The extended break from work provided the opportunity for a bit of turf and another step on the path to the 59 racecourses of Britain.
And contestant number 8 is... Lingfield in Surrey.
A good day's racing, despite only getting one payout from six races, and that was only a place. We both came close with exactas and I reckon we have cracked the art of the parade ring. So by this time next year we will be rich.
Next on the tour of Britain is Market Rasen in Lincolnshire and I am on track to complete the challenge in 2024.
It is coming down today so I thought I had better get a picture of it, especially given that it is so much more tasteful than last year's effort.
I guess I will bring myself a year of bad luck by taking it down early, but Christmas is dead and buried and we need to move on. Except that I am still eating turkey and chocolate.
[from El Reg]
HM Revenue and Customs has enhanced its international reputation for mislaying things by allowing 1.5kg of cocaine to go walkabout from a HMRC depot near Coventry airport, the Sun reports.
Warwickshire Police have confirmed they're investigating the "complete one-off", which saw the Bolivian marching powder evaporate from a secure lock-up for which "less than 10 people" had the password.
While acting chairman of HMRC David Hartnett told a public accounts committee he would be "very worried" if the Colombian naughty salt had been half inched, he did not rule out the possibility that it "could have been sent to be destroyed, to a court for evidence or to a laboratory".
Hartnett said: "I am very concerned about what has happened in Coventry. All I know is that an amount of cocaine - 1.5kg - is missing from the place it should be in a secure lock-up.
"What I don't know at the minute is whether this cocaine has been sent for destruction, or to a court or to a forensic science laboratory and the paperwork has not been done properly or it has been stolen. I am very worried if it is the latter."
While Warwickshire's finest scour the countryside for the missing charlie, HMRC is still looking for the details of the 25m citizens contained on two discs which went awol back in November.
To save you the trouble, were HMRC to compensate the disc-outrage-affected citizens with a percentage of the street value of the rogue stash of nose Ajax, it would amount, by our reckoning, to a paltry 3.6 pence worth of toot per head - way short of the minimum required to numb citizens' faculties to HMRC's quite astounding track record of carelessness.
[from Ananova]
Daddy Fantastic and Bobby Dazzler are two of the record 40,000 people to have registered new names this year.
Daddy was formerly plain Robert Sullivan, a carpenter from Gloucester. While out drinking with pals he decided he needed something more memorable.
Bobby, formerly electrician Paul Lancaster, was also egged on by friends.
Among the other eccentric names recorded by the UK Deed Poll Service is Something Long And Complicated, who used to be known as William Wood, of Scunthorpe.
Oddest of all is Chris Gray, of Bingley, West Yorkshire, who is now called Mouth Who Wants To Know O'Mighty.
[found on Ananova]
A wolf walked into a packed bar in Italy, ate a steak sandwich and walked out again.
The wolf strolled into the bar at Villetta Barrea, near to the Abruzzo national park, and helped itself to a steak sandwich from a table.
Bar owner Giacinto Lorenzo, 43, said: "It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it really happened.
"Everyone here knows what a wolf looks like and there was no mistaking this beast for a big dog. It was one of the wolves from the national park.
"It looked pretty thin and we guess it must have been suffering with the recent cold weather and the snow.
"Everyone was so frightened we couldn't move for about five minutes afterwards, but the wolf just sauntered out as if it was the most normal thing in the world."
Local authorities have sent a team out to search for the wolf.
The 'buyer' decided that current market conditions meant that a big price cut was needed. I did not concur, mainly because a price cut now would mean another, deeper, one, on the eve of contract exchange.
[from the Grauniad]
A four-year-old girl dialled 999 when her mother collapsed, fetched her medicine - and changed into a Cinderella outfit so she looked smart for the trip to hospital. When Hannah Lerego had an asthma attack at home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, her daughter Olivia fetched her inhaler, stroked her hair to bring her round and described her symptoms to paramedics. Lerego, 30, said: "I don't think I would be alive without Olivia. When they asked if my lips were blue she said they were pink like hers but turning purple and she knew that for sure because purple is her favourite colour."
