Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Better Be Home Soon

Oh dear: it's more than a week between postings this time. Again I think I can plead innocent to a charge of indolence; as my uncle Anthony would say, "It's a question of time". It's actually a particularly pressing question of time now, as my VAT return is due by 30th June, and I've been busy enough just getting the accounts together to start compiling it, but I prefer blogging to calculating how much money I owe the government, so tonight I'll blog. I've done enough work for one day.

Royal Ascot was great. We went on the Friday, prompted by Jason and Fiona Hathorn's invitation to join their annual picnic, which again was the usual jolly party. We took Alix Choppin down with us and she was welcomed into the gathering too, which was rather amusing because Alix continues to find the English tradition of a formal picnic bemusing: apparently, to the French mind a piquenique is a paper bag containing a bread roll and a piece of cheese, plus a bottle of water, borne in a ruck sack as one goes for a walk through the countryside. It is not, apparently, an elaborate outdoor meal, complete with tables, chairs, plates, cutlery, glasses and dishes of excellent food.

But I think we're converting Alix (pictured) to thinking that, although our version is a strange idea, it's also a good one. We were lucky enough to see perhaps the most scintillating performance of Royal Ascot - well, perhaps not, as it's hard to look beyond Miss Andretti for sheer brilliance - as Indian Ink sprinted clear of her rivals. We'd seen her stretch out like a greyhound when beaten in the Fred Darling at Newbury in the spring the day that Brief ran there, and it was great to watch her win last week. She's a lovely filly, very talented and very genuine, and she made some very good horses look second-rate last week. A similarly enthusiastic galloper is Boscobel, who put in a great display to win the King Edward VII Stakes; and Queen's Vase winner Mahler, by whom I'd been very taken when I'd watched him win at Gowran Park on At The Races in the spring, was another horse whom it was a pleasure to watch.

I'd been hopeful of winning some sort of prize myself, so dapperly was I turned out, but unfortunately my hopes of making the finals of Fashions On The Field were dashed when we bumped into Mark McStay: he was kitted out like a latter-day Beau Brummel as he patrolled the parade ring with John Oxx, the pair planning the tactics which they would instruct Mick Kinane to apply on Arch Swing (top pic), whose pretty face did well to cross the line in fourth in the Coronation Stakes, bearing in mind that she is supposed to be ineffective on a wet track. McStay had been there all week and was coping with this test of stamina admirably, and was even preparing to keep going for day five, when I presume he'd have been required to saddle Amadeus Wolf for the Golden Jubilee Stakes. At least he didn't have the travelling to contend with, because he was staying in his club in London for the week, rather than returning to Newmarket every evening. And if you're wondering what club that is - don't ask me, because I shudder to think.

We've had another outing since then, because we've treated ourselves to some R&R in the frozen north. I had two days away and Emma has stretched out her absence to four, staying with her parents in Golspie, about 70 miles south of John O'Groats. I'm not good at leaving home, but it is good to have a change of scenery occasionally: paradoxically, a good way of having a break from worrying about how much there is to do all the bloody time is to have a couple of days away doing nothing, which of course results in the backlog of administrative tasks waiting to be tackled becoming even bigger and therefore even more of a worry. But to cast it from one's mind for 48 hours is a good thing, even if one then pays for it on one's return, as I've spent the past 24 hours being reminded. Emma managed to sell the concept of a couple of days away to me by producing a couple of tickets to see/hear Crowded House in a field near Aviemore. I know it's been really, really wet here, but even so I wasn't prepared for how wet, nor how cold, it would be in the Cairngorms last Sunday. Fortunately I did take an anorak, a sweater, a cap and my R.M.Williams boots, but that was barely enough. The omens - starting on the early morning drive to Luton, during which not one but two of the many rabbits we drove past were black (I'm not sure if Emma took this on board, but I'm illogically aware of omens) - were looking really bad and, having flown out of Luton for Inverness at 7.00 on Sunday morning and knowing that Crowded House weren't due to start playing until 9.15 in the evening, the thought of skipping the concert did come to mind. Although between us we have at least one copy of all of their previous studio albums, we don't own a copy of the new one, courtesy of record-buying opportunities in Newmarket being extremely poor (unless you like things like Sugababes, Robbie Williams, James Blunt and Phil Collins) ever since the internet drove the outstanding 'Discus' shop out of business a couple of years ago. I'd hoped to buy a CD of the new album at the airport record shop so that we could listen to it as preparation for the concert as we drove around what I assumed would the sun-kissed highlands during the day, but no such luck: it wasn't in stock, incredibly. But, wait a minute - there was a double CD recording of the band's farewell 1996 Sydney Harbourside concert, for only £8.99. What a bargain, and wouldn't we be warmed up for the concert come 9.15pm! Yes, you've guessed it: the terrible hire car which we picked up at Inverness airport turned out to be only vehicle made in 2006 to be fitted with a radio/cassette rather than a radio/CD player! It was so bloody cold, and it rained all day. Still, driving around the highlands has its charms irrespective of the weather, but it would have been nicer if conditions had been just a little more clement. So we showed up in Aviemore rather earlier than might have been the case (I'd pulled over to the side of an extremely small road in the middle of nowhere so that we could have a nap, but I'd only been asleep for about ten minutes when Emma made the perhaps wise, but to my mind over-cautious, observation that we ought to drive on because this wouldn't be a good place to be marooned by flood as the rain continued to tumble down around the car) with quite a few hours to kill before our heroes were due to take to the stage. Emma had previously informed me that Eddie Reader, formerly of Fairground Attraction, was to be another of the acts, to which I think my response had been something along the lines of "I reached the stage where I decided that I'd be quite happy never to hear 'Perfect' again in about 1990" - so you don't need me to tell you what was the first song which assailed our ears as we got close to the field of mud! But in the end it just all came together nicely: the rain stopped about 8.30, and Crowded House were brilliant.

We'd guessed that 'Weather With You' might be the opening number, and we were nearly right because that came second, and I'd also pondered whether something rousing like 'Mean To Me' might kick it off, and again that thought was nearly right as that came third or fourth; but the opening bars of 'Locked Out' got the show out of the gates like Miss Andretti, and it was then about 100 minutes of musical bliss. On a day devoid of sunshine, it was inevitable that we'd hear my favourite Crowded House song 'Distant Sun', and nobody could have left the field disappointed. The late-night 90-mile drive to Golspie was a piece of cake, notwithstanding our early start to the day, after such an electrifying performance; and, thanks to the car's heater, our clothes were dry, but obviously not clean, by the time we arrived at 12.45. We were actually about the cleanest people at the concert, and were in nothing like the state of the pair in this photograph: these people are pretty much unidentifiable, but I'll give you a clue and tell you that they are either two Aviemore mud-sliders, or Gemma plus mystery dance-partner at Glastonbury: is it Sexy Simon the vet, or is the figure too bow-legged to be him?

And then amazingly the far north of Scotland was about the best place in Britain to be on Monday - which isn't really saying much at all - as, although chilly, it stayed dry and we missed the torrents which swamped everywhere else. A drive up the coast to Helmsdale, where the town was taking the day off to salute a few old boats which were passing through, made a very pleasant diversion, in an environment completely free of PR-types such as McStay and Sims, who would be put off from pressing the flesh on the quayside by a sign specifically designed to frighten them away.

Helmsdale boasts what Clarissa Dixon-Wright has described as one of the six best fish and chips shops in Britain, and it was an excellent place to have lunch, not least because its interior is a weird as its fare is superb. It's called La Mirage and, if you're ever in the area, eat there. You might be stunned, but you won't be disappointed. And then, finally, I had sunshine for my drive to Inverness airport on Tueday morning, the first time I've ever seen the north of Scotland in its full glory.

There was even a family of basking seals stretched out to salute me on the edge of the Cromarty Firth as I drove past, and it made the prospect of returning to the seemingly permanently sodden stable-yard an even less appealing idea.

But it's back to reality now, and we have Milton on Friday and Jack on Saturday to look forward to. We might also have Lady Suffragette to look forward to, because Market Rasen's Friday meeting surprisingly passed its 1.00pm Wednesday inspection but, as the track is supposedly underwater, it's slightly difficult to see how the meeting can take place, because I can't see that the adjacent overflowing river is going to recede that much in the next couple of days. Milton, notwithstanding his proven record of being a disappointingly weak finisher, should have a good chance in what should be a very weak race, especially with the benefit of John Egan's galvanization, but it's hard to see Jack winning first up at the age of ten, when he failed to do so at the ages of two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine.

Otherwise, there's plenty to do be done here, especially as Martha is on a compulsory course at the Racing School this week. Perhaps the horse I've most enjoyed riding in the past week or so has been Imperial Decree, who remains a model pupil. We had several of her part-owners over from Ireland to watch her work last Wednesday, and that proved to be an enjoyable outing for horse and for people, on fortunately the least unsummery day of the past fortnight. Robert Havlin (pictured, with Hugh on Lady Suffragette) was kind enough to come in and gallop her for us and, although she is still a small amount of weeks away from being ready to run, her heart is already in the right place, and she is taking everything in her stride, finding her work a relaxing adventure rather than a stressful chore.

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