Tuesday July 25th 2023

Totnes won at 5/4 (about half odds when I picked him, but never going to be a big price)

Usual Ruth Carr conundrum this evening at Wolves ...20:00 Newyorkstateofmind and 20:30 Next Second the latter ran over an unsuitable 6f last week and is now back to a more suitable 5f...both 12/1. Could be worth an EW Double....now for the wrong pick...

Newyorkstateofmind EW Nap.

NAP Treyarnon Bay, 7.38 Ballinrobe. Her first start for Shark, 20/1 as I type, won a bumper for Nicky Henderson in Blighty. This is her 2nd handicap start. What's not to like?

Nap: Gone 15:40 Muss

Just noticed Tim Donworth had the winner, Skylight Brochard in the second race at Dieppe. He must be the first Dutch bred horse I've come across. I usually have a vada at German bred horses, but now have to have a bona vada at Dutch breds as well now.

4.50 Musselburgh Annie maher ew

Kodi Dancer ew in the 18:20 at Chelmsford

Sacchoandvanzetti has a favourite's chance today at Southwell (4.25). I wonder what Jim Bolger was thinking when he named the horse? I never had him down as a fan of anarchists, but Saccho and Vanzetti are regarded as Catholic martyrs in the Italian-American community and Jim has a taste for martyrs. Here's one of Ben Sahn's many paintings of the two men who were wronfully sent to the electric chair in 1927.

Another nugget: there's a town in Eatern Ukraine named Sakko i Vantsetti. It was taken by the Russians earlier this year in the battle for Bakhmut but they have now been dislodged. Even more reason for Fergal's horse to win.

Loch Carron Muss 16.50

Ascot adventure 3.40M.

While we're on poetry, I've always loved this sensitive poem by Philip Larkin on retired racehorses:

The eye can hardly pick them out

From the cold shade they shelter in,

Till wind distresses tail and mane;

Then one crops grass, and moves about

- The other seeming to look on -

And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps

Two dozen distances sufficed

To fable them : faint afternoons

Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,

Whereby their names were artificed

To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start : against the sky

Numbers and parasols : outside,

Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,

And littered grass : then the long cry

Hanging unhushed till it subside

To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?

They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.

Summer by summer all stole away,

The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -

All but the unmolesting meadows.

Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,

Or gallop for what must be joy,

And not a fieldglass sees them home,

Or curious stop-watch prophesies :

Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,

With bridles in the evening come.

Marion's Boy - 19.50 Chelmsford

Totnes 7.50Ch nap

Was going to pass through there today, but place we were going to visit is closed on Tuesday!

Hoots mon, och aye the noo, up your kilt, toss my caber its West Coast of Scotland day. Lochaber (huge expanse that is around Fort William), Loch Carron (the water by spelling rather than the village, on which Callum has his seal trips from Plockton on the more accessible opposite side) and Inverinate where I'm sure I've noted before is on the edge of Glen Shiel that Sheikh Mo owns (the estate not the horse he sold to win a Group 1 for Archie and Holly). Many a splendid holiday we have enjoyed up there and I don't really understand why Skye is more popular, but as I don't like people suited me fine.

Nap Muss 1650 Loch Carron

simply as its the longer price of the 2 possibles.

Wolverhampton 8.00 - Asadjumeirah

Given my appalling recent run of form, I was reflecting on whether my selections for the rest of the month should carry a squiggle. Low and behold yesterday’s sportinglife.com carried an article on the reliably unreliable Al Aasy and provided a brief history of the squiggle. Here are some of the terms that have accompanied that notorious symbol:

·       resolute only in refusing to race: can run a bit but won't

·       an arrant coward

·       a thorough jade

·       when it comes to a struggle, discretion always triumphs over the remaining parts of valour

·       likely to refuse to start, or run wide, or do anything else he can think of to avoid racing

·       a stubborn, lazy, wilful pig of a horse

·       soon showed that he had no intention of racing if he could help it

·       a plodder and a rogue

·       eight hundredweight of cowardice

·       a well-bred thief who will never win again

Throwing it down as I write from San Sebastián. So much for the scorching temperatures.

DillydingDillydong. Wolverhampton 6.30.

Well done to all. Some fine tipping going on !

Bungle Bay - 18.20 Chelmsford

Iolani 2.30 Musselburgh is the nap,well done yesterday's winners.

Jonathan,

Did you just make that Poem up?

Did you miss your true calling instead of shuffling Files like the rest of us?

Wordsworth was bred to win Classics but it is a long way from Rock and Roll to drawing the Dole and I'm waiting for the Great Leap Forwards over Hurdles.

Running at Ballinrobe must outweigh the indignation he felt when he was gelded.

16.43. Ballinrobe. Ex- Ballydoyle Horse. Wordsworth.