Every day I do the horse racing cards for the next day's racing, by writing down the names of each horse for each race I'm studying - one race per page - on a Pukka Jotta pad of squared A4 paper. I then add ratings, stats, blah blah blah, price the race up and itemise my bets. Once the race is over I annotate the performances and bets, in a red pen - essentially marking my own homework. Collectively these become my own version of a form-book. I recommend it to any wannabe gamblers out there.
And one of the things I love most in my daily life is the fifteen minutes I spend each day writing out the names. There's a poetry to the names of racehorses - also to be found in the galloping rhythms of repetition found in a race commentary - and it's best experienced in the writing them down under each other in a notepad.
It's not usually about each name individually, but how their mix of nonsense and sounds roll over each other that is pleasing, However, there is always room for a brilliantly named show-off. And there's two novice hurdlers this year that I have been particularly enjoying writing down and saying out loud.
The first is Onlyfoolsownhorses - I wish I'd thought of it.
The second is sadly a quite terrible horse, out of Brian Boru and the herself wonderfully named Sheebadiva. But I love saying his name to myself over and over as I write it down, like a liturgy, and in a terrible northern accent, obviously - looksnowtlikebrian, it's called, looksnowtlikebrian. Looksnowtlikebrian.
Try it. See...
And one of the things I love most in my daily life is the fifteen minutes I spend each day writing out the names. There's a poetry to the names of racehorses - also to be found in the galloping rhythms of repetition found in a race commentary - and it's best experienced in the writing them down under each other in a notepad.
It's not usually about each name individually, but how their mix of nonsense and sounds roll over each other that is pleasing, However, there is always room for a brilliantly named show-off. And there's two novice hurdlers this year that I have been particularly enjoying writing down and saying out loud.
The first is Onlyfoolsownhorses - I wish I'd thought of it.
The second is sadly a quite terrible horse, out of Brian Boru and the herself wonderfully named Sheebadiva. But I love saying his name to myself over and over as I write it down, like a liturgy, and in a terrible northern accent, obviously - looksnowtlikebrian, it's called, looksnowtlikebrian. Looksnowtlikebrian.
Try it. See...
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