Brwckyn's Brief visit

"Unseasonably warm" weather is forecast for Easter weekend, and it's certainly very pleasant today (Good Friday). I haven't been tempted to remove my sweater, though, so I wouldn't go overboard about the heatwave, but it's nice to have warm, sunny days. The mornings during the week were very frosty, but glorious as the sun got up, which made for perfect filming conditions - as we found out, courtesy of a crew from BBC Wales who were here yesterday. The star of the show was Bryckwn (I can pronouce the name - "Brook'n" - but I'm not sure that I can spell it) who must rate right up there on the list of brahmameisters.

Gemma has produced Brwckyn, who has been at the Racing School as part of a project for BBC Wales. He's training to be an amateur rider, and the quest is being filmed. He's been riding out for Evan Williams at home, has ridden in six point-to-points (completing the course every time), and now is to ride in a proper race. He was therefore on the obligatory amateur riders' course this week, and had an extra-curricular taste of Newmarket Heath one morning, courtesy of Brief Goodbye. I'd say the week has gone very well for him and his crew (cameraman Hew, who is Welsh but not nearly as Welsh as Brwckyn, and soundman Brian, who is English), with one major setback: he has been refused his license. I can't think why, really, because although he isn't the most polished of hoops, he seems safe enough on a horse, rides with great confidence, and has already shown in point-to-points that he can get from A to B satisfactorily.

So far, I've only given you a taste of Brwckyn without really giving you the full Brwckyn. Bryckwn is a true brahmameister, and I mean this in the very best sense. He is a remarkable man. He is a TV presenter/director/producer (ie 'identity') cum pop star and, although you'd think he'd never left Wales in his life, he's apparently very popular in Italy (as well as Wales, obviously), and has played at Glastonbury (in a band called Jess, in 1996). He is blessed with a very theatrical manner, with bountiful arm and leg movements (very like John Cleese, only completely natural) as he declaims. He has a very good and entertaining turn of phrase, even though I suspect English isn't his language of choice: when he and Hew converse, they prefer to use their native tongue. If Shakespeare's plays were ever translated into Welsh, you'd give Brwckyn the lead role without hesitation, even if you might want to ask him to remove his nose-ring (and maybe shave off his goatee) for the show. He is a very decent and friendly man who is overflowing with one of life's most important attributes: enthusiasm. In short, he was a most welcome visitor, and I really hope we see him again. He has to return to the Racing School for a second attempt at being licensed, so I hope we'll see him when he comes up for that - and if I heard he was riding in a race, I'd love to go there to wish him well and give him moral support. I took my camera out with me again yesterday when Brwckyn rode Brief, so I hope we'll have a few illustrations to accompany this text. They should be fairly self-explanatory. We had a string of four: Brwckyn on Brief, Gemma on By Storm, Gerry (making his first appearance of the year) on Belle Annie, and myself on Lady Suffragette. Hew and Brian recorded the moment, and Frank Conlon, Henry Cecil's former head lad who now helps out at the Racing School, accompanied them from the stable to Long Hill to make sure they got where they were to go when they were to go there.

An added brahma of Brwckyn's visit occured earlier in the week. Gerry had, as mentioned in the previous chapter, turned fifty at the start of this week, so he came to Newmarket on Tuesday evening to be toasted. Gemma organised a small get-together in the Wagon And Horses which I attended, and the BBC Wales team came along too. Gemma had alerted our former colleague James, who is Gerry's number one fan and who appointed himself to the role of helping him into his tights on Newmarket Town Plate day last year, of the get-together but, unbelievably, James decided that he would be too busy making his sandwiches for his following day's trip to Nottingham to come to the pub for an hour or two that evening. No sooner had we digested this suprise than we became aware of just what a gathering James was missing. Not only was there Gerry, of course, but Brwckyn, a rockstar race-rider and therefore truly a man after Jim's heart. But the piece de resistance was the discovery of the project which Brian had just completed. James, a life-long rock fan and currently bongo-player with obscure Haslingfield-based band 'Midlife Crisis', only hears about 50% of what anyone says to him (I sometimes used to think that he'd only ever hear 5% of what I was saying to him) and for this he blames one of the most memorable nights of his life: he was in the audience in the Hammersmith Apollo in 1973 when Deep Purple played the loudest concert ever (according to the Guiness Book Of Records - and, presumably, modern health and safety legislation will ensure that that's a permanent record). And what has Brian just done? He's produced a DVD on Deep Purple, complete with live footage of that very concert no doubt and available in all good record shops as of this week. So what a line-up: Gerry, Brwckyn and Brian - and no Jim! He'd have been in his element, but instead spent the evening making a round of sandwiches, checking that he'd got his anorak (yes, the blue one) in case it rained, and getting his flask ready to have the boiling water added to the Barry's tea in the morning. Unbelievable.

So that made for a very entertaining evening, and their presence in our midst yesterday morning was even better. And this morning we had Aisling back, returned from her two-month stint in the UAE. So that's excellent - and if Somewhere Safer at the Gold Coast tomorrow and Lady Suffragette at Towcester on Sunday can both run well, that will be the icing on the cake.