Four bets for Sandown tomorrow

The entries for the Cheltenham Festival handicaps races were announced this week and so now seems a good time to try to steal a little value from bookmakers, with the four days of elite jump racing just around the corner next month. ✍️ Penworthy.

Introducing Grok Imagine.

I saw recently that Bristol City Council wants to limit collection of its wheelie bins to once a month. In much of Britain, it is already fortnightly. But at least they have wheelie bins. ✍️ Jonathan Miller.

The daily bottles kept getting nicer, and by now I was stumbling onto seaplanes completely blotto and by the end of a week, I believe I was suffering a form of vintage champagne poisoning. ✍️ Sean Thomas.

A dog can be a real friend; a cat is merely a chimera – sometimes intimate, usually more committed to maiming and killing other innocent creatures. ✍️ Zoe Strimpel

How do you even think about flirting without being able to ask – or be asked – for a light? It isn’t alcohol that makes sex happen; it’s the flickering flame of a lighter between two people in a dark corner of a club. ✍️ Flora Watkins.

In 1885, Grenfell was made Sirdar – or Commander-in-Chief – of the Egyptian army. This promotion accidentally led to the name of Grenfell Tower. ✍️ Harry Mount

Women are generally more self-conscious than men; the average woman spends around 55 minutes a day on her appearance, while a sixth of women wear make-up at the gym. ✍️ Zoe Strimpel.

Gen Z is fuelling a rise in demand. ✍️ Arabella Byrne.

What’s missing is honesty. ✍️ Jonny Ford.

I worried I might actually burst. ✍️ Francis Cole.

Being British is depressing because we Britons are the first globally hegemonic people to witness the decline and extinction of our world-ruling empire in little more than a generation. ✍️ Sean Thomas

It is inferior to Mackerel Sky, my local fish shack, but I live in west Cornwall, and I can’t see the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar buying it any time soon. ✍️ Tanya Gold

Q. My godmother still looks after me even though I am now 31. She gives me a case of wine each birthday from the year of my birth: 1993. The trouble is, this was not a very good vintage. ✍️ Dear Mary: How do I guide my godmother to buy me better wine?.

I wonder how it would go down if we tried this back in Blighty, putting signs up insisting that sharia courts, rape gangs, cousin marriage, the burka and hijab and so on are offensive and un-British and would ‘destroy’ our way of life. ✍️ Rachel Johnson.

If you don’t mind sitting in a room full of older people eating classic dishes, you’re going to love this new reality. ✍️ Tim Hayward.

My husband may wish that he had married someone who at least stood a chance of paying the mortgage. But I have never pretended to be anything I’m not. ✍️ Arabella Byrne

Try, for example, asking an American bot like ChatGPT or Claude about anything remotely problematic in regard to race, gender or crime. You will get evasive answers, screeds of weird diversion, or sometimes downright lies. ✍️ Sean Thomas.

That Italy could be as melancholy as Eastern Europe, I realised, on my last Saturday there, standing on my apartment balcony. The sky, though rainless, was a sullied sheet, the sea the colour of lumps of broken glass. ✍️ Robin Ashenden.

The puddings – generally old-fashioned nursery fare with dollops of custard – are gorgeous, but I gave them up after a fortnight, lest I no longer fit into the hoist. ✍️ Julie Burchill.