Slack Jawed Babbling

Mug Punting got off to a pretty low-key start this jumps season. Even a trip to Cheltenham’s first day of the season couldn’t induce a winning thread. Me, Dad and Bruv pitched up on the first day that an impressive new £45m five-storey grandstand was open for business. The whole redevelopment looked good: a new parade ring and winners enclosure, balconies, viewing areas and high level walkways. We grabbed a table on the first floor next to the champagne bar and gathered from staff that plebs like us would not be allowed in here in future. When the stand opened formally from the next meeting, this would be badge holders only. This was the soft launch designed to test operational wrinkles like queues for the bogs and crushes at the exits. (Wouldn’t want to see the members used as such guinea pigs...) Still, the development is a significant improvement on the old owners and trainers enclosure that used to occupy the site. Much more spick and span than my punting. I di...

Well, two and a half piers, really. Because I was to be found lurking outside a concrete bunker opposite Brighton's ruined West Pier at one point of this tale, haranguing strangers on a damp Halloween evening. West Pier You may well ask why this was happening when I could easily have been lapping up an insanely brilliant collection of Weekend sport in comfort at home. The answer has something to do with a misjudgement about the pulling power of a rock ‘n’ roll dream ticket.   Joe Bonamassa, one of the few truly inspiring guitarists left on my to-see list had announced an arena tour. Surprisingly all the dates missed out London. Inexplicably, they also bypassed Aylesbury Watford and even the decent blues pub in Sarrat. Brighton was on the list though. And I knew tickets would sell fast for this blistering fret-meister. So one Monday morning I was to crouching over the laptop, credit card in hand, waiting for the tickets to go on sale. Hardly a Glastonbury-scale operati...

I'm delighted to announce the follow up to Mug Punting: Short tales about long odds is published today. Picking up the dysfunctional threads of the original Mug Punting opus, this second collection of real-life racing and sporting yarns meanders haphazardly through ten more years of furiously celebrated small time gambling adventures.  Since that first volume, the this blog has become quite well established as an outlet for racing, sport and betting rambles, together with a ridiculous array of general escapist nonsense, bellyaching and disturbing trend towards telltale middle-aged grumpiness. Time marches on … The blog has implausibly gathered a loyal troupe of curious visitors, to whom I am massively grateful. Many of those posts provide the source for the stories here, and have been expanded and edited into new tales that are set against the backdrop of a decade of horse racing and other iconic sporting moments. Smug Punting: More short tales about long odds (what el...

An early Autumn weekend in Gibraltar seemed too good to miss. We had some credits left over from a cancelled flight last year. Desperate to use them up before they expired, I scoured the Monarch website and soon enough the destination pretty much self-selected: convenient departure airport, weekend-friendly flights and the prospect of warm weather.   That the destination was new to us as well was a bonus. The tired old Airbus 320, with its faulty seats and broken lighting, pitched up late at Luton and took off later still. But that didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of plenty on board. The greater part of the Bedfordshire Rotary Club had taken up several rows in front of us and were eagerly anticipating a weekend away from running tombolas and raffles (I think that’s what Rotarians usually do). And the woman in the seat next to me was travelling with various members of her family to a brother’s surprise 40 th birthday party. She was applying complicated make-up using an arr...

The dog’s arrival has had some unexpected impacts on our lives. As well stressful hours chasing her around half of Hertfordshire when she does the Escape To Victory routine, we also decided to have a Nuca-friendly holiday this Summer. No kennels in her first year with us. Instead we spent a couple of weeks in pet-compliant gaffs. First up north with my Dad and Bruv and, after a pause back home where I lost and then won back holiday spending money via Glorious Goodwood, a week on the Isle of Wight en famille. Staying in England afforded the opportunity to establish some new and revisit some old holiday facts:   Always – no, never – set up an ‘Out of office’ message   I managed to send out about a billion or so ‘out of office’ messages. By accident, of course. I’m not really sure how this happened. Something to do with the way I applied the filters, I believe. Even the polite little warning from Apple, saying “Are you sure?” didn’t alert me. About 30 seconds after cli...

Oblivion avoided. Just when hope was leaching away, when bookies were about to snap shut their satchels and as hog roast caravans were closing down and hitching up for York, the project began to deliver. First Toofi came late and fast-ish to claim 2nd in the Stewards Cup for the place element of our 20/1 stake. 4pts net profit that ate away a little of the (by then) 20pt deficit. Then, after missing out in the maiden, it became the late, late show. Enlace held on for the first of this exercise's Johnston winners at a backed price of 7/1. Then Balmoral Castle prevailed at an even more slender margin at a morning price of 10/1. That gave a net profit on the day of 21 points to exactly and precisely wipe out the accumulated losses. In the very last breath of the Festival's 35 races, I was honours even with the bookies. Ridiculous and spectacular. Blind value betting cannot be endorsed on the basis of this foolhardy exercise. Of course not. But it has been a tremendous ri...

Barring a manoeuvre that would make the turning circle of a supertanker look like a handbrake turn in a Fiat 500, this wretched Goodwood value project has failed. Six points frittered away yesterday and again the best result was a non runner. Only a couple of the selections ever looked competitive. Humping a 16 point deficit, the project now resembling a guessing game rather than a carefully honed punting strategy, rumbles in to the final day of Glorious Goodwood. 2.00 6f Stewards' Sprint Stakes: The Hooded Claw , 20/1 ew 2.35 1m4 handicap: Novancia , 9/1  3.10 1m2f Nassua Stakes: Diamondsandrubies , 4/1 3.45 6f Steward Cup: Toofi , 20/1 ew 4.20 7f Maiden stakes: Mediciman , 6/1 4.55 7f Qatar Stakes handicap: Enlace , 7/1  6.00 Apprentice Stakes Handicap: Balmoral Castle , 10/1  Thank God this is over...