Last Kelso meeting a few weeks ago the storm broke upon us with fury and flame, well, torrential rain anyway, the 3 rivers surrounding Blairgowrie burst their banks and I got as far as the biggest beech hedge in the world (3 miles) before meeting a harassed looking P&K chap with a van and a hi viz turning us round.
"You can't get through to Perth this way, flooded mate" "Coupar Angus?"
"Flooded mate"
"Alyth?" "Flooded mate"
"Bottom road to Dunkeld?"
"Flooded mate"
"Top road to Dunkeld?" "There's a tree down mate" - at least it wasn't flooded.
The only road out was to Braemar- a day's work lost.
Our friend Ross was due to make his CairnBet debut and was patiently awaiting me in a car park in Perth, blissfully unaware of biblical levels of carnage some 15 miles north. I'd even done some bloody training with him in the week. I've offered him New Years Day for when we next need a worker. He politely declined, even with the offer of time and a half and a Well Hung and Tender burger. Disappointing. In truth he would have displaced my current reign as "the pretty one" by a factor of about 100 so it may not all be bad. And it allowed me to shoehorn in a Big Country album track- I've already used the obvious "Chance" lyric.
All of which meant that, given there was another weather warning this week, I started the Kelso pilgrimage on Friday, spending a tedious 10 hours in a hotel room just south of Perth, wondering if my car was going to be washed away, playing countless games of Twilight Struggle online with folk from Japan. I was further rewarded for my dedication at around 3am for with stomach cramps previously only seen in a labour ward. I'm still on dry toast the following morning and the day was littered with trips to the Kelso facilities- I was particularly grateful for the long distance events...
We actually lost hedging at Kelso last year so liability was nudged up for this season, in the hope we can bet a bit more normally there. Was it the right choice?
1) The hospitality section emptied out and we started the day with a string of bets for Lunar Chief. We assume that Tim Peake was the guest tipster. Whoever it was, we were grateful an hour or so later as we had liabilities on the aforementioned Lunar Chief and also the similarly priced Tara Cove. In a relatively bad each way race, from our point of view, we stood chunks in the place market on Indian Louis, Blue Bear, Better Be Definite plus Lunar again of course and got good reward as Coniston George gave us a reasonable start in the win market and we dodged all of the place bogeys to supplement our win by another 50% or so. Kelso giveth
2) Empire Steel for the max in a normal looking book, Corach Rambler, surprisingly, only a small bogey when we expected a max there too. Elvis Mail another steady result for us and we had a further nice move ahead on 2 second favourites we could easily have lost on. Kelso continued to giveth.
3) And then it taketh away. Big style. I'm not sure if it was the funny name, the booking of Brian Hughes or if this was the result they give away when you buy the racecard but we stood Busty Boy for the max in win and place and were royally battered as it defied a huge drift on the off. Most of the early profit gone and we were expenses only territory. And hedging was now in profit. Of course it was. Never a good thing.
4) 4 runners, as usually seems to be the case we stood the top and bottom of the market and had the middle two as winners. Relatively stress free as they were the only two in it but we wanted Gold Des Bois for a good win but got Bollingerandkrug for a small one. Not helped by a lovely group of ladies asking me for a tip on the off. Could only suggest the champagne related name and they were delighted a few minutes later- Steve less so. Even worse when they joyfully told us they weren't betting again for the rest of the day as they had their going out money for the night. Got a few quid on the forecast and we had possibilities of a decent day and were only half way through the card.
5) In typical Kelso fashion we had a competitive looking 15 runner job which was, of course, won by the 3/1 favourite at a canter for our new Kelso max and the few quid we got back in the each way market was the tiniest crumb of comfort from our cake of misery. Massive step backwards, stomach continued to gurgle alarmingly and I just wanted to go home.
6) Another 2nd favourite prevailed in the next and we eked out a tiny win by standing the jolly, Rob Roy MacGregor but Lucinda's winners at Kelso are seldom jackpots. We wanted the fast finishing Doyen Du Bar which hit something crazy short in running but resolutely refused to go past. Another dose of seconditis.
7) Finally some respite. We wanted the jolly, Augharue at Hexham a couple of weeks ago but we certainly didn't want it here. Max liability along with half maxes for Hector Master and Fathers Advice. Fearless Action was a great result for us, though Hector Master gave us a scare late on, and we finally had some wages.
8) Lucinda. Jolly. You know the rest. Only a half max as we ended up standing the top 3 for various amounts and were never in it but a stomach churner, literally and figuratively, to end the day.
A reasonable win overall, pretty much on the back of the 10/1 shot in the 7th. We felt it was probably as good as it could've been given the next biggest priced winner was 4/1 and the other 6 races were one of the top 2 in the market. Did we win hedging? Of course we did. Not a good thing. We will stick with the higher liabilities as we didn't see anything we obviously got caught on- the 2 big losers being a 3/1 favourite in a 15 runner race, and the whole track being on Busty Boy for tenners and twenties, rather than an obvious big bet- and see how it looks at the end of the season.
Kelso again in a couple of weeks for a great meeting which next year will be a victim of the premierisation timetable so we'll enjoy it while we can. Until then...