Greatest Piggott - and second greatest Dittman

Today has been a very pleasant day. We were very well stocked with riders this morning, and I took the excuse to give myself a morning on the ground (pretending to be a proper trainer!). This was actually very timely, because we have Anthony staying for a long weekend, so it was nice to take him up to the Heath on foot a couple of times to watch the horses go about their work and to watch the world go by. And we did watch quite a decent amount of (this tiny section of) the world go by. Our first trip to the Heath was to racecourse side, where we watched Imperial Decree and Polychrome have a gentle gallop (ridden by Desna and Gemma respectively) over five furlongs on the Cambridge Road all-weather. Emma took some nice photographs of this pair, and then I, at my sticky-beak best, suggested we stroll over to watch Luca's horses gallop Across the Flat, which was very interesting and provided another series of photo-opportunities.

The second sortie was to Side Hill, where Anthony, Steve McCormick and myself stood to watch Lady Suffragette (Gemma), Brief Goodbye (Jamie), Anis Etoile (Suze) and Filemot (Martha) enjoy a pleasant canter on the grass, with my taking the camera this time because Emma and Panto were accompanying Hugh and Ethics Girl on a canter up Warren Hill at the same time. There were, as you would expect on a bright spring Saturday morning, plenty of spectators on the Heath, and the one we were most excited to see was the one whom I pointed out to Anthony with the description, "That man was the greatest jockey the world has ever known". Anthony's very good at remembering things he's told, but I always like to check up on what he's taken on board; so half an hour later I asked him if he could remember the name of the jockey we'd seen, and the reply was 'Greatest Piggott'. While this wasn't completely correct, it probably hit the nail on the head.

What made a really nice morning even more special was an event which happened during it but elsewhere, and this actually follows on quite nicely from our sighting of Greatest Piggott. If there was a competitor in recent history to Lester's title of The Greatest, it was probably The Enforcer, L. (Mick) Dittman. Anyway, Somewhere Safer, the four-year-old Postponed mare whom Michael Tidmarsh trains at Deagon in Queensland and whom I part-own, was running at 4.55 pm today at the Gold Coast, which was 7.55 am here. She'd been ridden last time by her track-work rider A. Nicholls (no, not our one - this one's called Adam) but sadly he couldn't do the weight this time, so Michael booked L. Dittman to ride. This, of course, was not THE (retired) L. Dittman, but was L. Dittman, son of L. Dittman. Yesterday evening I was chuckling to myself about how exciting it would be to have our horse ridden to victory by L. Dittman - the year I spent in Australia was roughly the time when The Enforcer was at his peak, so he's a god to me - although I didn't really consider it likely because, really well though the filly had run last time, it was hard to be confident with her having drawn barrier 15. This would obviously make things hard for horse and hoop alike, however good the hoop might be. However, everything fell into place like a dream: there were EIGHT scratchings after pre-race rain (even though the track only ended up being rated dead) and the filly jumped out of barrier eight - and won in a photo assisted by what I'm told was a very good ride by Luke Dittman. So what a wonderful addition to the morning that was - fantastic! She's a wonderful filly, trained by a master horseman who's the nicest guy to boot, and it's just such a joy to be involved with her.

After a great morning, what better than a pleasant afternoon? The recipe for a pleasant afternoon which we chose was to head to Thriplow, which some may know is Daffodil City for one weekend a year, when this small and idyllic Cambridgeshire village has an open day (well, two days to be exact) to allow the world to admire its bountiful daffodil crop. Of course, it never really works out like that: last year the really cold spring meant that few of the daffodils were open when the appointed weekend arrived, while this year we had such an easy latter part of the winter that the majority of the daffodils had already died by this weekend. Still, it's a beautiful village and it was a beautiful spring afternoon - and Thriplow with only a minority of its daffodils still flourishing still has more daffodils in evidence than you'd see just about any day anywhere else. Suze (see above - rode Anis this morning) lives there, as does our former inmate Bilkie, whose idyllic new life (as a promising show-jumper) we disturbed briefly. (Having just heard the terribly sad news that another of our former inmates, dear little By Storm, was killed in a fall in a hurdle race at Market Rasen last Sunday, it was very timely to see evidence of another one having really fallen on his feet). So that was a very pleasant afternoon, the icing on the cake being provided by Suze at the end of it, when afternoon tea in her house contained the best flapjacks I've ever eaten. The Open Village thing was very good, and would be very useful for anyone suffering from concussion who couldn't remember where he was: a few minutes spent in Thriplow this afternoon would have made it instantly clear that he was in England. Even down to having Morris dancers. And vintage tractors which Anthony the tractor fanatic loved. All that was missing was Inspector Barnaby from Midsomer Murders. And Alan Partridge, who would have hated it, but who should have been booked by his agent to attend as the celebrity guest. And Richard Sims, who would have loved it, who would probably have enrolled in a Morris dancing course, and whom Suze would have found very, very hard to get rid of.

Tonight I'll have to set the video on ATR so we can see if Monsam, a Danehill Dancer gelding which Richard part-bred and part-owns, can follow in Somewhere Safer's footsteps by saluting the judge at Tatura (Vic). Watching that will be the first item on tomorrow's agenda, after which all roads (ie M11 and A120) will lead to Great Leighs, where Brief Goodbye will be assisting in the required trials which, fingers crossed, will precede the track's imminent and long-awaited opening. Fingers crossed we'll have an easier day than Gemma and her fellow London marathoners will endure - good luck to them.