As it turned out, day one of Lisa's course wasn't the complete disaster she was anticipating. She only fell asleep twice, she was sat next to an international Maypole Dancing champion, and despite the course being residential, she made it home at the end of the day, due to the fact that she'd rather crawl on her face up the A23 for an hour than have to stay there for a week. Well, that and the fact that she was offered a lift.

She's also greatly looking forward to Thursday, when she'll be learning leadership skills by hiking through Ashdown Forest for ten hours with an overweight office manager on her back. She's quite confident with a compass because, as she told me last night, she never had a problem drawing circles at school.

Anyway, I'm sure she'll blog about it at the end of the week. Actually I'm not sure at all, but I like to be optimistic.

For my part, I spent yesterday completing the workbooks for Lisa's next course. We have a system whereby I do all the study and come up with the answers, and she signs the bit declaring that it's all her own work. It's foolproof. Anyway, after seven hours of research on 'Diversity & Professional Practice', I now know that if you ask a single mother to make the tea, you could end up in serious trouble. Though I'm not entirely sure why.

All that work did however earn me Sunday lunch at the Ha Ha Bar, and an evening out at the Devil's Dyke last night, a restaurant cum geographic feature, where the waitress forgot our drinks order, took our dessert order, came back and told us everything was off, then attempted to split the bill between our two credit cards, worked it out wrong in her head, charged us too much, and then ended up putting both halves on Lisa's card anyway, despite the fact that I'd signed for one of them. So that went well. I think she was more devil than dyke.

Anyhoo, today's the start of the biggest event in the horse racing calendar, The Cheltenham Festival (or the Chelmsford Festival, as Lisa likes to call it. She's not a big horse racing fan). It is however very exciting, so following the (almost) complete success of my Oscar predictions, I thought I'd give my tips for this afternoon's four televised races. These are all guaranteed to win, and you really should put your last penny on them.

No more than a penny though, obviously, because frankly I'll be lucky to get one in the first three. Right, here we go...

2:00 Straw Bear at 10-1

2:35 Missed That at 6-1

3:15 Macs Joy at 6-1

4:00 No Half Session at 8-1