Big Brown, Baby Hammerhead Sharks & the State Department

First off - the telephone conference took place on Friday with Judge Doyle and a State Department legal eagle named Groesky.

I am still barred from a visa being issued for coming to the US for visitation despite the recantation of the mother's allegations. I wonder what Judge Doyle is now going to make of this as this means visitation can only take place outside of the US or indeed, is it not time for Emily to be returned home to the UK?

We shall see but as one pundit observed, "You have an American judge in an American court he's going to favour the American party on this no matter what."

I am inclined to agree.

Yesterday was a day of fishing on North Ormond Beach with Gator Bob, an American reprobate of the first degree and a very colourful character who introduced me to fishing for real. In a matter of seconds I had a baby hammerhead on the hook which did not look best pleased but at about a foot long, there was very little he could do except suffer the indignity of being caught by a limey fishing novice.

After a day of catching the rays (and I mean the sun variety as the fish dried up pretty quickly), it was a brief retirement to Peckers Pub for the Big Race and Big Brown, the 4-1 on favourite for the 140th Belmont Stakes and part of the horse racing Triple Crown over here. In quite an upset he finished last to the dismay of many and the sniffy queries of the cognescenti asking what went wrong - "It's a fix!" said one wag and I agreed.

There's something rotten in the state of "Denmark" Willy Shake once wrote, and there seems to be an all pervasive whiff here in the US too concerning virtually everything.

Nevertheless, time to get ready for another boringly beautiful day on the beach while I slurp my third morning coffee and wait for Monday and what Judge Doyle comes up with.