In June 1975 Barney Curley executed one of the most famous gambles of all time, on a horse called Yellow Sam at Bellewstown. It was a moderate race and any large bets would have stuck out like a sore thumb, so Curley arranged for an army of men to place smaller stakes at SP (the starting price) across hundreds of betting shops away from the racecourse.

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days,
Thursday, Friday, Happy Days,
The weekend comes, the racegoer hums,
Ready to go racing with you!

The buds on the newly planted beech saplings have broken into leaf, the grass on the track needs mowing yet again and evening jaunts are spoilt by clouds of flying bugs.

Summer is finally here…

Joanna’s scarecrow is a truly frightening individual with a manic grin, curly hair and no face mask. I occasionally wonder whether he was based on anyone that I know…

It’d be easy to define a racemeeting as an event where horses are ridden around a field to determine which one is the fastest, but that’d neglect the essential contribution gained through the addition of spectators.

Without spectators there is no ‘meeting’, all we’re left with is the ‘race’ part of the word…

Having a reasonably logical and enquiring mind, it’s safe to say that I have hitherto considered myself to be a bit of scientist or, as the Cambridge Dictionary might frame it: a person who gains knowledge through the systematic observation of the structure and behaviour of the natural and physical world.

Despite the government’s investment of £1.2 billion in a meteorological super-computer next year (that it is claimed will be capable of predicting the weather on a street-by-street basis), there will always be people who prefer to base their weather predictions on the behaviour of cattle in a nearby field – just as there will always be racegoers who insist on backing the horses trained by the first trainer they see on arrival at the racecourse. 

If the mighty oak is considered to be the king of trees, then beech is the queen. And, according to books on the subject, the beech fairy offers gifts of prosperity and wisdom to all those who acknowledge her presence.

Apparently her speciality is to help people let go of rigid ideas, so that they may move forward in faith and openness. So if you feel restricted by stale routines and preachy protocols, like many of us after fourteen months of lockdown, it’s time to discover the fairies at Kelso Racecourse, where we have just planted an avenue of 24 beech trees and a neat row of beech hedging.

They say that when you look at the concentric rings within the cross-section of a tree trunk, you can see the differences between the nature of the seasons.

The same would be true if you were to cut me in half at the end of my life. Bisecting the body being a life-ending sort of process, I’d be quite grateful to remain intact until such time as I’ve passed on naturally, but if you can imagine such a situation, this is what you might find…

Scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago, have identified an anomaly which points towards a fifth force of nature and could answer the question as to why it can be so tricky to back winners of the Grand National.