Haighgate

I’m not right at the moment – I’ve had a headache for about ten days and I’ve got blood in my nose.  Today is the first time in a while that I’ve felt properly human, although the headache is still just hanging in there – it started when I came off the beta-blockers.  I need to get this sorted once and for all – I’m going to see a specialist next week.

I was in meetings all day yesterday – I can’t remember them as well as I should and I know I didn’t function well.  In the days when I used to play bridge for a living I’d build up my cash when I felt well and blow it when the headaches came – it’s a bit like that now as I am completely irrational and tend to gamble my money away at a rate of knots when I have a headache. 

I took my emails this morning – I have a huge list of unanswered emails that I’ll never get around to now.  There were a couple about Paul Haigh and his apparent attack on the Racing Post through the Guardian.  Haigh, their long time feature writer, called the RP a “cheerleading tip sheet”.

I don’t know Haigh well – I had a good chat with him years ago at York races but our paths haven’t crossed a lot since then.  He does have history with BF though, notably in the forum.  He made himself known to the forum a long time ago (chatname Zorro) but was soon getting into very aggressive exchanges with other forumites.  I don’t remember the details but he turned the air blue one night and we had to ban him – from recollection he was banned on several occasions for language that was pretty choice. 

I have to stick up for the RP here.  I’ve enjoyed Haigh’s column more than any other in the paper but he seems like a pretty volatile guy and he must have been hard to handle.

Astrodome runs at Newbury today and he has a great chance.  I’d prefer the distance to be a little further and the ground a little softer – I’m also concerned that there are no front runners, which may expose us to a faster smaller horse if the pace isn’t there.  We may have to make the pace ourselves but we’d prefer not to.  Despite all of these concerns I’ll be backing him – he’s a very decent horse and is one to follow.