My Lovely Horse!

I'm quids in after the Grand National yesterday! Now I'm not usually a betting person, and have only bet on it once before a couple of years ago under pressure from a friend who dragged me into a betting shop on the day, but I fancied a flutter yesterday so picked out four horses and put £2.50 each way on them all. Of course, I had no particular reason for going for them other than on the basis of their name, my first choice was for the horse called Simon as I have a good friend of that name, but bloke Simon told me off afterwards as he said that it was bound to come last and that Simon's are generally rubbish. Horse Simon actually didn't do too badly, apparently he was in the contenders before falling over at the 25th fence, so could have been worse. Can't actually remember two of the other horses I went for, but they weren't in the winners, unlike my final choice Silver Birch who was a 33-1 outsider but romped home and has netted me over a hundred quid!

I had to do a bit of reading to find out how the whole betting thing works as wasn't sure how much I'd get - apparently a £2.50 each way bet means £2.50 to win and £2.50 at a quarter odds to place in the top 4. So by my calculations, 33 x £2.50 plus the original stake back is £85, and since a win also counts as a place, I also get (33/4) x £2.50 plus the rest of the stake back, equalling £23.13 so a grand total of £108.12! Well, minus the £20 that I spent in the first place, but it's still enough to have a good day out sometime.

Just got back from the North where I was for my cousin Nick's wedding yesterday - he and his new wife Claire had a lovely day for it as it was pretty warm, and a nice informal service. Had a minor panic in the morning when my mum realised she'd forgotten to bring a top to wear, so she was all in a flap about that when my brother and I just said it could be easily sorted out by going shopping. Managed to find her something in the end so crisis was averted, but at least she realised she'd left it behind a couple of hours before she had to get ready rather than an hour before we had to be at the church!

Off now to do the final coat of paint on the woodwork in my bedroom, the new carpet is arriving on tuesday so it's all very exciting here...