Experimenting with drugs

An exciting day yesterday as my three fillies arrived at Watership Down from Japan.  They flew from Japan to Amsterdam and were boxed the remainder.  There’s a lot of risk in this type of journey and they seem to be injury free which is a relief.  I’ll give them a few days to settle in before I go down to …

Boredom relief

I had a terrible day betting yesterday, and for no good reason.  I was alone in the house, bored and with too much money in my account – a recipe for disaster.  If I only ever bet when I had a strong conviction then I’d do very well, but I’m succumbing to “boredom relief” type betting too often at the …

Hit and hope

Quality racing today but tough.  I’ve been through the various cards and I haven’t found anything that I would consider standout.  I’ve decided to follow David Pipe – he’s been in no form this season but he has plenty of good horses in the stable and he’s been getting the odd winner.  He has eight runners today around the country.  I’ve always …

If you can keep your head when all about you…

With so little racing on I’ve been watching the financial markets again, and it’s still carnage.  Our banks are slowly being nationalised, although in Barclays case they could end up being sold to Arab interests.    The biggest casualty of all is sterling – close to parity against the Euro now and at a 23 year low agaist the dollar having lost almost a third of …

Not in love with the game

I’m busy today with site meetings around the farm – we’ve got builders everywhere at the moment and the place is a mess. I’ve got one runner today – Viscaya goes in the 2:30 at Wolver.  She was a speculative claim a while back – she’d shown a little form, something was clearly amiss and if we could put it …

Chocolate rules

This dark chocolate diet is amazing – I expected results but I didn’t expect them to come so quickly.  Yesterday, with my newly supercharged brain, I had what probably ranks as my best betting day ever.  My first three bets won at 50-1, 12-1 and 12-1, and I came back at the end of the day for one more large and reckless …

Small is beautiful

I’ve had the first pics of the new foal – will post when I have more time.  She’s very small – partly down to being born early but we think she’s small anyway, which is probably down to the fact that her mother had her very young.  She’s well though and looks good – chestnut at the moment although this can …

Cossack dance

Exciting news – Park Acclaim foaled down a filly this evening, the first foal ever born to one of my mares.  I don’t know if she’s a grey (Park Acclaim is grey, by Clodovil) – she’s by Motivator.  I’ll post some pictures later in the week. Other horse news is poor.  Big Paddy has been retired following further tendon issues …

Not the easiest

A quiet day yesterday – my two boys went to see “The Snowman” up in town with Jane’s mother.  Eddie who is four and talks non stop and has opinions on everything had his grandmother laughing all day.  He explained his strategy to her for getting us to put the TV on;  “I ask mum, and if she says no I ask …

Getting in the mix

I’m having a quiet time of it here on the farm.  We’re very exposed here and it’s very cold – we’ve all had the flu and are mostly staying in.  The kids (and me) have been spending a lot of time on the Wii, which can be a bit dangerous.  There’s this game called Mario Kart where you career around …