Slack Jawed Babbling

Nuca, our Romanian mongrel with a hair-trigger nose that detects grilled sausages at 200 paces, is sniffing Spring in the air. She’s been careering around the garden with unhinged, mad-March enthusiasm and tucking in to new shoots of grass like they are gourmet treats. I smell the changing mood too; and I’m sharing something of her wild passion. Not sure it’s the weather though… Cheltenham is nearly here. Festival preview nights are all the rage up and down the land right now. They have become an established part of the build-up: well-oiled panel pundits spouting dubiously informed views and rumours in front of eager, equally lubricated punters, before moving on to the next venue on the next night. Entertainment is the name of the game rather than cast-iron info. The skill is in winnowing the odd grain of valuable wheat from the wind-blown chaff. The Barley Mow festival pack had its own preview evening on Monday. Our level of inebriation would rival your regular ‘professional...

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 ...

Me and my mouth. For some while I had been bragging to a work colleague that he should give me a straight grand to gamble with over the course of the Jumps season. In return, come April, I’d hand him back a guaranteed £1,100. A six-month 10% profit margin that he would never secure in the High Street banks or would struggle to match on the stock markets. The incentive for me in the deal would be that any profit I made over £1,100 was mine to squirrel away. The grand would act as an investment, a pump-priming scenario. My staking is typically a lilly-livered affair because I never allow any bank of profits to build up. They are usually creamed off into the beer and kebab account, instead of fuelling a more structured punting strategy. I was supremely confident, based on my stats, that I’d land a few hundred quid’s profit. I’d mentioned this offer to any number of people, but only Pete from the office took me seriously. Even then, the transaction took ages to set up. He neve...