12th April 2016

Having been up to feed at 4 A.M I was delighted to receive an email from Sholto asking if I would bowl at him when I got back from galloping. We took Kimberlite Candy and Triopas for an away day. Both horses worked nicely, Triopas heads to the Goffs bumper at Exeter next week but will want some decent ground. Kimberlite Candy is being aimed at Woodford as he has from the day we bought him. He’s a big raw 4-year-old by Flemensfirth, we always knew he would need as much time as possible and Woodford is one of our favourite dates in the p2p calendar.

We worked Man O’ Words and Chase End Charlie on our return, all other horses had routine canters.

The contest for the champion trainer’s title is hotting up. I fear the bird may have flown for Paul Nicholls. Willie Mullins has set his stall out and he’s all out to win it. If Paul Nicholls can retain it, it would be a huge achievement given the fire power and lead Willie Mullins has over him. If Mullins can win the title is would be great for history as I’m reliably informed Vincent O’Brien didn’t win the Irish and British titles in the same year.

A farmer named Sam was overseeing his herd in a remote hilly pasture in
Hereford when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a
cloud of dust.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan®
sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out the window and asked the farmer,
“If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd,
will you give me a calf?”
Sam looks at the man, who is clearly a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing animals and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?”
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell® notebook computer,
connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a NASA
page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact
fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that
scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and
exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany …
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot® that the image
has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL
database through an ODBC connected Excel® spreadsheet with email on his
Blackberry® and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturised HP LaserJet® printer, turns to the Farmer and says, “You
have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”
“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says Sam.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with
amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then Sam says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my calf?”
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why
not?”
“You’re a Member of the European Parliament”, says Sam.
“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”
“No guessing required.” answered Sam. “You showed up here even though
nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew,
to a question I never asked. You used millions of pounds worth of
equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you
don’t know a thing about how working people make a living – or about
cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep.
Now give me back my dog.
AND THAT Friends IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE EU!!