Heaven knows how I used to get out and ride a bike up hill and down dale on the roads of southern Hampshire. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my first 12 hour ride and so it is 18 since my last. And there ended my short and undistinguished career as a racing cyclist but, honestly, it was the best thing I ever did. It seems more than a lifteime ago now.
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The piles of unsorted CD's that have sprung up around the house don't betray an excessive habit. I've known people who bought many more than I do. But the way that any orderly arrangement of them has disintegrated suggests that I was right not to become a librarian. A library should not have to depend on the librarian being the only person who can trace an item by remembering where he saw it last.
Music was such a treasured thing for a teenager in the 1970's that vinyl items were almost sacred and cassettes of records taken from a small transistor radio with a microphone were valued. Of course, 'kids these days' don't have the same sort of interest in music as we had (we might like to think) but they can't be expected to value it as highly either with it being ubiquitously available for nothing wherever they look. That which might have been intended as disposable then has become a part of us now but what might be a masterpiece now has become disposable.
But it is so easy to get yourself delivered of the latest thing you've heard now that one can afford it whereas then being in possesssion of enough cash to buy an LP meant one had a momentous decision to make. Recently it has been Berlioz, Sweelinck, Albinoni, the Wagenseil, Thomas Baltzar and concertos mentioned below and now the Viola Sonata that Shostakovich wrote on his death bed in 1975, quoting the Moonlight Sonata in the last movement.
Shostakovich is a major contender for the title of greatest composer of the C20th, with his range from the vast symphonies to the many and varied string quartets, the Preludes and Fugues that follow Bach's model, the opera, the jazz and any amount of this spare chamber music. I am not discounting any of the other candidates but my guess is that posterity will have immense respect for Shostakovich.
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Whereas Barney Curley is an old hero of mine of an entirely different stamp. Just when you thought the old maestro had left the horse racing industry and one day a copy of his autobiography might show up at a bargain price, he is much more than implicated in the biggest betting coup for several years, with estimates of 2 million pounds being offered as the profit of their little project on Wednesday this week.I don't know if he has ever done me any favours personally. I only ever seemed to pick up on the forays that went astray or were pulled. But he is not one to offend if you want to see how he deals with John McCririck and Luke Harvey on You Tube. But there was a good, old-fashioned player if ever there was one and I admired him for it.
This week's spectacular four-timer might be the last we see of him but you never know. Four horses who had been available at such prices as 20/1, 10/1 and 7/1 on Tuesday night won on Wednesday at prices like 9/4, even money and 4/6, the odds on chance being the one that had 'steamed' in from 20/1. Now that is what you call a steamer. I think it is three of them that had been in the care of Mr. Curley and got beaten a few times before he relinquished his training licence and then the horses returned after long lay-offs with much reduced official ratings. On a quiet Wednesday in January in inconspicuous races.
It was brilliant but today in the Racing Post it turns out that not everyone agrees. Quite rightly they point out that any punter who had backed other horses in those races did so not knowing that they didn't really stand a chance. Apparently it brings horse racing into disrepute.
On the other hand, the bookmakers needn't moan when they are taken for a large bundle of cash because it's them that want to bet. And so, equally, you can say the same for punters. Horse racing is supposed to be a bit disreputable. It always has been and that is what some of us like about it.
I think Reve de Sivola might beat Big Bucks at Cheltenham tomorrow and would be worth a go at 100/30.
But it's the weekend yet again and so hooray for Danny Baker, Donna Tartt, Shostakovich and Cheltenham races. If I can get a good start on the Times crossword, I'll pursue it and if I finish it, I'll put the solution here.