More boiler blues

As you may have gathered, we didn't make it to Newbury. I suppose that it was inevitable that that meeting would fall prey to waterlogging: Ex Con has now been aimed at various times at six races, and none has taken place. Let's hope Fontwell next Sunday, which has been chosen as his seventh target, can break that sequence, although one can't be too confident. I know we missed the really bad weather by being away, but that's just in relative terms because it's been grim enough since our return. Our local meeting of Huntingdon was lost to frost on Wednesday, and after that we had two very wet, cold days, which saw Fontwell and Newbury rained off. Yesterday was another very frosty day, while today it's turned much milder, but very wet and windy. What has made these adverse conditions slightly harder to bear is the fact that - another recurring theme on the blog - our boiler has broken down. This has helped British Gas to win the Charlatan of the Month award as, despite the boiler breaking down while receiving its annual service from the British Gas engineer which comes with my British Gas boiler, heating and internal plumbing insurance policy, British Gas have washed their hands of any responsibility to fix it, claiming that this breakdown falls outside the conditions of this insurance ("You should have read the small print, sir - it's all there in the contract you signed"). I'm sure that if either I or any of my employees displayed the condescending attitude and lack of responsibility towards our clients as seems to be standard policy at British Gas, I'd have gone out of business years ago, but there we are. Suffice to say we have someone from the local firm of Doug Misson is coming in to mend the boiler tomorrow. On this subject, incidentally, has Scottish devolution taken place without my noticing? Over the last couple of intensely frustrating, not to mention cold, days we have actually had the pleasure of meeting one extremely helpful British Gas employee - the second engineer who came out, the one who tried to fix the problem which had resulted from his colleague's previous visit - and I noticed that he carried a bag with twin logos, seemingly of two separate concerns: 'British Gas' and 'Scottish Gas'. Is Scotland no longer part of Britain? If anyone can shed any light on this, please let me know.

At least Cheltenham took place yesterday to light up our television screens. The highlight for me was William Kennedy's winner, The Sawyer. This confirmed my belief that William is as good a jockey as one would find, and I thought that the ride was as polished and tactically astute as anything the great Richard Dunwoody would have put in. I was delighted to cheer the horse home; while the previous day I had been nearly as pleased to see Horseshoe Reef run a great race at Lingfield (the pleasure in this instance would obviously have been greater had the horse won, instead of finishing a good second). This is one of two Australian horses which Jeremy Gask has brought here, the other being Mrs Penny, a winner the previous week. Mrs Penny, of course, should not be confused with the Ian Balding-trained champion of the early '80s, nor should Horseshoe Reef be confused with the Mill Reef filly which I used to look after when I worked for Luca Cumani in the late '80s. I didn't see Mrs Penny's win as we were still away at the time, but Horseshoe Reef looks a lovely horse who ran a tremendous race on his UK debut. We'd had Jeremy here a couple of days previously as he was in the area and was kind enough to pay us a visit. He was in Newmarket twelve years ago working for Mark Tompkins, since when he has proved himself a top-class trainer with some extremely good results in Australia, and it is really good to see his stable in such good form this winter, proving that if you can train well in one country, you can train well in another. I am forever indebted to Jeremy for introducing me to the music of Paul Kelly, another South Australian. I was lucky enough to see Paul Kelly play in Edinburgh in 1999, but sadly we missed a wonderful opportunity by leaving Australia when we did: Paul Kelly was due to support Leonard Cohen in an Australian tour, beginning with a show in the Yarra Valley the week after our departure from Victoria. That knowledge made departing even harder than it was. I actually decided not to avail myself of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend a Leonard Cohen concert while the great man was in Britain last summer, feeling that, however great the performer, it would be very hard to enjoy any concert in the O2 Arena, but this presented an infinitely more appealing option. But sadly our timing was just not good enough.