It's so very nice up north

Two weeks since my last entry, I see. Well, it's not really two weeks, because I put a little piece up last Saturday (correction: I wrote a little piece, which Emma made even littler and then put up) after Imperial Decree's satisfactory debut at Newmarket, but that was a news story (because we seem hardly ever to do those) rather than a chapter of the blog. So what have I been up to? (To what have I been up?).

We had our lunch party here last Sunday, which was really pleasant. Particularly as it didn't rain. Emma did all the organising for that, and we were extremely well fed by Becks. And we were royally entertained by James, who once again played a blinder on the bongoes. Disappointingly, Gerry didn't join him much on the stage this year, so later in the day I did the decent thing by adding my voice to the cacophony. James, of course, had to desert his post at various times to hang out with Aisling and Charlie, and also to give Kirsty the benefit of his critical appreciation of her performance on the calendar which adorns our tea-room.

It was wonderful to see so many owners here; some longstanding, others new but all getting on tremendously. Alan Reason and David Bowkett (pictured) are part of the Super Six syndicate and it was great to see them having a good laugh. David will always be a special friend of this yard as far as Emma is concerned as he was the previous owner of her beloved Pantomime Prince. Martha also enjoyed herself, some would say a little too much, but here she is (below) singing a memorable duet with Jim (I think it was 'Crazy Horses' which is fairly appropriate for both of them).

One very touching moment was when Trevor presented Cliff with a framed photograph of him leading Jack into the winner's enclosure at Yarmouth after the inappropriately-named 'Rising Stars Handicap' last August; this was a typically kind gesture by Trevor, and was hugely appreciated by Cliff, which was lovely to see. The party finally ended soon after nightfall, at which time the sky was still clear - but needless to say the rain had returned by the next morning.

Rain also, largely, favoured by us with its absence when Emma and I spent 28 hours or so in Yorkshire this week, which was another stroke of good fortune. One of Emma's jobs is taking photographs for Darley of numerous of Sheikh Mohammed's horses at various stages of their career. This includes visits to some training stables, and I occasionally invite myself along for the ride, pretending that my role as photographer's assistant and note-taker is important, but really just being a sticky-beak. What made this visit to Mark Johnston's stable so special, over and above the pleasure of being in such a special place as Middleham and seeing a swag of lovely horses, was how very welcome we were made. There were about 70 horses to be photographed, which meant two evening stables' worth, which was Tuesday and Wednesday. We'd driven up on Tuesday afternoon, and in the evening Mark treated us to an excellent and thoroughly entertaining dinner. It was remarkable that he spared us so much time, because he is obviously a very busy man, but he was the perfect host.

And then he invited us to join him the following morning as he supervised and assessed his string's training. This was a real treat, taking in visits to both the Low Moor and the High Moor. Mark's is an extremely impressive operation, and I found it particularly interesting to have seen some of the horses - clearly at various stages of their preparations - at rest in the evening and then to see what work they were doing the next morning. Compared to its numerical strength, the stable is, for various reasons, rather light on proven older horses just now - although as it contains two Royal Ascot-winning three-year-olds (Zaham and Boscobel, a pair of splendid horses) plus the lovely Champery, a four-length Listed winner in Italy this year who most recently ran in the Eclipse, one can't say that it's completely devoid of older talent - but there are some cracking, mostly unraced, two-year-olds there. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to itemize my favourites, but I could come up with a list of, say, six juveniles from which I would be fairly confident that at least two Group winners will emerge. I'll certainly enjoy keeping my eyes open for them. One of the horses whom Emma photographed, Missioner, runs today at Ascot and I'll watch him with interest, but he wouldn't be one of the ones to have most caught my eye. He, obviously, wasn't one of those doing strong work under one of the trio of JP Guillambert, Greg Fairley and Andrew Elliott on Wednesday morning, so I didn't pay attention to him at work. It was a lovely visit, a real treat, and the perfect post-script to it would be to see many of the horses which we saw there go on to win nice races in the forthcoming months; I hope and believe that that will happen, and that would certainly be what our hosts and their extremely helpful and pleasant staff deserve.

I can't finish the description of our tour without mentioning one of the stars. Mark and Deirdre's younger son Angus is an outstanding boy. Most regular armchair punters are familiar with his older brother Charlie, who has been interviewed on television a few times when accompanying the stable's runners, but Angus so far has kept a lower profile. I don't think that that will last for long, because he is superb. He and his mother only got home very late the day we arrived because they had been at a polo tournament in Towcester, to which Deirdre had driven Angus and his pony, plus his Bedale Pony Club team-mates and their mounts. (It goes without saying that they had done very well there). Angus is evidently a very good rider; and he seems to be as indefatiguable as his parents, because we found him on Wednesday afternoon doing a very thorough job of washing stable doors in the yard. He seems to share his father's entrepreneurial nature, because he explained that he is also hiring himself out to clean people's cars. What was really funny was that, when his mum asked him if he had any customers so far, he replied that his first one was "a student"; to this rather surprising answer, his mum wisely offered the advice, "In that case, I suggest you make sure you get the money up front"! Angus has opted to board at school (in Ripon) through the week in the winter terms (but not in the summer, because he would miss too much riding time during the long evenings) in future, explaining that with an hour and a half of prep every evening he will get more work done that way; he said that this will be a good move because "I have been lax in my organisation". You see what I mean when I say that he is truly his father's son!

While in Yorkshire we visited another stable at the end of the morning on Wednesday, because Emma had to photograph one horse in Kevin Ryan's stable: the Princess Haya-owned Kersaint, a lovely strong bay colt who had the distinction of being the first winner for the promising young stallion Catcher In The Rye. Visibility was not good on the top of Sutton Bank as the area was shrouded in low cloud so we couldn't enjoy the superb views one can catch from there, but it was still a pleasure to visit, albeit briefly, another very good stable. (It was also a pleasure to enjoy an excellent lunch in the outstanding neighbouring pub, the Hambleton). There were plenty of familiar faces there, and it was great to find both Mark Birch, who was a jockey I greatly admired, and Keith Stone both keeping themselves busy in the yard. And it was also a pleasure to pat two very distinguished horses whose happy heads were sticking out from adjacent boxes: Gimcrack, Middle Park and Duke Of York Stakes winner Amadeus Wolf and Flying Childers Stakes winner (and Molecomb, Gimcrack and Middle Park runner-up) Wi Dud.

I'll end with the best news of the week, which is that our dear friend Colin Casey is due to come out of Addenbroke's Hospital this afternoon. Colin must have been in there for the best part of a month. He's been unwell and wasn't in the best condition to withstand the major operation which he had to have, so he was inevitably very poorly after it. However, the last time I visited him I was delighted to find him, although still frail, clearly perking up, so I have been keeping my fingers crossed that he would be discharged this week, and that is what has happened. He doesn't eat much at the best of times, and basically eats nothing in hospital, but hopefully his strength will start to return now that Eileen will be feeding him again. I'll enjoy telling him about our visit to Middleham, as it is a place close to his heart: although he has lived in Newmarket for almost sixty years, he started his working life in Middleham because he was apprenticed to Sam Armstrong, and only came to Newmarket when the Armstrong stable moved from Tupgill to Warren Place over the winter of 1947/'48, in time for My Babu, whom Colin looked after, to win the 2,000 Guineas from that stable. He'll also enjoy hearing about our trip to Sandown yesterday, where Brief Goodbye ran fairly well despite being disadvantaged by the downpours which preceded his race. Let's hope we can find some good ground for Brief soon - and some good weather for all of us.