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 ...