With apologies to anybody arriving here in expectatiion of a poetry and books website. Yes, it is that but in the Autumn, especially, it can also be about horse racing.
The last two Saturdays have been costly while the more modest racing on weekdays has done its best to compensate but today I was too circumspect to put the aptly-named Poet's Vanity (won 13/2), tipped up to me by a colleague who had done his homework, with Rhododendron, 5/2, and the jumping best bet, Virgilio, 11/10, into some fiendish combination that would have set us up very nicely.
But let us not fret over what might have been.
The Cesarewitch is not the sort of race to get involved in unless you know something and I don't know anything. Picking through the less ambitious options, at Chepstow and Hexham, I have a shortlist that I'll make into a yankee with one at a price at York.
The market isn't as yet recommending Black Ivory in the first at Hexham but it's early days yet. Colin's Sister is probably not one we can take all the way to Cheltenham in March but might be good enough for Chepstow tomorrow and we can throw in Perfect Angel (York 3.10) for a small change yankee but, young enough but in receipt of lots of bags of sugar and apparently ready for big fences already, Clan des Obeaux (Chepstow 3.15) is one I want to have at 2/1 and get us in front from the off on our trek to Boxing Day.
We finished a bit in front last year and better in 2014, more so if you had got on at the early prices, but, yes, 2013 went wrong.
Hold on to your hats.