Easter weather

Today has been notable for its rough weather, here as in most parts of the UK, but it's been a very enjoyable day nonetheless. The day got off to a great start when I switched on the internet at 6.00 to find out the result of the 5.35 am (GMT) at the Gold Coast and discovered that Somewhere Safer, whom I part-own, had run second at odds of 47/1 in a very competitive race on her first start for about five months. Things got even better when the text, and later the call, came through from her trainer Michael Tidmarsh, telling me that she had been beaten a short half-head and had put up a tremendous performance. Michael is the one with most reason to feel proud, but I'm very happy to revel in her glory and feel very proud too.

We'll have to try to produce something to run equally well now, and the first opportunity will come from Polychrome, who was the only horse I rode today. She seems in very good nick and, fingers crossed, should run at Doncaster a week today. I don't know quite what to make of her exercise this morning: I thought that I had given her quite a strenuous work-out over five furlongs on the Cambridge Road all-weather, but when I got her home and removed her saddle, there were no signs of her having made any exertions at all. You'd have thought I'd just saddled her up, led her around the yard for two minutes and then untacked her again. So what do I make of that? Either she's extremely fit, or she's extremely lazy, or I'm an extremely ineffectual rider, or I've lost all judgement of speed, or it was a very, very cold and windy day. The answer is that probably all these reasons apply - but on balance I think her post-work condition has to be taken as a good thing.

It really has been a frightful day, with a cold wind throughout; and it was either raining or snowing for at least half of it. It was a day to cut as many corners as possible, and we didn't ride the horses who are only walking or trotting. Hugh and Martha rode two lots each and, even though we tried to time it so that they missed the worst of the weather, that proved impossible and they returned from their scamper up Long Hill on Jill and Imperial Decree very cold and bedraggled. More fortunate, however, had been Emma and Lucy Higginson, who only had to suffer two heavy but brief sleet showers during a spin up Warren Hill on Panto and Brief Goodbye. Lucy, who is editor of Horse And Hound, and her husband Tex, along with their two-year-old daughter Madeleine, stayed with us last nice which was really enjoyable, and it was great to volunteer Brief to provide her with her first ride on Newmarket Heath this morning. This proved an excellent pairing, as a (very good, though I say so myself) photograph which I took of them cantering up Warren Hill proves, which shows Brief clearly enjoying Lucy's very well-balanced riding.

We have Anthony staying this weekend, and he and Madeleine got on very well together. This afternoon the gathering of children became even better because Emma organised an Easter Egg Hunt - plus excellent lunch - to which Tony and Becka Fordham brought their children Archie and Minnie, and Andrew and Biddy Neve brought along their two boys Rupert and Edward. That was lovely, and the afternoon got even better when we watched - thank God for television, because watching either of these races in person would have pretty gruelling - two victories which I found very pleasing: the win of the Jimmy Quinn-ridden Smokey Oakey in the Lincoln in snow flurries for our neighbour Mark Tompkins (who also saddled the third, Babodana), and the success in a snow-storm in a Listed race at Kempton for a horse whom I very much admire, last year's November Handicap victor Malt Or Mash, a lovely grey son of the excellent Black Minnaloushe.

We had no horses in the field this afternoon and there are none out there tonight; and we have an open fire blazing away in here, with some more of Emma's fish pie to look forward to for dinner. So, meteorologically grim though Easter Saturday has been, I think we're coping with it well enough.