Two reasons to remember last Thursday

I'm really enjoying a quiet weekend. Well, I'm enjoying the fact that's it's quiet, even if some aspects - ie the rain - are harder to appreciate. We were all set for a great afternoon in front of the television yesterday, but of the course the absence of turf racing in the British Isles rather put a dampener on that. Two members of the household, though, who are completely unaffected by the horrible weather are the two newest ones. Thursday was a really special day because, in addition to a real treat which we enjoyed in the evening and which I'll describe shortly, we took delivery of two kittens who already now have their feet well and truly under the table. We weren't sure if we were going to get one or two, and we didn't know the sex. Had we only got one - and we knew that we were getting at least one, and that one would be grey -and had that been a boy, he would have been called Dalakhani, as we already have a (female) Alamshar. Had we got two boys, they would have been Arkle and Mill House. However, we have two and they are girls so we had a decision. I suggested Ouija Board and Pride, but as one is grey while the other is an indeterminate colour but with bits of bright bay, Natagora and Pride they are. And, if the weather now makes it preferable to stay indoors, that then just means more time to bond with these two really bold and friendly kittens. Which is great.

The kittens' arrival was merely highlight number one on Thursday, because the evening contained highlight number two. We'd been thinking we'd be going either to Warwick with Brief or to Great Leighs with Run From Nun; but, having decided not to declare Brief on the wet ground and having found that Run From Nun had been eliminated, I headed to the Racing Museum on Tuesday afternoon more in hope than expectation of there still being tickets available for the Evening with Lester Piggott two days thence. Amazingly, it wasn't sold out, so I bought two tickets. Emma and I, therefore, were able to enjoy a really special occasion on Thursday evening in the Jockey Club. The format was that Sean Magee, who evidently gets on very well with Lester, acted as compere as he and Lester discussed many of the best horses he had ridden, with accompanying films. It was really, really special. Just watching the films alone would have been special enough, but with Lester's reminiscences it was wonderful. Of course Lester is never going to be particularly loquacious, but by his standards he was extremely forthcoming, and was in very good and relaxed form. Some of the exchanges were very funny. Such as:-

SM: "You'd never ridden Nijinsky in any of his races before the Dewhurst because Liam Ward was Vincent's jockey in Ireland, but presumably you knew even before the race that this horse was supposed to be something very special".

LP: "Yes".

SM: "So had you been over to Ballydoyle to ride him work".

LP: "No".

SM: "Well, then I suppose Vincent had told you that he regarded the horse as really special".

LP: "No".

Puzzled pause.

LP (as if explaining something pretty obvious): "I'd read the papers".

Or how about Alleged's first Arc?

SM: "It's rare for a horse to make all the running in the Arc. Was that a plan that you and Vincent had come up with?"

LP: "No. He didn't want me to ride him like that".

SM: "What, it wasn't his idea, but you just told him that was how you were going to ride him?"

LP: "No. I didn't tell him that I was going to do it".

SM: "But he'd told you that he didn't want you to make the running?"

LP: "No. We never really discussed how I was going to ride the horses. I just knew that he wouldn't want me to do it - but I knew he'd be a better horse ridden that way".

It was basically just an hour or so of vintage Lester. The only shame was that so few people took the opportunity to enjoy it. I'd say that there were 60 people there - amazing. There should have been 600, or 6,000 - well, there wouldn't have been room for anything like that amount, but why it wasn't a sell-out I really can't understand. We met up with Jamie and Camilla there, plus Dawn Laidlaw, and Camilla's mum Wendy was there too. And it was good to catch up with a few of the town's stalwarts - including Tony and Sue Hide, plus John Moore, who was a great friend of Lester's cousin the late Bill Rickaby (there is a photograph of them skiing together in the Alps in Bill's autobiography) and who used to have the betting shop in Sun Lane in the days when officially there was no bookmaker in Sun Lane (nor in any street in any town in Britain) and who, when I congratulated him on his recent appearance in the Newmarket Journal as having won a prize for his garden, smiled and remarked that he thought was not doing too badly for a man about to turn 90 - plus Tim Cox, whom one could describe as racing's librarian, who had come up from Epsom. But of the other hundreds and hundreds of people whom one might have expected to see there? Well, they missed a wonderful evening.

So for this week? We have three entries for next weekend, Kadouchski and Run From Nun at Kempton on Saturday and Brief Goodbye at Goodwood on Sunday. Will either the weather or the eliminator allow us to have a runner? We'll just have to wait and see. If we don't have any outings, we'll just have to content ourselves with working towards whenever we do next have a runner, which task will, I hope, include continuing to be pleased with the progress of the two two-year-olds which we have in work, Struck Lucky and Ethics Girl. One of the few good consequences of seemingly constant rain is that we don't have to worry about the ground being too firm, and these two fillies duly enjoyed an excellent exercise out on the grass on Railway Land yesterday morning. We haven't had much to write home about recently, but with a few young horses around there's always scope for travelling hopefully.