Aintree 9/4/26 - Cutlery of Sorts

As is traditional for these stay away festivals the preamble is the night before when we have no idea how we've done though I predict we won't take enough on Lulamba for it to be a loser but we will on Jango Baie and The New Lion

Strange sort of digs. Lovely bedrooms, massive telly, no knives, forks or washing up liquid. I idly wondered if I was turning into Kevin (couldn't find sausages in a fridge full of sausages) when I couldn't find cutlery in a cutlery drawer but it was unquestionably sans fork. Simon said he'd eat with his fingers, it's curry tonight... Our host wondered if tomorrow would be ok for cutlery supply but, fortunately the good folk at Morrisons Daily took pity on us and we got half of their takeaway forks.

As I write we still await said curry and also await Simon with his HDMI lead so I can get the footy from laptop to colossal tv screen. Someone mentioned "casting" but it's way above my tech pay grade. Equipment drop off at Aintree on the way down- I'd only ever bet on the Saturday by the first fence and Steve & Simon were in last year's chair so it was all shiny and new to me. Essentially it's one massive row of pitches, one end of which appears to start in Walton and finish at the other end in Lydiate. Simon is on pitching in, I'm on moaning if he gets it wrong - one of us will have a fruitful day - I'm hoping it's Simon.

At pitch in we were as one. First pitch we went as far away from the winning post as it was possible to get without jumping the Canal Turn. 2nd pitch we took a punt by the covered seats in an area consistently, nay relentlessly, avoided by the other books and we were first in. Off pick 82. We could feel the incredulity of our colleagues and we had no idea whether they were right with their ill disguised scorn.

1) Early pitch ins (10am in this case) are the scourge of the easily bored. Matthew was given leave to hit the gym when we arrived but he was still bored within 10 minutes of his 11am arrival. I was on with Junior today, Simon has him for the rest of the week. 3 losers in an unhedged book and we started reasonably well with Mange Tout (Rodders) beating one of the bogeys, the jolly Selma De Vary, which was slightly nicked back with shocking places.

2) We thought we'd be left with Lulamba as a winner but a steady stream of doubles gave us a nice liability and we cashed in with the best result in the book on Koktail Divin whilst also avoiding the big place liabilities on MamboNumberFive and Jax Junior. A cracking result on a 2nd favourite. We only lay em

3) Heartbreaker as 2nd best in the book, Impaire Et Passe cruised alongside what appeared to be the beaten fav; not to be and a great result turned into max loss with minor place market compensations.

4) Eagle eyed viewers will remember that we couldn't lay Barton Snow at Cheltenham and we repeated the trick here, winning handsomely on said jolly, the gloss only slightly taken of with a shocking each way result in an each way race that favoured us in spades.

5) Put the top two in. Never looked like getting a result. Loss partially offset by cracking each way profit.

6) Two bogeys and a no score draw made up the trio of selections who could conceivably win with 1/2 mile to go and we had another loss, this time modestly, on Ryan's Rocket after we totted up the place payouts.

7) And our stuttering late performance hit another roadblock as Nan's Choice was anything but our choice. Small loser but we had a place result to die for which eased the pain.

Decent winning day overall with some late heartbreak.

And so we headed home. In Simon's OXI-VAN. Access to M57 via Switch Island went relatively painlessly, though Simon had a brief dalliance with the A59 before we pointed out that was the way back to the track. Steve dropped off at his Mum's with a minimum of fuss and I was relaxing in row 2 for the short hop over the bridge to Runcorn where our digs are. And then a curious thing happened 15 minutes later, and I'm wondering where the Mersey had gone and why we were in Warrington and had further to go than when we dropped Steve off. Turns out Simon had his "no tolls" setting on so we saved £2.40 at the cost of about a tenner in fuel. Simon's application for CairnBet Transport Manager has been put in "pending". Ladies Day tomorrow much to Matthew's delight whereas I'm thinking of the void bets and the extra till roll. The optimism of youth v the weariness of experience. Until then...