The master plumber is baffled

I feel as if I've backed a winner today. I was walking around the yard at just after 5pm this afternoon chatting to Tony and Becka Fordham, who had called in to say G'day and to see their filly Struck Lucky, when Lou, who works for Dave Morris in the other side of the yard, stuck her head over the fence to say that she'd broken a tap. (It was actually very good of her to say that she'd broken it, because I don't think it was her fault: I think basically an old tap had finally broken while she was turning it). This wasn't good news: we have only one water supply for the whole stable and the flat so, with a broken tap (ie one which cannot be turned off) that meant that, until the tap was replaced, the whole water supply would have to be turned off at the mains, which surprisingly enough I know how to do. And promptly did. This obviously wasn't a pleasant thought, particularly after 5pm on a Saturday. I couldn't really see that I could sort this out myself, (a) because I didn't know how to and (b) because I didn't have a spare tap - and I didn't see where I could buy one at that time of a weekend day. So, very disgruntledly, I concluded that calling out a 24-hour emergency plumber (ie a very expensive one) was the only option. The first one which I called repeatedly didn't answer the telephone (amazing, considering that this was a big firm which had taken out a half-page ad in the Yellow Pages to advertise its 24-hour, 365-day capacity for 1-hour response); the second - very sadly and slightly embarrassingly, even though I don't think I can be blamed for the unfortunate conversation - was a woman in Burwell who politely told me that that service was no longer available because her husband had died; but the third was like striking gold. The man I spoke to explained to me that I was, after all, capable of doing the job myself: he told me how to do the job, told me that Homebase would be open until 8pm and told me what I needed to buy there, and ended the conversation by saying, "You won't have any problems, and you're much better doing it yourself because I'd have to charge you 150 quid if I came out, and you don't want to be paying me to do that for a job which you could do yourself"! Good on 'im - I know that one might say that he was only saying this because he really didn't want to head off to work at that time of a Saturday but, even if that was the case, he could still more easily just have said that he couldn't do it and left it at that. So here I am: an instant master-plumber, buoyed by the satisfaction of a job well done, and 141 pounds (the tap cost 9 pounds) less poor than I might have been. And we've got water.

It was nice looking at Lucky with Tony and Becka, because she's coming along nicely, even allowing for the fact that she's still got a bit of a belly on her and she's still looking slightly unkempt. She's finding her cantering very easy and is getting and looking stronger week by week. Fingers crossed she'll be up to some racing by the end of the summer, which would be good as she's got to keep up with her relatives, several of whom have been keeping the family's flag flying recently. Three horses from her immediate family won within a week recently, including a Royal Applause horse called Whatsthescript who won a Graded race in America, and one of these, a three-year-old filly called Persian Sea, trained by Michael Jarvis for Sheikh Ahmed, won again the day before yesterday. It's always pleasing if one has a filly to see her close relatives doing well. The surprising thing about her pedigree is that her sire Key Of Luck, whom I've long regarded as a very good stallion, has been having very few runners this season, but the few who have been running recently have been doing quite well: he had a winner at the July Meeting, and he had the winner of the race in which Jill ran at Windsor, a horse called Australia Day who, having been bred by Richard Sims' acquaintance Jorge Vasicek, might even have been named in honour of our esteemed antipodean friend.

I oughtn't really to be writing this, because I should be spending this evening reading whatever the Racing Post has had to say recently about the sale of the Tote, which is a very dull subject, and one which doesn't seem to have any right answers. The reason why I should be swatting up on this is that I've been asked to take part in an hour's discussion programme on At The Races tomorrow morning, one of the main topics of which will be the sale of the Tote. So I'll be heading off to London quite early tomorrow morning, and fingers crossed I'll be able to say something sensible when I get there. I was lucky enough to attend a lunch in the Jockey Club Rooms last year, organised by Luca Cumani, in which the Tote chairman Peter Jones briefed a dozen or so of us about what is happening, and Peter did a very good job in that it wasn't until about a couple of hours after it had ended that it dawned on me that I was no wiser than I had been beforehand. So I have to admit that I don't know what is going on (or indeed what should be going on) but I don't feel too guilty about going on television to pontificate on a subject about which I know precious little, because I don't think anyone knows anything much.

Two other topics (which might actually be one topic) about which I am baffled are the possibly related subjects of why we're having so many non-runners currently, and why the ground at so many tracks is in such atrocious condition. Did anyone notice the figures for Newmarket last night? There were 24 non-runners on a 7-race card, with one race in which 7 of the 15 declared runners didn't take part! And this was on ground described as "good to firm, good in places" (which was what it had been forecast in advance to be). Amazing. One got a clue about a possible reason for the mass defections when one watched a race and saw nearly as much dirt being kicked up as one gets on the sand at Southwell; but in Newmarket's defence I'd say that the track was in much better condition than was the case at Sandown when Brief ran there - and that day Sandown looked in much better shape than York. It was amazing to see races being run at two supposedly top-class tracks in which all the jockeys went round the bend - on ground supposedly faster than good - keeping at least three or four horses' widths off the rail, simply because the ground close to the rail was so rutted that it wasn't safe to gallop on. It's just terrible. And what about Brighton? Did anyone else notice that when they raced there this week the ground in the morning paper was described by the surely unprecedented phrase "Good to soft (watering to maintain)" - and that in the results the next day it was described as "Good to firm, firm in places"! No wonder there were loads of non-runners. You'd think that we were living on the equator, not in a country where summers were something which they used to have in the old days. I know that many of racing's problems are insoluble (such as the future of the Tote) but I don't think that it's asking too much to hope for track maintenance to be a bit less hit-or-miss than is the case currently.