The Mighty Hammers!

Some of you might have realised by now that I am a West Ham fan, so I am going to take the rare opportunity to gloat!  What about last night and the 4-0 drubbing that the Hammers handed out to Manchester United?!  It was United's first defeat in twenty-nine games, and I think it is fair to say that maybe Mr Ferguson's reserves aren't quite as good as he thought they were.  It's a shame that Obinna is only on loan from Inter Milan as he looked a class above everyone last night, and sadly I don't think that West Ham will be able to afford to sign him at the end of the year.  Anyway, I was delighted and Christmas is back on the agenda in the Barnes household!

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Looking through today's Racing Post, it occurred to me that Brian McCullough is taking the mickey when he says, "I hope Kempton have rung up their regular crowd to let them know that the start time has been moved forward".  I don't see why they couldn't ring both of them - when I went there for an all-weather meeting a few years ago there were more bookies than punters!

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I was looking through the statistics pages of the paper this morning and was paying particular interest to the cold jockey's list when my wife piped up "Cold jokeys?  They must all be cold!"...I will leave it at that!

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It has certainly been cold around the yard, although we have been lucky to have escaped the majority of the snow.  Below I have a couple of photographs from the gallops from earlier in the week featuring Dynaste, Hunterview, Presenting Ace and Consigliere.

  
Above left: (l-r) Dynaste and Hunterview, and right: Presenting Ace and Consigliere on the Pond House gallops