The Bad Omen

Hello! My spring holiday has suddenly become much more exciting and generally enjoyable. Thank goodness for that or I may have lost mind! Read on to discover what’s been happening.

Saturday was the biggest horse-race of the year (in the UK anyway), the Grand National. As usual I read through the newspaper and chose a horse to make a bet on. After some deliberation (well several seconds anyway) I decided on which horse to back. West End Rocker at odd of 14/1. It seemed to have a decent chance yet wasn’t one of the favourites. My fingers were crossed that this horse would earn me some money.

Hours later after the build-up which goes on for ever, the race began. And several seconds in and my horse was out of the race. West End Rocker fell at the second fence. Clearly my horse-choosing skills are not very good. It was an exciting race though and the closest Grand National ever. It was a photo finish and the grey horse Neptune Collognes won it by a whisker.  It’s very unusual for a grey horse to win, especially this one who wasn’t predicted to do that well really.

^{That’s what you call close!}

I write about the National every year and every year someone comes along and starts going on about how cruel it is and pretty much tells me I’m a terrible person for considering it entertainment. It’s a completely invalid point. Yes, two horses did die this year. The news always incorrectly says that they died going over the fences. This is simply not true. The horses fell at the fences and broke legs and had to be out down. I don’t know the exact reason why but breaking a leg is much more serious in a horse and because of it’s biology means it would suffer much more if it remained alive. The course was made safer this year and it was just pure bad luck that resulted in this tragedy. No-one wants the horses to die, least of all the people involved. And there’s often criticism of the use of the whip. Let’s remind ourselves that too much whipping results in all sorts of trouble for the jockey. And whipping a horse is not like whipping a person, they are much less sensitive and won’t feel it as much. If I look at the horses racing I see happy horses who are doing what they love doing. The fact they carry on jumping the fences and running the race even when the jockey has fallen off. Horse racing is not cruel in any way and everything possible is done to make it as safe as possible for both the jockeys and the horses.

Well that’s enough on that subject. Monday saw me head back to Winchester for 24 hours, mainly to do get together with my maths assignment group and do some work. This happened and we did a bit of work. All fine. After a visit to McDonald’s for lunch, I attempted to head back to the house. I found that nearly every way I went was blocked off by police cordons. I thought perhaps there had been an accident but there did seem to be an excessive amount of police officers around if that was the case. Once I finally found a route to the house, a much longer one than normal, I looked up what was going on in my phone. It turns out it was a bomb scare. Someone had rung up the police saying there was a bomb at the County Courts. I was quite surprised by this. Winchester is not very big and not really that important. The only way it is important is because it has both the county council offices and the county courtrooms in it. Still, I never suspected that anyone would ever threaten to blow either of these up. Winchester is not the sort of place you’d think bomb scares happen. I was very impressed with how the emergency services dealt with the unlikely situation though. Police were ensuring no-one got into the area and evacuated one end of the high street. Ambulances were stationed on stand-by right near my house. It was impressive stuff. In the end, as was always going to be the case, nothing was found and things returned to normal. It was all very exciting though.

After an evening of spicy chicken, bowling and drinking more alcohol than I’d planned, this morning I headed home, stopping off for a bit of shopping in Southampton on the way. I left Southampton train station to discover the city appeared to be up in smoke. There was a massive fire at the docks which was the cause and fire-fighters have said it will take a few days before it will go out completely.

^{This shows all the smoke. (Picture courtesy BBC News)}

I couldn’t believe that after being in Winchester the day there was a bomb scare, I was in Southampton the day it was on fire. I recommend that all towns refuse me entry in case something else happens. I have not exactly been a good omen over the last few days. I wandered round Southampton city centre for quite a while. Me shopping on my own is always a disaster. I feel really uncomfortable and always end up buying more than I can carry and generally make a mess of things. My first purchase was two pairs of trousers, which I somehow managed to get charged half the price for. I have a knack for doing this. I then went into Forbidden Planet, and spent quite a long time in there. It’s full of various geeky things such as action figures and has a whole floor dedicated to comics and graphic novels. I ended up buying three graphic novels, two of which were the next two volumes of The Walking Dead comic. Once I’ve read those I’ll be up to volume 12. After wandering around various shops looking at Blu-rays and not finding any I wanted, I purchased a new pair of shoes and a new T-shirt. Both of which are awesome and in what I like to think as my unique style. Which is generally stuff which is either really brightly coloured, geeky or some combination of the too. I quite often think I the clothes I wear actually look pretty cool. My face let’s the look down though, it’s just not a cool face. I also bought a new lamp for my room so I can read at night in bed and don’t have to stagger across the room half-asleep to turn the light off.

Eventually I ended up back at home with my parents. It was a crazy few days. This second week of my spring holiday has already been better than the first and I’ve got lots of fun things planned so it should be pretty awesome. I just hope my presence is other town doesn’t cause any other crazy things to happen!

I’d like to end today by saying thanks to everyone who reads this blog regularly. Whether you’ve done it for ages or have only just discovered it, I’m glad you like it and really appreciate you coming here. Make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts on things. My blog appears to be particularly popular with escorts in India. I’m not sure why but I regularly receive comments from profiles with names like “Mumbai Escorts” telling me how good my blog is. I think they might just be spamming though. I hope so because I’d find it weird if escorts really were reading this. That’s all for today but there will be more stuff very soon so watch this space!