Jack Dawson - 11 not out.

For one reason or another, I've got rather slack with this blog so I'll have to put that right. I'm particularly moved to do so, having met one of the blog's few readers on Sunday morning. Emma and I had had a canter together up Warren Hill all-weather, on Panto and Imperial Decree respectively, and as we came off at the top of we passed a family walking a greyhound. This turned out to be a very fortunate meeting, as it transpired that they were visiting their son who is at the racing school, having started work with Sir Mark Prescott - as good a way of starting out in racing as one could get - and being now on the obligatory nine-week course. Anyway, it's always nice to meet friendly faces with a greyhound, but the icing on the cake was that Gary, who was leading the greyhound, let slip that he reads this blog, which was really nice to hear. I thought to myself, "Oh dear, and this is a rare occasion when I've gone a week without posting anything", so here I am.

As Emma has written on her blog, the three yearlings have all settled in very happily. I'm very pleased with them, even if I have no basis for saying that, because we haven't done anything with them yet, bar stand and watch them enjoy life and each other's company. We've had one boost, though, because the Catcher In The Rye's pedigree has already had an update: Destiny's Dream, the two-year-old Mull Of Kintyre filly ex Dream Of Jenny (ie a full-sister to Jill Dawson) won at Beverley last week. Dream Of Jenny has such a good breeding record, and it was just unfortunate for John Burke that this win didn't take place until after the sale - but it's still nice for him to have bred his another winner, even if it might have profitted him more to have come a week sooner.

These fillies weren't our only purchase at Fairyhouse, because I came home also with a lovely biography of T.P. Burns, former champion dual-purpose Irish jockey and right-hand man to Vincent O'Brien. There was a little stall in reception at Fairyhouse selling a few things, and when I saw this book on it the decision to buy was a given. When it turned out that the book is signed by both T.P. and by the author (Guy St. John Williams), that was the icing on the cake. It's a beautiful book, a must for any racing enthusiast - and I mean that even if the racing enthusiast can't speak English, because it would be worth buying just for the numerous old photographs alone. Among my favourites are a bare-headed teenage T.P. galloping alongside an older (mid-50s?) Steve Donoghue (wearing a trilby!); a great shot of T.P. (as jockey) and Vincent O'Brien (as trainer) discussing tactics in the parade ring prior to Ballymoss' win in the Irish Derby; a photograph from the '40s of three horses galloping on the Curragh, the riders being Tom Burns (T.P.'s father and also a champion jockey), Jimmy Eddery and T.P., passing right under the nose of the trainer's wife sitting side-saddle on her hack; T.P. cantering Golden Fleece up the straight at Epsom the day before that horse won the Derby. I could go on and on: basically, the book is as good a stroll down racing history of the bulk of the 20th century as you could get. I've actually broken off now to read and then review (for the Racing Post) Nick Godfrey's book 'On The Racing Road' - which I'm really enjoying - but I'll be back to T.P.'s book anon; and it's actually good to take an intermission in it, because there is just so much in there that it's best not to rush it. One nice little touch to the buying of this book was that, when I'd bought it, I walked out to the car park to leave it in the car so that I wouldn't have to carry it around the sales complex all day. I passed John O'Connor, the extremely nice manager of Ballylinch Stud, who noticed my carrying the book. I enthused to him how much I was looking forward to reading it, and he reported that he had it at home and that it is indeed excellent; and that, once it had been written, funds were needed to enable it to be published, and Ballylinch Stud and their trainer (Jim Bolger, my hero) were among those who stepped in to sponsor it.

A more personal chapter of racing history has recently been concluded with the decision to retire Jack Dawson (pictured with Tom Greenway). His run at Stratford was, to my eyes, definitely the steeplechasing debut (one has to regard it as his first run over fences, because the Huntingdon debacle doesn't really count) of a future winner. However, his steeplechasing career would be a long-term project and, as a horse who has clearly started to lose some of his ability through the onset of middle age, the decision to quit while he's still 100% sound is, I am sure, a wise one. It's always preferable to end an innings with a 'not out' by one's name, and it would be wrong to wait until he was clearly on the way down - or worse - before taking the decision (or very likely having it forced upon us). I've written a tribute to him which I hope will be published in a Racing Post this week, and I wrote one for Winning Post which was in last weekend's edition - what the bulk of Aussies would have made of this highly subjective piece of journalism I don't know - but I don't really think that I need to write one here. Most regular readers of this diary will have gathered how special Jack is to everyone here, notwithstanding the fact that he's been here for eight years and I've only been writing a blog for a year and a bit. So now Jack can look forward to, fingers crossed, many years of a happy and active second career as an eventer/show horse with Margaret and Paul Wright. He went down there last winter to check the place out and has already given it the thumbs-up so, although there will be a few tears in a few eyes when he does leave here for the last time, we'll simultaneously be happy to see him head off to a safe and happy future.

I hope when Jack does leave I hope that I won't cry as much as I did during 'Atonement', which we watched in the cinema in Cambridge early on Friday evening. (I am loathe to go to the cinema at the conventional, ie later, time for fear of nodding off, but I needn't have worried in this case, because it was rivetting). It's a beautiful and very moving book so I suspected that we might be in for a disappointment - albeit only a very minor one, because the reviews had been so good - but it, to my mind, achieved the impossible by being even better than the book. Probably having read the book made it even better, because one knew in advance the heart-ache which was panning out in front of one's eyes, but nobody could fail to be moved by it. And the really sad part was that, in the war, this saga of almost unbearable sadness was just one of countless tragedies which were being acted out everywhere all the time. It's easy to forget just how lucky the vast majority of us nowadays are in the cards which fate has dealt us.

We should have three runners this week: Brief at Sandown on Wednesday (six days after running very well off a higher mark in a better race at the same course, his favourite), Imperial Decree at Yarmouth on Thursday, and Racie Gracie at Newmarket on Friday. If it's not asking for too much, let's hope for a bit of luck with some or all of those.