I don't have big ambitions but that doesn't mean there aren't minor things to try to achieve.On Sunday the novel, Time After Time, reached halfway, as chapter 5 was finished in the unrevised first draft that it is only ever going to exist in, which is 25000 words towards the 50000 and, as it happened, it reached a point comparable to Hamlet's decision to act if I may make any such a parallel between one of the greatest works in Eng Lit and one of the worst. So that project is on course and likely to be completed in the Spring.
Another aspiration was to win enough from my turf investments to pay for Ton Koopman's Complete Works of Buxtehude. Its 29 CD'S and DVD are a luxury purchase and one I wanted to earn rather than just pay for.
Today's win by One Sixty, in a handicap hurdle at Leicester, by a head, was as routine as it gets, at 3/1. But it led me to review the current state of my advantage over the bookmakers for 2016 and compare it to the lowest price that the Buxtehude was available for. And, because the gods were on my side, there was one offer much lower than the general going rate so I made all haste to snap it up.
There are two more discs already on their way with every chance of being added to the superlative shortlist for this year's Best CD but this release was from 2014 so it won't be a candidate for that. It might be some time before anything appears on here about it either but it comes with a great sense of achievement, having bought a painting from the profits in September when it seemed this monumental purchase was too much to hope for.There is another picture in the way, too, in what seems an orgy of winter spending that has even extended to £1.75 for a cyclamen plant that, for reasons I can't say quite why, needed to be bought on Saturday morning.
But it's a big Hallelujah and thanks to all the horses that ran fast enough to persuade Paddy Power to so generously stump up for a Christmas present that is just what I always wanted.