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Two years on and Devonshire's four-legged namesake, trained by Mark Tompkins, is preparing for the biggest race of his career when he lines up on the start line in the Epsom Derby on Saturday. |
Trew's nag, a 250-1 outsider with William Hill, has four top-three finishes in his career thus far and enjoys a star studded following, including Hollywood film star Ray Winstone. |
And the 50-year-old owner, a West Ham fan since the age of six, is hoping Devonshire the horse - which finished fourth at Lingfeld Park in May to qualify for the Derby - can match the player's ability to pull off a shock. |
"Alan is one of the greatest players I've ever seen and he was always my favourite. He was a great winger and was capable of doing the unexpected," said Trew. |
"He only won a handful of England caps, but I think he would have won more had he not had his career affected by injury. |
"I've got a box in the Queen's Stand. There will be 45 of us getting a coach from Kent including former West Ham players Tony Cottee, Phil Parkes and Tony Gale. |
"It is a dream to think I once watched these players as a kid and now they are coming with me to watch Alan Devonshire the horse at the Derby. Amazing. |
"Alan had a bit of a disappointing end to his season as a manager, hopefully this will brighten him up a bit." |
Trew has been good friends with Devonshire since meeting him at a West Ham United legends event and the 52-year-old Beavers boss has missed just one race the horse has run since making its debut outing. |
Having named one horse after a past hero, Trew took the plunge by naming another after former Hammer Yossi Benayoun. |
"It was a coincidence that Yossi was gelded in the same week the player left West Ham for Liverpool. Since then I'll only name horses after past players, because they won't let you down," added Trew. |
Alan Devonshire finished fourth in its first race of the year to qualify for the Derby and has four top four finishes in its career thus far, including one win. |
He will be up against the much-fancied Henrythenavigator, Casual Conquest and Curtain Call at the weekend in a field featuring seven Aiden O'Brien-trained mounts. |
But trainer Tompkins, who names Bob's Return's St Ledger triumph in 1993 as the best of his 900+ winners, insists the dream will not die even if the horse fails at the famous Downs course. |
"The Derby is everybody's dream. It is the pinnacle of anybody's career in the sport. It is a massive day," he said. |
SRS Ltd. is a diversified company with a business portfolio comprises of gold & jewellery, cinema exhibition, retail, hotel and food & beverages. It operates through the following segments: Cinemas, Retail and Gold & Jewellery. The company was founded on August 29, 2000 and is headquartered in Faridabad, India. |
MALIN Andersson made a shock return to Love Island on tonight's episode. |
Confronting her cheating ex about his on-screen hook up with Emma-Jane Woodham, the pair had it out in a fiery argument. |
But it seems that Terry Walsh got a bit carried away in all the drama, storming off and grabbing his ex-girlfriend's sunglasses on the way out by mistake. |
As Malin asked, "erm do you wanna give me my sunglasses back?" viewers took to Twitter to share what they thought of the awkward moment. |
One fan joked that Terry's blunder was "about as embarrassing as his new fling", while another brilliantly commented, "When you don't have any good comebacks so you just steal their sunglasses instead." |
We hope that someone treats Malin to a nice new pair of shades to make up for this unfortunate incident. |
Most keen gardeners will be familiar with hypericum Hidcote, a classic garden variety which is reliable, rewarding and easy to grow, and named after a famous National Trust garden. |
This hardy evergreen shrub produces its beautiful yellow flowers, which resemble those of a giant buttercup, throughout the summer and into early autumn. |
It’s also worth seeking out other hypericums, as they too make excellent garden plants. |
We can now add to this list, for floristry, as in recent years much breeding has taken place to produce hypericums with attractive fruits, for both garden value, but especially as a cut flower for bouquets and flower arrangements. |
These include the ‘magical’ series, the ‘flair’ series, Rowallane and Sunburst. |
The shrubby hypericums need very little pruning, a light trim in March to remove any dead or damaged growth is usually enough. |
They will thrive in a sunny spot in any soil, so long as it doesn’t get waterlogged. |
Yellow associates well with blues, so blue flowered plants which flower at the same time as the shrubby hypericums, like geranium Rozanne, echinops Taplow Blue, catmints and sea hollies are worth considering. |
If you prefer to continue in the hot colour vein, then red, orange or yellow dahlias, crocosmias or day lilies can be combined with the yellow flowers of the hypericum. |
For the rock garden, or front of a border H. olympicum combines green-blue foliage with golden yellow flowers, while the Rose of Sharon, H.calycinum, is widely used as a weed suppressing ground cover. |
Container-grown hypericums can be planted into prepared soil and keep them well watered if the weather is hot. |
A thorough soaking to the base of the plant in the evening will make best use of water. |
A mulch around the plant with bark chippings or mushroom compost will also help conserve moisture in the soil. |
It is high summer and herbaceous perennials, summer bedding, containers and hanging baskets are looking good. |
Continue tying in the developing stems of climbers such as roses, clematis and honeysuckles. |
Sweet peas are in full flower and dahlias are starting to flower. |
As soon as their blooms fade, cut them off as this will encourage the plant to produce more flowers. |
Similarly, remove the faded blooms from plants in containers and hanging baskets. |
Keep these well watered in hot, dry, sunny weather. |
Plants will also benefit from a weekly feed with a fertiliser high in potassium and a tomato fertiliser is ideal. |
As soon as the flowers on mock orange (philadelphus) have faded, prune the flowered shoots back to a healthy, ideally outward facing bud. |
This will encourage the plant to produce shoots which will bear next year’s flowers. |
Continue sowing quick-maturing salad crops such as loose leaf lettuce and rocket, while Chinese cabbage can be sown towards the end of the month. |
Daily file photoThe Securities and Exchange Commissio is checking into Vail Resorts' accounting practices because the company restated earnings downward for fiscal year 2003. The commission routinely makes inquiries when publically-traded companies restate earnings. |
Federal securities regulators are taking another, formal look at Vail Resorts’ accounting practices. |
The agency routinely investigates companies that have restated earnings and it’s the second time Vail Resorts has been scrutinized by the agency. Vail Resorts officials declined Friday afternoon. |
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates publicly-traded companies, issued a subpoena in November following a $3.3 million restatement of earnings by the company in October. |
A week after the restatement, which delayed release of the year-end financial report by three weeks, Vail Resorts announced it had reassigned its chief financial officer. Those restated earnings spanned 1999 until 2001. |
The agency is examining the accounting practices and financial restatements made by the company for its 2003 fiscal year, which ended July 31. |
In February, after an inquiry by the company, the agency investigated the company’s accounting for private-club initiation fees, causing the company to prorate the value of those fees over the life of a membership. |
In its 2003 year-end financial report, the company lost of $14 million – $8.5 million after taxes – on revenues of $710 million. It was the first loss suffered by the company in a decade. |
That loss was attributed to the war in Iraq, which started in March, when 25 percent of the company’s ski business occurs. Tourism and travel declined precipitously with the onset of the war. |
Vail Resorts is the largest domestic operater of ski resorts. It operates Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Breckenridge in the Rocky Mountains and Heavenly at Lake Tahoe. Vail Resorts also owns the Grand Teton Lodge Co. in Jackson Wyoming and has an interest in 10 RockResorts luxury hotels across the country. |
Thursday the company reported it had an expected seasonal loss of $25.4 million on $103.6 million in revenue and expenses of $134 million for the quarter ended Oct. 31. |
At close of trading Friday, Vail Resorts’ stock was at $17.46, up 2.7 percent. |
Above: Ignore the shoes of journalist Chris Morris. Why does Sony have fake maple leaves? |
One of the unintentionally funny moments of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) took place at Microsoft’s press event, where Ralph Fulton, creative director of Playground Games, announced the Forza Horizon 4 racing video game. |
“Seasons change everything!” insisted Fulton, who was very excited about the dynamic seasons in the game. Yes, that was cool tech. The racing game becomes very different in visuals and audio and gameplay with the change of seasons to winter, spring, summer, and fall. As he said this, faux leaves started falling from th... |
But I felt something was false about that claim, since, in real life, seasons don’t change things that much. Racing games have long had night or rain conditions. And this sounded like a marketing department’s way to dress up a game that was still essentially the same as the previous version that debuted on the same con... |
Fast forward a few hours and I was sitting in the audience of Bethesda’s press event. Todd Howard made a presentation about Fallout 76, the new game in the post-apocalyptic series. His game was set in West Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, as a cover singer sang a version of John Denver’s Country Roads song. We sa... |
The next day, we went to the Sony press conference. And during the presentation of the beautiful Ghost of Tsushima, I heard the leaves rustling in the trees first. And then I could not help but notice leaves falling from the trees. A red maple leaf was blowing in the wind amid all of the greenery. Then, during the samu... |
After the press conference was done, we walked outside to the after party. And we saw faux Japanese buildings and, of course, faux red maple leaves. |
Surely this is a coincidence, I thought. Sucker Punch, the developer of Ghost of Tsushima, didn’t make a similar claim about how seasons change everything. But I laughed again and took a picture of the leaves on the ground, as they lay under the feet of my friend Chris Morris. After many more jokes, I came home from E3... |
How can this be? Four big games, all independently declaring that leaves are now important in video games. Does this mean that we’ve hit diminishing returns for interactivity and graphics in video games, where developers are making improvements to games by inserting things that we really don’t care about? What’s next? ... |
You can see how my journalistic mind works. E3 featured more than 200 games and introduced a couple of thousand products. Yet my mind was searching in a paranoid way for the patterns to link them all together. When I saw Skull & Bones from Ubisoft, I started thinking it was the “year of pirate games” because crashing w... |
We’ve all done this, and we’ve noted how we saw a “year of the bow” and then a “year of the grappling hook.” Thankfully, in reality, the video game industry isn’t just a bunch of lemmings. These are just fantasies of journalists who, for the most part, aren’t very good at statistics. |
Of course, we do see a trend that is tearing up gaming and changing everything right now: the battle royale game. It came up in every interview I did at E3, either because I brought it up or the interviewee brought it up. Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and to a lesser extent, H1Z1 (see, three is a trend) have... |
Panic stricken, some of the incumbents are worried about losing market share in first-person shooters. Both Activision and EA announced battle royale modes in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Battlefield V. Gunpowder Games’ Maelstrom is taking battle royale to the sea, Paladins is taking it to fantasy, Surviv.io is taking... |
I suppose we have false trends, like the leaves, and real trends, like the copycat behavior going on with battle royale. If you’re making games, it’s always good to know the difference. It’s also good to be far ahead of the trends, making something that no one else is doing. That’s called innovation. |
And remember, my opinion on this could change in a few months because … seasons change everything! |
the performance. Pepys’ diaries provide a unique insight into London life in the 17th century. He served as a naval administrator and MP and was aboard the ship which returned Charles II from Holland to restore the English monarchy to the throne in 1660. Far from being a dry record of historical events, Pepys chronicle... |
Tickets including tapas and a drink £16, tickets for performance only £10. |
Boogienotes Rock and Pop Choir performs a variety of songs from the last few years as well as wartime tunes and medleys. Running time approximately one hour. |
The HandleBards are the world’s first cycling theatre company. The all female troupe presents Shakespeare’s famous story of Romeo and Juliet who fall in love despite the fact their families hate each other. Tickets £15, discounts available. |
No entrance fee, all donations to charity. All welcome to the Songs of Praise in the church at 6pm on Sunday to learn more about quilts and how they have been used for communication purposes over the years. Delicious refreshments served from 2.30 - 4.30pm on both days in the village hall by WIGS, the Thornborough and T... |
Late at night, with the world asleep, Theodor Seuss Geisel to his studio would creep. The author and illustrator stashed his unfinished prose and unrolled artwork that nobody knows. |
The world came to love him as Dr. Seuss; he famously created characters like the Whos. An expert says that his midnight jam helped him dream up stories like "Green Eggs and Ham." |
"At nighttime, it was just his own unbridled creativity he was able to put out there on canvas, on a piece of paper, on board," said Jeff Schuffman, spokesman for the Art of Dr. Seuss Collection for more than a decade. |
"Which, I think, definitely benefited what he was doing during his day job. I think one inspired the other." |
More than 40 reproductions spanning 50 years of Geisel's unknown artistry will be unveiled to the Canadian public for the first time on Monday at a gallery in Vancouver. The Pendulum Gallery will showcase the limited edition illustrations, paintings and sculptures authorized by the Dr. Seuss Estate in California until ... |
The exhibition will offer a rare look at works that Geisel asked his wife not release publicly until he was dead, Schuffman said. Seuss squirreled away the art he made for pleasure, to cure writer's block, and for family and close friends to maintain some privacy, he said. More than 250 million copies of the author's 4... |
Geisel dubbed his secret collection, containing about 200 works, the "Midnight Paintings." |
In a preface to a book about the collection called "The Cat Behind the Hat," Geisel's wife Audrey writes: "I'm gratified to carry out Ted's wishes and have these works revealed to the world." |
Schuffman said there is the public side of Dr. Seuss that many children grew up with, but visitors to the exhibit will discover his private mind. |
Geisel, born in 1904 in Massachusetts, was a self-taught artist whose talents ranged from watercolour to oil to sculpture, Schuffman said. He studied at Oxford University to be an English professor, but quit when he realized he was doodling more than taking notes. |
He began his career as an editorial cartoonist in the 1920s, served in the army during the Second World War and visited more than 30 countries in Europe and South America before he was 30 years old. |
"I meet a lot of people at shows and exhibitions who knew that Seuss certainly was an author who revolutionized children's literacy in the late 1950s, but never realized that he actually illustrated those books as well," Schuffman said. |
"You will come away being reintroduced to someone who you thought you knew." |
Among the gallery highlights will be a portfolio of nine drawings recreated last year to honour the 25th anniversary of Geisel's final book, "Oh the Places You'll Go!" He made the hand-coloured drawings before the book went to final ink and paint. |
A quirkier display will be five surreal animal heads mounted on wood plaques that were made in the 1930s, called "Unorthodox Taxidermy." Fabricated from paint, papier mache and clay, they were inspired by authentic beaks, horns and antlers of dead animals that were mailed to Geisel by his father, a zoo superintendent. ... |
Schuffman described the work being displayed in Vancouver as having a "Seussian slant," from his writing, to his rhythm and rhyme, to his drawings and characters. |
"If you saw them out of context, you may not notice that they are the art of Dr. Seuss," he said. "But when you see them in context with his full body of work, it just clicks and makes sense." |
Maybe the Ravens were attracted to safety Matt Elam by his size. Or his speed. Or his ball skills. Or his ability to deliver a hit. |
Or maybe they like safeties who don’t have agents. |
Former Ravens safety Ed Reed didn’t have an agent, hiring David Dunn only after Reed landed on the free-agent market and the Ravens weren’t stuffing enough cash into his pockets. And so, with the 32nd pick in the first round of the draft, the Ravens picked Florida safety Matt Elam. |
At this point, Elam doesn’t really need an agent. Instead, he needs to ask the NFLPA what the 32nd pick got last year, and he should probably wait until the 31st and 33rd picks sign their contracts in 2013, with the goal of fitting in the middle. |
Eventually, however, he’ll need representation. Whether renegotiating with the Ravens or becoming a free agent, it’s too hard for a player to navigate that mine field on his own. |
I never thought about it before, but with the rookie pay scale this actually seems pretty smart. |
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