The bee remains in the bonnet

Umm - well, the chess. Honours even, as Squeak and I ended up winning four games each of the eight we played together this week. That meant that I won the second session 3:2, but it contained a result of which I'm not proud, as in the first game I succumbed to the four-move checkmate. That makes me sound like a really bad player, but that's not the case, as we're both adequate: it was an aberration, as I obviously hadn't got myself into 'the zone' at that stage. But you can be sure that, temporary though the aberration was, our little friend won't let me forget about it. He's still talking about the previous time I fell into that trap, and that must be six years ago.

Squeak being here meant that we enjoyed a nice dinner in 'The Wellington' on Tuesday evening. The excellent former landlord, MIck Wallace, along with his wife Sally, meant that it became firmly established over the years as our favourite, and it's still nice under the new landlord Keith. One bonus of going there was that I bumped into two of the town's nicest men, Jack Banks and Stuart Jackson. Stuart takes Jack there fairly regularly for an early-evening drink. I was delighted to catch them. It was the first time I'd seen Jack since his stroke last winter; it's certainly hit him, but he's a tough, brave man, and evidently still able to enjoy life. Stuart can take a lot of credit for this, as I understand that he's been a true friend to Jack throughout, and I was equally pleased to see him, the first time I'd done so since the retirement of his former employer Geoff Huffer, for whom he used to ride Cockney Rebel most days.

The previous evening we'd enjoyed a Pedigree Club meeting at Ruth Harrison's house. There was an unusually large turn-out, prompted by the fact that Sir Mark Prescott kindly addressed the gathering. I'm afraid that I failed completely in my task of trying to steer him in the theoretically correct direction (ie onto the subject of pedigrees) but of course that turned out for the best: given free rein, he is the most entertaining raconteur you could find. And racont he did, at great length. It's rare to see him taken by surprise, but he did look slightly taken aback afterwards when I told him that Squeak (whose first employer he was) had beaten me at chess that day. Bon mot of the evening had then to be his reply to my information, "Squeak was in your yard on Sunday evening. He called in to catch up with some of his former colleagues. He asked Colin Nutter if you were around, and Colin said, 'He's in the office, but I'd advice you not to go in there to see him". Sir Mark's concise response to this was, "That was good advice"!

On the subject of advice, or opinions, I feel I ought to expand a bit on my already-expansive statements about the current vogue for saying that prize money levels are of no relevance to owners or to the health of racing. Since my last ramblings around this subject, Alastair Down has joined Nic Coward in expounding this view. Paul Dixon and Sue Scargill make typically cogent cases on the subject in today's Racing Post, but I'd like to chime in once again.

Basically, for racing to exist in anything like its present form, there has to be prize money. If there was none, the amount of horses in training would drop by, I'd say, at least 90%. That is beyond dispute. If it was otherwise, the levy negotiations would be solely 'racing' saying to the bookmakers: "It costs x to pay the salaries of the officials required to stage the meetings and y to pay the courses to open for the day, so work out among yourself how you are going to pay x plus y". But racing would just grind to a halt, which nobody wants, so there has to be a z component of the levy to make up prize money. So what is a suitable value for z? Well, Nic Coward and Alastair Down think that a token figure is acceptable, reasoning that owning horses is a rich man's pasttime for which one should not expect to be paid. I don't think that, nowadays, that view is valid, and I shall explain why.

Racing is no longer an amateur pasttime. It has become business, in the sense that it is nowadays run for the benefit of several ancilliary industries who depend on its widespread flourishing for their survival. In addition to the trainers and jockeys who depend on people continuing to own and race horses, we have the sport's bureaucracy (a multi-million pound business, of which Nic Coward is just one well-paid beneficiary), the racing press (nowadays a massive body of people, of which Alastair Down is just one well-paid beneficiary), racecourse owning (which has in the majority of cases ceased to be something which happens for the benefit of the sport, and is now the domain of plcs whose purpose is to make money from the sport) and the betting industry. Racing is run for the betting industry: virtually every regulation exists to make it an attractive betting medium for punters. It is no longer simply a case of people owning their horses and having fun with them: it is a case of people owning horses and being told when, where and how they can run them so that these dependent industries can prosper on the back of them. It is just not acceptable, for a variety of reasons, for anyone in any of these industries - be it trainer, jockey, pressman, bookmaker or, particularly, bureaucrat - to say, "I acknowledge that I make my (often extremely good) living and lead my (often extremely good) life only because people pay very large sums to own racehorses, but at the same time I feel that there is no obligation for us to try to limit the extent to which they subsidise me: if they are stupid enough to do so, then that's their problem. Just so long as they keep shelling out so that I can pocket my salary and enjoy my life".

No, that isn't good enough. I regard the people who own horses in this stable and in this country as the most important people in British racing, and I have no time for anyone who draws his living from racing who says otherwise. Without them, none of us could lead the life which we do. And I say that while not earning anything from racing, so how people like Alastair Down and Nic Coward, who are both becoming very rich at racing's expense - thanks to owners funding the sport - can say otherwise is beyond me.

So where does that leave us? What is a suitable level of return? We have large industries - press, administration, racecourses, betting - all dependent for their prosperity on a large band of what we have to call voluntary helpers, ie the owners who pay to provide the horses without which everything would grind to a halt. In a modern environment, is it right that these voluntary helpers don't even receive their expenses for turning up - even running third in a low-grade race nowadays doesn't usually pay the horse's costs (transport plus jockey's fee plus entry fee) for the day, never mind the week or month? In any other form of big business, if the voluntary helpers on whom the whole business depended asked not to be out of pocket for the day and were told, "Look, be grateful for what you've got. Don't forget: you're doing this because you enjoy it and nobody forces you to do it", this would seem odd. In other countries, things like raceday costs are covered by appearance money for each horse. But that, of course, only covers the costs of the outing so, if there were no prize money on top to provide the hope of defraying part of the huge expense of buying the horse and then training him throughout the year, very few people would own horses in training. All countries recognise this, and all provide prize money to a greater or lesser level. What is the appropriate level? There is no correct answer, but Britain is falling farther and farther down the world's table of outgoing:return ratio, and to say that that doesn't matter - that owners are owning horses voluntarily because they enjoy it, so they have no right to expect a subsidy - is just plain stupid. It is the owners who subsidise everyone else, and not vice versa. Anyone who draws their living solely because racing continues to be subsidised by owners should recognise this. Furthermore, anyone who cares for racing should want it to flourish by international comparisons. The days of British racing being the best because it's British are gone forever. British racing is no longer the best in the world, and it will continue to slip as the value of its races drops further unless that decline is arrested. We've been very lucky in that we've had an extra prop from the Maktoums, but it's foolhardy to base one's assumptions that all's well and good because they are going to keep large volumes of nice horses in Britain for our entertainment indefinitely. This is just basic common sense. Nobody expects owners to make money - I always advise potential owners to budget as if they are going to earn no prize money - but all who make their living from racing, as well as all who merely enjoy the show, will be the loser if the economics of the sport in this country continue to decline so that, while owners' costs continue to rise, their potential for having a meaningful partial defraying of those costs continues to drop. That's not altruism: it's educated self-interest, and if Nic Coward and Alastair Down are so stupid or pig-headed that they can't see it then they have no business to be doing the jobs for which they are so well paid.

I'm afraid that Alastair has a very strange way of looking at things sometimes. He wrote disparagingly a couple of weeks ago about people supposedly running no-hopers at the Cheltenham Festival and "wasting our money". Leaving aside the fact that having a runner at the Cheltenham Festival is such a popular thing to do that nearly all the races are heavily oversubscribed so that it is now almost impossible to run a no-hoper there, what is the "wasting OUR money" about? How would they be wasting anyone's money but their own? If the also-rans didn't run at the Festival, the meeting would fade away: it is only a big, popular betting jamboree because the fields are so strong, numerically as well as regards quality. The also-rans play their role just as much as the winners. And has he any idea of how much it costs to run a horse there? There was a bit of a stink by the press a couple of years ago when photographers were asked to pay admission, along the lines of 'The meeting needs photographers, so why should they pay to get in?', which completely missed the point that the horses, the most vital component without whom there would be no Festival, have to pay to be there. The entry fees are large, and then the owner has to pay to have the horse transported there, pay the jockey, pay to have the horse plated in advance, pay for the weeks and months of training beforehand required to have the horse fit enough to go ...

I'm sorry if I've gone on too much, but this is important. Even the bookmakers who pay the levy recognise that prize money is essential for racing to exist at all, never mind exist to anything like the standard which we have come to enjoy, to depend on and to take for granted - so for racing's leader to approach the matter by saying that prize money plummeting doesn't matter should be a sackable offence. And if the Racing Post is going to pay its main writer to echo that view, and then publish the articles, then it should be ashamed of itself. It depends on racehorse owners continuing to pay the vast majority of the expenses for putting on the show which we all enjoy, and from which so many people (including the paper's owners and employees) make money, and it should not be ignoring this fact.

To finish on a lighter note, hats off to Brian McMath (pictured) for winning a maiden race on the Flat the other day with a six-year-old by the National Hunt sire Overbury. I see the horse is owned by her (I think it was a mare) breeder, so that was a very happy result. Brian doesn't work with promising material, so that was a great effort, as was the third place of his runner at Huntingdon a few days later. Brian rides out all morning every day, often on some horses who wouldn't be nice for someone my age to ride, never mind someone a few years older, and he genuinely deserves some happy results.

Viva le Squeaker

I must apologise for taking a long time between blogging drinks, but this computer was in dry dock for a few days last week, and since its return I haven't been able to bag it until now. The secondary computer doesn't seem able to connect to 'blogger' - I don't know if that is because that computer has only Explorer, and not Safari, as its medium to the net, or whether it is just old and not very good - so I have to have access to this one to blog. Anyway, I have it now, so here goes.

Newmarket, and particularly this small boggy section of it, is much more visitor-friendly in the spring, summer and autumn than in the winter, but even so we have had two welcome visitors from overseas over the past few days. On Saturday we had Cameron Plant, one of our antipodean friends, here as he found himself with 24 spare hours in the UK as he passed through the country on one of his regular business trips to Russia and her neighbouring countries. And then today we had the return of the Squeak (pictured above on the left). This has been as fertile a source of brahmae as if Richard Sims were here, and it has been great to see Squeaker again. Regular readers of the blog will be aware that Squeak worked in this stable for what seemed a few decades - in fact it was only a few years - during his apprenticeship, which yielded a few places but no winners. He is now, though, enjoying phase two of his apprenticeship, which is going extremely well, in Sweden. Merely to provide you with a factual outline of his history, however, greatly underplays the Squeak phenomenon: he is a very memorable, as well as very small, person, who has the rare gift of making all around him smile, scratch their heads in bemusement, howl with laughter, ask him to repeat what he has said, ask him never to repeat what he has said, tear their hair out and wish him well simultaneously. Everyone in Newmarket knows, and will never forget, Squeak so having him, plus his very nice Swedish girlfriend Gaby, in the string for the morning was a very sociable and noisy event. He's back in town for three days, and then is going to his hometown of Purfleet for another three days, and then returns to continue on the winning trail in Stockholm next weekend. At lunchtime today he showed me some DVDs of some of his winners which was impressive as they all showed him performing very competently. Unfortunately for me, he performed equally competently beside the chess board: we used to play often, so a resumption of hostilities today was inevitable. I won the first game, but I'm afraid that things went downhill thereafter, and we called it quits for the day when he was two:one ahead. Just you wait until tomorrow, Squeaker, because then we'll see who is the master . . .

Sadly it was foggy this morning for Gaby's first rides on Newmarket Heath - the fog was rather appropriate for Squeak's return, because it really did mean that most people heard him before they saw him, which is pretty much the norm - but yesterday was a lovely spring-like, warm and sunny day. It contained twin highlights of an excellent schooling session for My Obsession and then a pleasant afternoon at Higham point-to-point course. I had actually entered My Obsession, who hasn't run for, I'd guess, sixteen months, on the flat on Friday, figuring that as he can be quite keen a hit-out over a mile might get the gas out of him before he tackled two miles for the first time on his hurdles debut. However, after yesterday's school, I'll scrap that plan and he can go straight to Folkestone fifteen days hence. He is just such a good jumper (for evidence to back up that statement, please go to Emma's blog and see a great photograph) who is bold but also very sensible: he thinks about what he is doing on the approach to the hurdle, rather than just running at the jump, so William Kennedy, the excellent jockey who rode him yesterday, is confident that settling him sufficiently in the hurdle race will be feasible, and I agree with him. So straight over jumps it will be now. I hope that Polly will also run that week, so that's something to look forward to. We've had creditable performances from our two runs in January (Run From Nun both times, finishing third and fourth) so let's hope that February can keep up the sequence of having our horses finish safely and in the frame.

Our trip to Higham was fun. We saw several friendly faces, and had the happy experience of being invited by Andrew Barr to share in a victory drink with his fellow connections after the (very easy) success of Mr Tee Pee. This took place in balmy weather and ensured that our first impressions of Higham were very favourable. Emma made a picnic, which Gemma Dawson and Simon Waterhouse shared with us, and I can't eat a picnic in a racecourse car park without thinking 'in terms of' the BBC. Just to show that nauseating use of language isn't restricted to the satellite channels, I shall regale you with a question which was asked by one of the BBC's presenters during the Royal Ascot broadcast two or three years ago: just when we were itching to be shown the runners in the parade ring before the next race, we were taken on a trip out to the car park to inspect a picnic, and the presenter's opening conversational gambit to the picnic's hostess was "What can you give us in terms of advice picnicwise?".

Still, hearing such inelegant use of language is considerably less irritating than reading the further installments of the wit and wisdom of Nic Coward, for which 'racing' pays, I would guess, something in the region of a thousand pounds a day. I read in today's Racing Post that he has reiterated his views recently (to an Irish audience) that the rapidly declining levels of prize money in the UK are of no relevance nor concern. I can see why he says this - because solving the problem won't be easy and may well prove beyond his capabilities, so persuading everyone that the problem doesn't exist is the easiest way of making his constituents think that he is doing a good job - but even so I can't believe that he is going to get away with repeatedly telling audiences comprised largely of racehorse owners that large numbers of owners "do not care" about prize-money. As far as I know, Nic Coward does not own any horses - I always rather feel that owning horses should be a prerequisite for holding jobs in racing administration, because it is hard to appreciate the commitment made to the sport by the its principal financiers, ie the owners, unless making the same commitment oneself - so I feel that, when confronted by a racehorse-owning audience, he would do better to ask the audience what they think, rather than tell them what he (incorrectly) believes they think.

That's my political installment for the day. Why do I keep returning to this subject? Because I do feel that a sport as important as racing deserves a leadership capable of fighting its corner; it certainly pays its leadership enough, so I feel that asking for support from that leadership in return isn't unreasonable. Of course racing's civil servants get paid however things turn out, so they are unlikely to appreciate the importance of the sport either thriving or stagnating; and the press will still draw their salaries however things turn out, so most of them aren't going to consider it too pressing an issue. So the only way of doing something to try to help to make sure that Britain doesn't slip even farther down the international league tables of thriving racing nations than it already has is for any concerned voices to be raised via whatever methods there are to hand. In my case, that means this blog.

Vagaries of the linguists

Returning to the theme of thoughts from 2007, another highlight for me was my involvement in the selection of the HWPA Journalist of the Year. To recap, the idea was that, to give the award some connection to what the candidates had actually written in the past year - as opposed to it being a long-service award, or Buggins' turn, as it sometimes seemed to have been previously - each entrant would submit three articles which they'd had published in 2007. A panel of three impartial people would select its preferred short-list of four, and then the voters, ie the HWPA members, would vote from this four, either reading or not reading the proffered pieces as they chose. Anyway, the panel was Tim Richards, Paul Hayward and myself, and it was was really good fun to be on it; not only because it's nice to find oneself in good company, but also, in my case anyway, because it meant that I found myself reading some really good articles which I'd previously missed. The selection of the short-list was easy: we'd each compiled a list of four, and four names were on at least two of the three lists - hey presto, the work was done.

Selecting one's individual short-list was harder, because the standard of entry was so high. I recall when I used to ride my pony in shows as a boy that the winner received a red rosette, the second a blue, the third a yellow and the fourth a green. So one could say that the panel's short-list of four were the four recipients of rosettes, and it was up to the members to decide who received the red. But, going back to the show-ring, there used to be a small quantity of white rosettes for people who'd done well without making the frame - these rosettes would have 'Highly Commended' written on them - so I feel that I can't finish this recollection without saying that, from my memory of the entries, Lee Mottershead, Marcus Armytage and Jon Lees all failed to make the cut but all count as worthy recipients of a 'Highly Commended' rosette at the least. Marcus wrote what I thought was the best individual article, an account of a visit he had paid to Enda Bolger's stable, for the Daily Telegraph. He was treated to a ride across the south Limerick countryside Bolger-style, and his account of the tour was outstanding. One item which springs to mind was that he wrote that before he went he had told a couple of trainers about his forthcoming adventure; one's reply was, "Oh good, you'll love it", while the other said, "It's been nice knowing you". Marcus then, having found out just what a white-knuckle ride it was, summed it up by saying, "It's definitely something to put on your list of ten things to do before you die - but just make sure you do the other nine first". Superb - as was Jon Lees' entry. It's always going to be hard for someone like Jon to win a prize like this, because feature writers are always going to have a big advantage over race reporters when it comes to producing critically-acclaimed stuff: the race-day reporter just has to get the facts down on paper quickly, and has neither the scope nor the time to produce arty prose. But, re-reading some of Jon's big-race reports from the Racing Post, I was reminded that one isn't going to find the job done any better than he consistently does it.

Moving from newspapers to novels, the day the on which selection committee met contained a side-benefit, because I used the trip to London as an excuse to visit Hatchards, whence I emerged well laden with books. One of these was a signed paperback copy of 'Restless' by William Boyd, writer of my all-time favourite novel 'Any Human Heart'. I finished reading 'Restless' a couple of weeks ago - I'd only started it a few days previously - and it is very good indeed. The narrator is a woman whose job is to teach English to students from overseas who come to Oxford for a small amount of weeks to hone their use of our language. (A similar scheme exists in Cambridge, as I know because we have acquired a friend from Poland called Marcin who calls in to see us whenever his employer, the Grassavoye Insurance Company, sends him to Cambridge for a week to continue the task of perfecting his already-good use of English). In the book, these men and women are instructed in the intricacies of our language (don't worry, that isn't the main thrust of the plot) such as knowing when to use the perfect, the imperfect, the pluperfect or the aorist tenses, or when to use the subjunctive rather than the indicative mood - and I've been musing over how these talented linguistic students would cope when confronted by the pidgin English which has become the norm in this country. (The book is set in 1976, and I believe cerebral standards in Britain have slipped hugely since then). What, for instance, would an overseas student make of hearing, as I did on At The Races recently in a review of a race in which the favourite had fallen at an early stage of a race, the phrase, "It was game over early doors"? The student might take a while to grasp that the reason why he didn't know what the pundit meant wasn't that his English wasn't good enough to understand her, but that it was too good. And why am I waffling on in this fashion? Because my quotation of the week is provided by John McNamara. As so often happens when he and I converse either on the telephone (as was the case yesterday) or in person, he started to bemoan the nonsense spoken by the talking heads of the television and radio, and that written in the newspapers. After repeating the latest meaningless cliche he'd heard, he came out with the following, "Ah, the vagaries of the English language - well, the English language is fine; it's just the people who use it!".

I'm currently reading the official biography of Vincent O'Brien, written by Ivor Herbert and Jacqueline O'Brien. I was given this book when it came out in the autumn of 2005, but I am ashamed to say that I am only now reading it for the first time. It is superb. There's so much to take out of it, including entertainment, inspiration and instruction. It is providing me with so much to think about, and one horse who has been in my mind a bit since reading one of the early chapters is, you may be surprised to learn, our own dear Ben Bhraggie. It sometimes seems as if Ben has been here forever, but in fact we've only had him for two and a bit years (ie I bought him as a yearling and he's now an untried four-year-old). But if he is taxing my patience (which he isn't - not yet, anyway), how did the connections of 1955 Grand National winner Quare Times keep the faith through his formative years? Quare Times was born in 1946, and was bought as a yearling at Ballsbridge in 1947 by Mrs Cecily Welman. She then turned him out on her farm in Westmeath until he was five, at which stage she had him broken and then sent him to Vincent O'Brien, whose first reaction was, "He'll take a long, long time". Quare Times made his debut as a six-year-old in 1952, and raced three times that year - once on the flat, once in an amateur maiden hurdle and once in a novice chase - finishing unplaced every time. 'He then ran into training difficulties, and could not run between November 1952 and December 1953" which meant that he celebrated his eighth birthday on New Year's Day 1954 with a career record of no wins from four starts, "but over the winter of 1953/'54 the horse's strength finally grew to match his size". He won a novice chase at Gowran Park in January 1954, the National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham two months later and the following year's Grand National. And if that doesn't give a man hope, what does?

Highlights of this week and of last year

Happiest news of the week is that we can add another name to the list of newer owners to the stable. The Fordham family - Tony and Becky and their two children, who live locally in Reach - have taken their first venture into ownership with the Key Of Luck filly - and, if first impressions count for anything, then I can say that they go straight onto the list of people who deserve to own a nice horse. So let's hope that that is what she turns out to be. We can thank my old friend Andrew Neve, alongside whom I worked at Woodditton Stud fifteen years or so ago, for the introduction - he and his wife Biddy live in Reach also, just along the road from Tony and Becky - and I'm confident that they will prove to be people whom it's a pleasure not just to train for, but to know. Tony has been a racing enthusiast ever since taking advantage of a successful tip for Fact Finder in the 1989 Lincoln, so let's hope that I can help him to find that ownership is the pleasure he's spent a long time hoping it will be.

Second happiest news of the week is that Dave Morris has already doubled his tally of winners for the year, Wodhill Gold having saluted the judge at Southwell on January 8th under Hayley Turner (and congratulations, by the way, to Kirsty Milczarek for her first treble yesterday). Dave's setting a hot pace, so let's hope that Run From Nun can give us some hope of keeping within striking distance of his tally when she runs at Wolverhampton on Saturday. She's a nice filly, but she certainly won't be the most nicely-named horse running on Saturday. As she is by Oasis Dream from Nunatak, I was thinking that the only excuse for her rather cumbersome name was that Nunatak didn't mean anything - but then, flicking through the dictionary on Tuesday to check out the given description for 'obdurate' (I'd seen Rahul Dravid described as "India's most obdurate batsman" after the controversial Test in Sydney), I happened to stumble upon 'nunatak', which is 'an isolated peak of rock projecting above a surface of inland ice or snow'. She's by Bering, so that fits - but surely we could have had something better than 'Run From Nun' for her Oasis Dream foal.

So who will be the nicest-named horse running on Saturday? For many it will be Arnold Layne, the likely favourite for the big steeplechase at Warwick, who shares his name with Pink Floyd's first hit. That's nice, as was the fact that Malcolm Denmark had two horses running in consecutive races at Plumpton the other day, Can't Buy A Thrill and Nightfly. It's thus as easy to identify him as a Steely Dan/Donald Fagen fan as it was to work out that Martin St. Quinton enjoys Leonard Cohen's music, after he had two fillies in Mick Channon's stable called Tower Of Song (subsequently claimed by and successful for David Chapman) and Take Manhattan. It's too much to hope that the Philip Hobbs inmate Like A Hurricane should run this week too.

From the pleasing to the not so pleasing, was I the only one startled by what yesterday's Racing Post (yes, that's the one whose front-page headline was 'BERRY CLEARED ON FRAUD CHARGES') quoted Nic Coward as saying at the TBA dinner on Tuesday? Apparently, getting fed up by repeated questions from the floor as to what he, as head of the BHA, was planning to do about racing's falling income from the betting industry and therefore falling prize money, his response apparently was, "You've got to stop going on about it and do something about it. If this is a real issue, you, the horsemen, have got to resolve among yourselves how you're going to address it"! Leaving aside his implicit questioning of whether this actually is a real issue, it is truly bizarre that he doesn't seem to see racing's financial administration as being the responsibility of the BHA. If that truly is the case, one's got to wonder what role he believes he and the BHA are meant to fulfill. The disciplinary department hasn't been covering itself in glory recently, so now that we find that the leader of the BHA seems to have abdicated responsibility for organizing racing financially, it's becoming ever harder to have any confidence at all in our well-paid leadership.

Well, Nic Coward may be loath to administer, but I'm proud to say that, in my own little corner of the racing world, I've been administering like a dervish this week. (Yes, I know that correctly that means that I've done no administering at all, because dervishes don't administer - but you know what I mean). Emma's away for four days in the Alps with some friends. I'm rather 'take it or leave it' with skiing. I was lucky enough to go skiing a few times as a child, when I was a real dare-devil and loved it. Then I had a gap of probably six or seven years, and when I tried it again I found I was already getting over-cautious and rusty. That was 19 years ago, so I know that if I took it up again now I wouldn't do it anything like well enough to get the most fun out of it. So I elected to stay at home, which I rather regret - but I shouldn't really regret it, as I've spent the week getting the least behind with my paperwork that I've been for ages. One of the things I least enjoy about life is that I constantly have it hanging over me that there are umpteen unfinished administrative tasks which I should be addressing and, however many hours a day I spend on them, there are always more. It's like painting the Forth Road Bridge. Anyway, this evening I can say that there are fewer girders in urgent need of fresh paint than there have been for ages; and come this time tomorrow there will be even fewer.

Which brings us back to my ongoing review of the year. It's a major help as a small trainer to have some other employment as well as training. Training a small string is so much running to stand still financially that other sources of income are invaluable. And in the past year I've been very fortunate to have a lot of writing work - at least I have to keep reminding myself that it's work because, as I generally list my hobbies as reading and writing, it never seems like work. Thoroughbredinternet has become a great supporter (if you don't know it, check it out on www.thoroughbredinternet.com - it's a great site and source of bloodstock data, and will become one of your favourites) and allows me to churn out two or three 700 or so-word 'Grey Panels' each week. I really enjoy doing that - when one feels one's written a good one, or when someone tells one that one has, it's a very easy way to get the satisfaction of 'a thing well made'. It's certainly a lot more instant (and frequent) than training a winner! On top of this I think we're into year sixteen of the International Report in Winning Post, and other publications kind enough to find me printable recently have included Thoroughbred Owner and Breeder (a Gai Waterhouse feature), the Racing Post (a review of Nick Godfrey's book) and the FRBC yearbook (an article on the really friendly Thierry Doumen, who was a pleasure to interview over the telephone). The Gai Waterhouse commission was a real gift from God, because spending the morning with her was one of the highlights of the year; throw in a morning with Martin and David Pipe at Nicholsashayne and an evening and then morning with Mark Johnston in Middleham, and you can see that 2007 wasn't short of red-letter days for me. The other stable visit which was a real treat was an excursion into the forest of Chantilly with Jean de Roualle, and then I mustn't forget two great studs visited: Haras du Quesnay and Dalham Hall Stud. The last-named is on our doorstep and it's easy to overlook things that are so nearby - which is why visiting Newmarket Heath several times a day doesn't even get a mention - but I went up there four times last year, and each time remembered what a thrill it is to see some of the world's best stallions.

And one final thing - best wishes to Lord Huntingdon, who I was startled to read in the Racing Post is recovering from an ELEVEN-HOUR heart operation in California a few days after Christmas. It's quite chilling that someone who always looks as fit and well as he does can be thus afflicted, but happily it sounds as if he's on the road to recovery. He's not only one of the sport's characters, but also one of it's really decent men, so fingers crossed he'll be ok.

Off the mark!

Fourth of January, and Beverley House Stables was off the mark! Is that a record? Certainly in the Humphrey Cottrell era it's hard to see that there would have been any winners coming out of here much before about the fourth of April. (I don't think Sir Humphrey used to train jumpers, did he?). The only trouble, of course, is that I can't claim any credit for this latest success, as the winner came from Dave Morris' portion of the stable. But that, believe it or not, only marginally decreases my pleasure in the result. I think I can say for sure that, leaving aside winners that I either train or part-own, no result this year will give me as much pleasure as did the ten-lengths success of Cragganmore Creek in the amateur handicap at Southwell yesterday. It was not just that Dave trains the horse, but more particularly that his sixteen-year-old son Ben rode him, gaining his first success on only his third ride. This is excellent. They are such a nice family and it is a joy to have them as tenants, so seeing Ben salute the judge for the first time, riding for his dad, was a wonderful thing. As always, there's a brahma attached. Dave has one fault as a tenant, and that is that if you're not careful he can waste an awful lot of your time: conversationally (or monologually, if there is such a word) he can be like a (mini) ocean-going liner, in that when he gets into his stride it can take an awful long time to bring him to a halt. The good thing is that he's very aware of this (so often you hear people say about someone else, "You know what he's like - once he gets going, you can't shut him up", but Dave is a rare example of someone who'll say about himself, "You know what I'm like - once I get going, you can't shut me up") so he doesn't take offence if you run away when he starts to pick up verbal momentum. Anyway, this morning when I was congratulating them and sharing in the joy, Dave came out with the following brahma: "Sir Mark (Prescott) rang Linda (Dave's wife and Ben's mum) this morning to say 'Well done'. Afterwards I said to her, 'Why did he ring you?', and she replied, 'Because he knew that if he rung you he'd never get off the phone!'".

This brings me on to the next part of my review of the year. One of the great things about racing is that you don't only meet some lovely horses: you also meet some lovely people. You also, of course, meet some dreadful people, but that's not solely a racing thing, more an occupational hazard of being alive. The late, great Jeffrey Bernard summed it up perfectly: "The racing world is stuffed with lunatics, criminals, idiots, charmers, bastards and exceptionally nice people". As ever, one gets to the end of the year and gives thanks that one's path has been crossed by some of these exceptionally nice people, and the arrival of the Morris family here has been one of the year's highlights. We'd been neighbours, of course, for the previous ten years, and I'd always been happy with my other tenants previously, but I'm delighted to have them here, and the joy I got from yesterday's result has reminded me just how much. Otherwise, we've had several new additions to the list of the stable's owners in the past year or so, and without exception I can say that we are fortunate to enjoy not just the patronage but also the friendship of some very decent people. It's always been said that good horses deserve good owners, so it is very pleasing when a nice horse gets a nice owner or group of owners, and vice versa; so on that basis, it was the perfect result that Lady Suffragette should win for Stewart Leadley-Brown last summer (although circumstances dictated that that was the last time she carried my colours, when it really should have been the first time that she carried Stewart's). What we want now, and what will happen if natural justice continues to prevail, is for Anis Etoile, Ex Con and Polychrome to visit the winners' enclosure during the forthcoming year, and for Imperial Decree to train on and add to her Yarmouth victory. And on the subject of acquaintanceships newly made which have brightened the year, our champion blogger-elect Alan Taylor has been an excellent addition to the ranks of our friends. I hope that we see you back again this summer, Alan - and then all we'll need while you're here (and I'm sure this is going to happen someday) is for someone to walk into the yard and shake my hand with the words, "I am the Walrus". That would make a true brahmafest.

Review of the year (part three) to follow ...

A POSITIVE NEW YEAR FOR TEAM BERRY!

I've been inspired. I haven't finished my review of 2007 - not by a long chalk, so don't think you've got off this lightly - but, as I say, I've been inspired: Alan Taylor's closing exhortation on his response to my most recent posting has inspired me to start the new year with a chapter in similar vein: so let's look forward to a positive New Year for Team Berry!

I can't say that I've actually started 2008 with the elan that that pronoucement implies, because I've started it with a heavy cold, so I'll be taking things fairly quietly for a few days. I wasn't too bad on New Year's Day - starting to feel under the weather had seen me retire well before the midnight hour on Old Year's Night (is that the same thing as New Year's Eve? I'm assuming it is, and that 's what I'm talking about) so I was still relatlvely perky for the first few hours of this year - so I started the year with a lovely ride on Run From Nun, but I've been very unadventurous and pathetic since then. That ride, though, had one useful spin-off, because it now means that the filly has a photograph to accompany her biography in the site's 'Horses in Training' section: we had two house-guests (my dad and Kate Green) so Emma took them out onto the Heath for a look-around, and while she was there took the opportunity to snap away as dear little Run From Nun scampered up Long Hill.

Although I've been trying to do as little as possible outdoors since we've got back to the normal stable routine on January 2nd (yesterday), I did venture up to Primrose Farm, the other (ie better) side of Norwich today as a passenger in the (well-heated) cab of Tim Phillips' lorry as he went to collect Brief Goodbye, Jill Dawson, Imperial Decree and Anis Etoile from their winter holiday. This has made me feel a lot better, for several reasons. Kerry Oldfield, who gives the horses such a wonderful home-from-home there, has been really ill with pneumonia since Christmas, and seeing how unwell she's been made me feel better; I told her this to try to console her, but I'm not sure that it did. But even without the beneficial effect of seeing someone iller than oneself, any trip to Primrose Farm warms the heart: it is truly Horse Heaven, as John McNamara dubbed it when I took him up there a few years ago, and we are truly blessed to have such a nice family looking after our horses so well in such a lovely spot. We took Lady Suffragette and Ethics Girl up there to take the place of the four we took away, but of course they aren't taking their exact place: Kerry put the new arrivals in a lovely fresh field which she'd saved for them, and you wouldn't see two happier horses than when we turned them out and they shot off, trying to do two things at once, ie gallop a few circuits of their new kingdom to check it out while trying to stuff as much of the bountiful grass into their mouths at the same time.

Anyway, that's four more horses welcomed back from their winter break. All looked very well, as is invariably the case when they return from Norfolk - Anis Etoile would be the one I'd pick as having benefitted physically most from the break, but that's not surprising because, as was suggested by the fact that she was the one too immature to race last year, she was (and still is) the one with most scope for physical development - and they now join Filemot back here, the latter having come back last Friday from her break at Greg Parsons' Upperwood Farm Stud, the former home of her sire Largesse. So hopefully that will give us plenty to keep ourselves occupied over the coming weeks and months as we work towards a what we hope will be a successful season in a positive new year for Team Berry!

Further reflections on the old year to follow ...