Royal Ascot 19/6/25 - I had a hat dropped it down picked it up, slapped it on my head

Yes - I know it's the abridged lyric but the full version is bigger than my Twitter character allowance.

Long, hard day for everyone working at Ascot today. I don't expect folk to feel sorry for us but conditions were pretty brutal today - on course for 9:30, already hotter than we saw in the frozen north all last year and just kept getting hotter for the 9 hours we were stood up. Not a day I want back.

Simon, despite being the youngest by at least a decade, has a bald bonce and Tuesday brought a purchase of a bucket hat at the Ascot shop. 15 quid gets you a reversible option of traditional Ascot blue with logo on one side and chavvy floral that makes you look more like the drummer from Stone Roses than a bona fide bookmaker. Simon opted for chavvy. Obvs. I made my feelings clear. Obvs. Skip forward to today and the chav side was on show and a discussion with a punter ended with Simon enquiring if he looked good in it and the nonplussed punter merely asked if he'd nicked it from his daughter. Mercifully it's been on the blue side every since.

Kev and Simon were dispatched to the lawns in front of the bar, whilst me and Steve were on the hill next to the uproarious White of Derby team pitched up next. We thought we were funny at times but we're mere amateurs- these guys are pros. And genuinely lovely too.

1) It's Ladies Day and the crowd generally want funny names and outsiders so the short priced jolly, Charles Darwin, was fairly and squarely onside and gave us a great start to the day with a dream of a place result as well and we were up and running. I made a stab at a couple of evolution gags, one guy said he was too young to understand. I wept inside.

2) Sing Us A Song, Masai Moon and Waterford Flow the ones to avoid and we had another win on a jolly, this time more moderate though, again, each way market made it moderate to good in places. And that, ladies and gentleman, is the best gag I've ever written. That's how low the bar is.

3) 3 losers around the middle and Garden of Eden was about the worst of them. Like Praise Him a few years ago we ran into another gospel choir coach outing and that, along with another Moore/O'Brien combo meant a step back whilst our colleagues took a step forward.

4) Trawlerman was a big profit for us for most of the betting until a late lump halved it and we had layer's regret as it won well. Places were poor in a bad each way market for the layers though we were still grateful for a positive result on the 3rd jolly out of 4.

5) Teroomm and Thunder Wonder (delightfully requested as Wonder Woman on more than one occasion) the bogeys with a stack of 0-0 draws and we won smallish on what was, effectively, the 4th fav out of 5. Places decent as well.

6) The pattern was repeated. Another jolly, another small win topped up by another good place result.

7) See race 6. Honestly. But we wanted the 2nd more.

As we opened with, the nature of betting on Ladies Days are that we are often left with favourites running for us- we've had many disappointing days when the outsiders and funny names have won but today it went our way and we know that luck was on our side.

Another roasting hot today tomorrow and we're mad busy packing up to leave first thing Saturday so the next blog will be a double header covering Friday and Saturday on Sunday.

Until then...