Tom Roper's Weblog

Amphibian racing: Ascot and Haydock

The recent and forecasted weather seems more suited to frog-racing or some other species of amphibian. Nevertheless, in the belief that racing at Ascot and Haydock will go ahead, here are my selections:
1220 Haydock: Balder Success
1250 Haydock: Ile de Re
210 Ascot: Finian's Rainbow
230 Haydock: Katkeau
245 Ascot: Oscar Whisky
305 Haydock: Silvanico Conti
320 Ascot: Pepite Rose

Cheltenham: Paddy Power Gold Cup

It has to be Grands Cru. I post a little late, and my first selection managed second place in the 12:45, but for postertiry, I include it here.

Cheltenham 12:45: Vasco du Ronceray
Cheltenham 155; Problema Tic
Cheltenham 235: Grands Cru
Cheltenham 305: Goulanes

 

Barnet casino

I have been following events in the London Borough of Barnet with some interest. I worked there, from 1978 to 1986, in my first jobs in libraries. To my horror, it has now become a locus classicus, a horrible example for the whole nation of what is in store for libraries, and all our public services. I worked in a well-staffed and stocked service, though we had to defend staffing and stock levels against both the council and national government cuts. Now they propose seven professional librarians for the whole borough. When I worked there we had more than that in the Hendon library alone. 

If you want to follow every twist and turn of the Barnet story, Mrs Angry (a former Barnet library worker) documents it admirably in her Broken Barnet blog. And I recently came upon this splendid animation, which says it all :

I wish I were at Kelso

Alas, instead I am on a London-bound train. For today, the death-rattle of the flat, I select these:
200 Doncaster: Dorcas Lane
235 Doncaster: Kirthill
250 Wincanton: Prospect Wells
310 Doncaster: Sirius Prospect
325 Wincanton: Golden Chieftain

Ascot, Down Royal and Wetherby

Now race meetings begin early in the day, and end at tea-time. The going will be sub-aquatic today, I suspect, especially at Down Royal, a racecourse I have never visited, but dearly want to.

Down Royal 225: Quito de la Roque
Ascot 235: Ile de Re
Ascot 310: Ace High
Wetherby 325: Planet of Sound

 

Aintree, Chepstow, Doncaster and Newbury

This is the last of the flat season; henceforward race meetings will start and finish earlier. I post these late, as the small matters of swimming training and marathon marhsalling have kept me from the keyboard until now.

Newbury 215: Odooj
Doncaster 230: Dungannon
Newbury 245: Hawaafez
Doncaster 305: Steeler
Aintree 330: Hector's Choice
Chepstow 415: Arthurian Legend

 

It's nothing to do with austerity: why I'm marching on #Oct20

Like many thousands of others in London, Glasgow and Belfast, I'll be joining the TUC March for a Future demonstrations tomorrow. I and other library workers and campaigners plan to meet at 11 on the Embankment opposite Middle Temple Lane, under the Speak Up for Libraries banner. Join us, if you can.

Everyone will have their own reasons for marching. I'm marching for libraries, of course, but also for education, health, housing, inudstry, full employment, everything that makes a modern civilisation. I have to confess, though, that I have some difficulty with the TUC's portrayal of this as a march against 'austerity'. What austerity? There have been times in our history, the war and its immediate aftermath being the most recent example, when austerity was practiced.

Looking round Britain under the coalition, or under the Blair-Brown government, I see no evidence of 'moral strictness, self-discipline, self-restraint', to quote the OED, whether I look at MPs' salaries and expenses, the gas companies' price hikes, the privatisation of the NHS or the costs of waging war in Afghanistan, to name but a few. Austerity is another example, like collateral damage, friendly fire, enhanced interrogation, of words being twisted to mean their opposite. When Cameron, Clegg and Osborne speak of austerity, they are abusing the language to hide the truth. We should not give it currency.

 

The Great Storm and the Pathetic Fallacy

How we giggled when our English master introduced us to the idea of the pathetic fallacy. 'Don't think much of your fallacy, pretty pathetic if you ask me', we'd say to one another. We were schoolboys, after all.

Twenty-five years ago, there was the Great Storm. I returned from a meeting plotting the revolutionary overthrow of the existing relations of production and watched the late-night weather forecast. I saw Michael Fish reassure us that the viewer who had rung in with a warning of a hurricane was mistaken. A few hours later, I woke as the power went off. I mainly remember how warm it was. In the morning I made my way to work through streets filled with debris. I always walked to work, so the collapse of public transport didn't matter to me. We had a departmental union meeting scheduled for that morning; the meeting went ahead. We would not let a little breeze divert us from our purpose.

Slowly I realised how great the storm had been. I visited my parents in Cambridgeshire; whole avenues of trees near Newmarket had gone. A trip by train to Brighton showed me devastation at the side of the track. Trees rooted for hundreds of years had gone in a night.

A few days later my brother left England for good; the woman with whom I lived at that time left, suddenly and without explanation. Was it something to with the weather?

Twenty-five years later, Michael Fish appears from time to time at the end of the local news, forecasting away.

Cesarewitch day

I can never remember which heir to the title of Tsar gave his name to the big race today (Google tells me it was the young man later to be Alexander II). It matters little, since those blood-soaked reactionaries were removed in 1917, one hopes never to return. Leaving that aside, here are my selections for today:

Newmarket 150: Scarf
Newmarket 220: Moohaajim
Newmarket 255:Dawn Approach
Newmarket 335: Martyr
York 345: Louis the Pious
Newmarket 405: Just the Judge

 

Regular reader may have noticed I achieved an unusually high strike rate with last week's selections. Let's hope....

Ascot and Newmarket

I'm posting late, after the first races have been run, but nevertheless:

200 Ascot: The Taj
215 Newmarket; Victrix Ludorum
230 Ascot: Hawaafez
250 Newmarket:  Ghurair
305 Ascot: Mince
335 Ascot: Captain Ramius