (this was the ‘Venice of the North’ after all, doffing a respectful cap to other claimants for this title that include Amsterdam and, well, Wigan); and visiting the many fine landmark build...

What happened there? Write a post in February , blink your eyes and the next thing it’s Halloween. The hottest Summer since 1976 proved to be a barren desert for this blog.   Arctic interludes are already muscling a benign Autumn out of the way and I haven’t yet dealt with the Spring festivals. Picking up the baton from that February missive, I feel it is time to draw to a close the hairy tale of the Grab-a-Grand initiative. The deal, you may or may not remember, involved a work colleague investing a straight £1,000 with which I would gamble over the course of the Jumps season. In return, come April, I’d present him with a guaranteed £1,100. A six-month 10% profit margin that he would never secure in the High Street banks. My incentive was that any profit I made over £1,100 was mine to keep. An investment of a grand would provide me with the raw materials for bigger, bolder bets. I was confident of a 30-40% return on investment. That February blog reported the notching of ...