Let this be a lesson

I’ve a funny (that’s not a promise) story with a message to recount in relation to the Cheltenham Festival. This story is funny for one reason and one reason only: I had a good day today.

Let us start at the beginning, so often the best place for a story to start. As long time readers will know, I do enjoy a good bit of horse racing. Many of the on-line bookmakers have special offers to entice one’s money in their direction. These offers are usually along the lines of ‘Stake £25 and we’ll give you a £25 FREE BET’. However, this week, one of the major sites had a much better offer, namely, stake up to £50 and they would give double the stake in free bets. It was actually in tiers rather than a straight doubling, but that’s not important here.

I thought, ‘So I can bet fifty quid and it doesn’t matter if I lose because I can stick the hundred on Kauto Star and double my money anyway.’ The more perceptive, or more accurately, those who’ve heard the result of the Gold Cup, will know that Kauto Star did not in fact win the Gold Cup. Again, this is secondary to the story.

After having a good hard look through the form for Thursday’s races, I decided that Albertas Run had the best form in its race and should win. Hill’s had the horse at 9/2 and I decided to play it safe in a competitive race and stick £25 on each way. This would only return a small profit for a place but together with the £100 free stake money I’d be happy. Now, for some unknown reason the William Hill website lists horses in betting rather than race card order. So, Albertas Run, 9/2 favourite, at the top right? Well no as it turned out. For some reason they’d got Air Force One (notice it begins with an ‘A’) also at 9/2 and since Air comes before Albertas alphabetically this was listed first.

There’s no excuse for what I did. Always pay attention to what you are doing when placing bets. So I only went and stuck £25 each-way on the wrong bleeding horse! Obviously had Air Force One won the race I wouldn’t have minded, but it didn’t (for the record it finished 5th, 2 places less than what would have won me some money). No prizes for guessing what did win. My stupid mistake meant instead of winning £140 on the race I had lost £50. I was not best pleased.

When I came to look at the form for Friday my ‘eggs in one basket’ plan didn’t seem such a good idea. It looks even worse now. My first alternative was to stick £65 on Kauto, with the other £35 on his main rival Denman, in what was shaping up to be a two horse race. I decided instead to stick the bulk on Kauto but then pick out a few other horses at decent prices so that any one winner would see me come out with more than the original £50. It turned out to be a good plan today as first Fiveforthree at 8/1 and then Celestial Halo at 13/2 both came home in front.

Kauto at even money would have been a lovely bonus, but I’ve more than doubled my money and I’ve still got £3.50 in free stake money to bet by the 20th. Any suggestions for what it should go on would be welcome.

This one’s for the Subscribers!

I’m not sure a few days before Christmas is the right time to start reading a biography of Mao Tse-tung.

The Land of No Return

This weekend I’ve been enjoying Renault’s hospitality, watching cars whizz past at high speeds. There’s been some fine action on show (as always) with a F1 demonstration, various single-seater categories and sporty coupes. The highlight (predictably enough) was the clio racing. Dozens of those powerful hatchbacks speeding down the ‘Craner Curves’ is a sight to behold!

The problem came when we tried to leave today. We decided to miss the last race to avoid the rush as everybody tried to leave at once. Immediately after the penultimate race finished we were on our way to the exit (about 15.25). We found the car with no trouble and joined the nearest queue of cars heading towards the exit (the way we came in).

The line of traffic did not move. We waited. Empires were raised and fell. We waited. The traffic simply refused to move. Not even a little. The only time there was any movement at all was when somebody gave up and went to find a different way out. Their space was usally taken by somebody cutting in from the sides. We got penned in with a troop of vehicles all around us. Over a hour after we got to the car enough of them gave up that we were able to squeeze out to the left and head over towards where we had spotted movement.

Having joined a new queue of cars e made some progress before this too appeared to have stalled. Thankfully, this setback was only temporary. Over where we had been the cars were in exactly the same places as when we left them. This new location had seven lines of cars all trying to get through a space just large enough for one. We were in the line best positioned for the hole, but in truth it was a test of nerve to decide who got through. We were positioned so close to the car in front that nothing could edge us out. There was a VW to our left driven by a nutter who had already narrowly avoided smashing into a line of cars. When the car in front pulled forwards we were too slow, and the VW and a Rover pounced on the square-yard of space as if it was a sandwich and they hadn’t eaten for 2 days. This left them equally well positioned to get through the space, but the Rover driver showed a determination against the arrogant VW driver which earned my respect. After that is was steady progress out to the road (about 18.00).

We then queued through Castle Donington and headed for the simple, 45 minute, drive up the motorway. Only, the motorway was gridlocked. Following a detour through several towns we arrived home four hours after we set off.

We have no reason to suspect the original line of traffic is anywhere other than where we left it.

Analogue vs Digital

After reading this CBC article on the switch over from analogue television to digital, I have a few comments. I don’t agree with the switching off of the analogue television signals and until reading that story I didn’t realise that everywhere else was doing the same. I thought it was just another crackpot idea our government had dreamt up. I suppose with the international nature of modern broadcast media I shouldn’t be surprised.

The main message we are bombarded by in relation to this issue is that digital television is “better” than analogue. Personally I don’t believe it is so cut and dried. I think digital television has some advantages - picture quality and the on-screen programme guides being the main ones - but also has some important disadvantages - the signal is more vulnerable to interference and have your tried to use digital teletext? It sucks! I use ceefax/teletext a lot and the digital equivalents are just crap.

In Finland (where the analogue signal has just been switched off) some people can no longer get television because the much vaunted digital broadcasts don’t have the full coverage that the analogue ones did. If it’s so great, how come they can’t even get it to everyone?

Something that surprised me was that set top boxes in Canada cost $200, which is notably more than the £20 or so a freeview box costs. I imagine it is not a like for like comparison. Perhaps they are more like those ’sky’ boxes that have more channels.

Since TV is the demon behind the decline of society (at least according to Robert Putnam) I guess it would be better if they turned off all the signals, but let’s not go down that road just at the moment.

Graduation Day

I got my graduation pack in the post this morning. It’s in the middle of November at Sheffield City Hall, with a reception there afterwards.

It wasn’t long ago I was thinking about secretly sneaking off on holiday so I’d be out of the country when it happens. I want to go and see the good people from my course and my mother wants the picture of me in cap and gown with a scroll of paper in my hands, but I don’t actually want to go up on stage and collect my degree. I suffer terribly from nerves; just thinking about it when I was looking through the pack made me feel queasy. I think that when they announce my name I’ll be in the toilets throwing up!

There’s all sorts of merchandise one can buy too. There’s a Class of 2007 t-shirt with a list of all the graduates on the back, cuff-links and tie pins available in steel or silver and various other goodies. It says the ones listed are only a selection and the full range is at www.shu.ac.uk/service/facilities/gifts so I’ll have to pop on there a little later to have a look.

I’ve just been measured for my gown (I did suggest it might be an idea to wait a couple of months as I might change size between now and then).

There is of course the other problem: there’s going to be a lot of people asking “What have you been doing this summer” and “What are you going to do now?” neither of which I care to answer.

Where’s nice in November?

Three cheers for the council

I don’t know who wrote it but someone told me today about someone writing a thank you to Sheffield City Council, for if not for their road maintainance policy the floods would have been 2ft deeper.

The Fox from the Flames

Firefox is back working and all is good with the world.

Opera was starting to drive me mad. In particular it seems to hate yahoo, and doesn’t quite get on with wordpress.

There’s so much I could write in this post, but I figure when writing about web-browsers it’s probably best to keep it as short as possible!

What not to read

I haven’t been reading nearly as much as I’d intended just recently. Last night I thought I’d read before going to sleep, as reading makes me sleepy at the best of times and I’m not very good as going to sleep.

Unfortunately, (I feel as though that word gets used a lot on this blog!) in this case reading proved to be counter-productive. Without going into the details, may I recommend that should anyone decide to read Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk it might be an idea to skip pages 18-21. I’m sure this will make some people curious as to what could be so disturbing as to get to one such as myself who watches all sorts of violent horror movies etc. Take my advice: DO NOT READ IT. Once you’ve read it, that’s it, you cannot unread it afterwards.

I decided that it was pathetic skipping a section of the book. I decided that I should press on, that I wasn’t going to back down from the challange. I really wish I hadn’t read those words, in that particular order. I wish I could somehow forget it, to wipe that particular section of my memory. I just know that’s gonna keep coming back to me for the rest of my life. To try and take my mind off it I started to read Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. It didn’t help. Not even a little. I ended up laid in bed watching BBC News 24.

*** Update ***

I found out last night I  actually put up the wrong page numbers - it’s 16-21 that are the problem. By page 18 it’s already too late.  At the end of the book there’s an afterword (where else would an afterword be?) by the author, who tells of his experience on the book tour. He read the short story in question and people fainted; men and women, usually two or three and at the same point in the story.

Blogger Notice

Just a quick note to any readers who blog on the Blogger platform: I recently had to switch to the ‘Opera’ web browser since Firefox inexplicably stopped working and I refuse to use IE. For some reason Opera refuses to let me comment on Blogger blogs.

We hope to resume normal commenting at the earliest opportunity. Thank you.

Die Weiße Rose

I’ve just finished a book about the White Rose anti-Nazi group who distributed leaflets during the war and were executed by the Nazis as traitors. I have to say it’s moving stuff, young conscientious people willing to put it all on the line because it was the right thing to do while most buried their head in the sand. I feel like I should pop down to Munich one February 22nd to pay tribute. Next year will be the 65th anniversery of the first 3 executions - of Hans and Sophie Scholl and father of three, Christoph Probst.

One of the things I especially like about the group is that they didn’t just oppose the Nazi war crimes, but they also opposed their world view. They opposed the overly strong state. They opposed the view of man as a tool, a means to an end, and the state as an end instead of a means.

The strange thing about this particular text is the fact that it claims to be written by a couple of academics, and on the face of it seems well researched, (its the only book on the subject I’ve read so I’m not in a good position to judge) yet it isn’t footnoted.

I’ll finish with the final paragraph of the book:

“The impact of the White Rose cannot be measured in tyrants destroyed, regimes overthrown, justice restored. A scale with another dimension is needed, and then their significance is deeper; it goes even beyond the Third Reich, beyond Germany: if people like those who founded the White Rose can exist, believe as they believed, act as they acted, maybe it means that this weary corrupted, and extremely endangered species we belong to has the right to survive, and to keep on trying.”

from Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007)