Up For The Cup...

...Had any of you managed to place a bet, on the advice of my suggestion, for Our Vic to win the Gold Cup yesterday and lost your money, then blame the bookie not me!

For at the last hour the horse was withdrawn from that race in order to run in another. Thus only a thoroughly dishonest bookmaker would have taken your money but to keep it. (He - horse not bookie - did manage a creditable second in his chosen race, though sadly as the Palladas pennies were only on for a win we did not score.)

You will be though delighted on my behalf to hear that my final choice of horse for the Gold Cup - and heavily (think three figures and then some) backed each way at the mighty odds of 100-1 - itself came in second to the supreme Katuo Star.

I do not, however, this very instance announce my immediate retirement from daily toil, departing for Monaco in order to lead the high life.

Why so not, if so well endowed in the moolah department?

Well, sadly the clue is in my exact choice of words. My quote-unquote horse did indeed pass the post just behind the winner, but sadly my horse's jockey was at that moment still some two miles behind his mount, having been chucked out of the saddle when two other nags collided at an early fence the one bouncing off the other into mine, throwing my hapless jock to the ground through utterly no fault of his own.

My horse - Idle Talk - clearly had it in him to run the race without any difficulty and had only he been accompanied by his rider throughout then tonight one's fortunes would have been made.

But 'twas clearly not to be. Providence has - no doubt wisely - arranged otherwise. (Never have come across a bookmaker called 'Providence', but if I do I shall steer well clear!)

Oh and, by the way, E indeed does not know who St. Patrick was. Having just returned from picking her up and quizzing her reluctant self on the way home I can aver that she is ignorant not only of any detail of the life and times of the Patron Saint of Ireland, but also is equally clueless as to who St. George might have been other than our own patron saint.

As for who is the patron of either Scotland or Wales she has not the foggiest. Well she does now because she has been told, but it does not bode well for the future well-being of our United Kingdom if a tolerably well-educated teenage specimen is so far from this basic knowledge of what historical ties identify and bind us. I blame Tony Blair of course.