Runner At Both Meetings

It's day five in Tuscany and there are a few sore heads this morning!  Despite being far removed from anywhere (down four miles of dirt track) we managed to have a lads day out yesterday and found eight tempting looking bars.  In fact, by the end of it all David's three year old son Jack could walk better than most of the party!  There are a couple of days of our holiday remaining but Martin and I are already packed - I'd like to say that is because we are super organised, but by now you probably know that that is completely untrue and it is actually our lovely wives who have prepared us.

It's day five in Tuscany and there are a few sore heads this morning!  Despite being far removed from anywhere (down four miles of dirt track) we managed to have a lads day out yesterday and found eight tempting looking bars.  In fact, by the end of it all David's three year old son Jack could walk better than most of the party!  There are a couple of days of our holiday remaining but Martin and me are already packed - I'd like to say that is because we are super organised, but by now you probably know that that is completely untrue and it is actually our lovely wives who have prepared us.

We decided to knock our snooker tournament on the head yesterday as the situation was starting to look hopeless (which just about sums up our standard of play!).  I would like to say that we conceded gracefully but we are both bad losers so I would by lying!  Instead everyone participated in a game of 'Killer' - if you have never heard of it, it is a snooker based game where all participants have two lives and you take it in turns to pot a red - if you do not pot a ball you lose a life.  To give you some idea of how good the cue skills of the gents in the party are, the final took place between Susie and Leanne!

Anyway, I digress once again!  There are five meetings taking place this afternoon - three on the level at Hamilton, Kempton and Lingfield as well as National Hunt fixtures at Fontwell and Stratford.  The stable has one runner at each of the jumps cards - Beyond takes part in the 2m6f handicap hurdle, while Lola Galli runs in the concluding bumper at Stratford.  Beyond has been in good form on the level winning a decent race at Salisbury (pictured left) and there is no doubt that a mark of 107 looks reasonable given his ability on the level, although his hurdle form has been a little disappointing of late - Kieron Edgar takes 7lbs off his back.  Lola Galli ran a promising race when third in a bumper last time and hopefully she will continue to improve and looks to have fair claims today - Tom Scudamore is in the saddle.

*****

It was a good day for the Brits in the US Open tennis yesterday.  It may only be the early rounds but to have both Andy Murray and Laura Robson successful on the same day has to be considered a bonus.

It was a good day too for Scottish football as Celtic qualified for the Champions League.  Having slated the state of the game in Scotland only last week, they immediately put me in my place with an unlikely 3-0 win over Shakhter Karagandy having lost the first leg 2-0.