Bad Day at the Office

 There are such days from time to time. Confidence is a much over-rated thing, especially in horse racing. But we survived one or two worse Saturdays last year and came out of it with an all-time best profit. It is as important to limit one's losses when it's not going right as it is to sit on one's winnings when it is so it was entirely my fault for breaking the rules and chasing early losses and compounding the problem but we're still solvent, in the black and set up to do better next time which is a modest investment on Gary Moore's Inneston in the first at Fontwell (1.05) tomorrow. When you fall off your bike, or horse, you have to get back on.

Dan Skelton impressively tells it like it is and was confident without being as bullish as his mentor, Mr. Nicholls, about Pembroke who was heavily backed but found one too good on the day. Whether Mr. Nicholls was quite so expectant of Stage Star giving away weight first time up in a handicap I'm not sure but the horse defied his doubters and, of course, I only wish I hadn't been one of them and had had more on. And so you wonder if and where he might go in March.

One consolation is writing about it because words can somehow be soothing like an inward hurt objectified and thus in a way neutralised. And another consolation is looking forwards by making a tentative long short list of which names might be set to appear in the forthcoming Cheltenham Preview which is always a highlight of the racing journalism year.

There's ten of them, at least three of them not favourites, and a tantalising 'dark horse' but we will see.

I feel better already with nothing to complain about how it's gone for the last ten years and things to look forward to in the next few weeks. It was just one bad day at the office.

I keep wondering when the words will run out, as far as writing's concerned. Surely one day all the sentences one could possibly have wanted to write will have been written, as well as all those you thought better of afterwards. The same goes for chess moves but that doesn't seem to worry those that understand it better than I do. And certainly it seems to apply to pop music when one is reminded of disc 1 of the immaculate Best of Bowie but I dare say that the 12 year olds of today think just as highly of Piggy Minxster, Slapdog Jerome and Feeble Gangster as some of us did of T. Rex fifty years ago.

Whatever one does it doesn't seem quite enough. Wouldn't it be good to write one of those perfect little 'novellas' like Gide or Turgenev did, publish the Shakespeare 'twins theory' in something more solid than the letter in the TLS all those years ago or even have a songwriting credit on the 85 year old Cliff Richard's compelling return to form in a few year's time.

I'm thrilled with what all the poems look like, the best of them, if I ever look at them. I have enough essays backed up to furnish those outlets that may or may not want to print them. I'm in danger of overloading what suitable conduits there are, which is predominantly the music reviews, and so further essays aren't really required.

And that's what it like, it's all good, it's all under control but nobody ever did anything much by thinking like that. The only way to be satisfied is to be less than happy with how things are and be doing something about it. Making a respectable profit from the turf and thinking it should be more, finding combinations of words even more attractive than what's gone before, flirting with the vainglorious idea that you've done something worthwhile.

Sport was ever thus. That was good. A few weeks later it was understood as the new standard and thus ordinary. You couldn't ever win and that, as long as it doesn't drive you mad, was a good thing.