A collection of brahmas

I know it's not good to be wishing one's life away, but I'm afraid that's what I mostly do. Particularly in winter. My simplistic mind splits the year into four seasons, each comprising exactly three months. Winter to me is December, January and February, and I spend most of that winter wishing the season away. And we've now only another seven hours to go. February's been an odd month. The snow didn't start until February 1st; it then lasted at least half the month - but, as the most recent events are usually the ones uppermost in one's mind, that all seems a long time ago now because we've ended the month with a (relatively) balmy week. The good thing about a freeze-up is that, when the temperature subsequently inches its way towards double figures, it then seems really temperate. And that's how it seems as if the month has ended, with some very pleasant, spring-like weather.

Today was a very pleasant morning in the nice weather. One nice part of it was that we had some horses - Brief Goodbye, Jenny Dawson and Struck Lucky - cantering around Southfields Grass (an excellent c.14-furlong grass canter behind the racecourse which is open all winter but which for us comes into its own in late winter for the horses who are returning to strong work and who need to do a lot of long cantering to work their ways back to fitness) for the first time this winter. I was lucky enough not to have to ride out that lot, so really enjoyed going out on foot with Steve McCormick to watch the three horses - ridden respectively by Hugh, Martha and Gemma - relishing their task. Brief, needless to say, decided he had to finish the exercise in front. He looked just so pleased with himself as he pulled up, so clearly very happy with his lot; you could see great minds thinking alike as Steve turned to me with a smile and said, "Brief's still enthusiastic!".

In addition to having some very varied weather, February has also given us a few brahmas. Top of the pile has to be the offering from an East of England Health And Safety officer who graced us with his presence a couple of weeks ago. You might not be surprised to know that my view is that The Great God Health And Safety is based on a misapprehension - that nobody would use his common sense without a manual in his hand to remind him to do so - but modern legislation means that it is a necessary evil. Of course Health And Safety isn't about health and safety at all; rather it is about red-tape to keep civil servants in a job. So what unsurprisingly the Health And Safety officer wasn't in the least interested in finding out was how safe a workplace this is - he was here to check paperwork. Had he been interested in checking how safe this place is, he'd have found out that, because the horses are allowed to be turned out in the field, they are considerably less feisty than most, and thus this stable is probably the safest one in the town from which to ride out. But how safe the place is wasn't an issue, which isn't really surprising as I think racing just gets filed into the 'Too Hard' basket by H&E men. A great example of this comes in a lovely story which Sir Mark Prescott tells. He had to attend a Health And Safety seminar, at which the lecturer told them that every "dangerous occurence" has to be recorded in a log book. Sir Mark asked what constitutes a dangerous occurence, and was told, "It would be something like if your secretary has to get a book off the top shelf and uses a step-ladder to reach it". Sir Mark, therefore, asked to be excused for a few minutes to ring home. When he came back into the room, the lecturer asked him if everything was alright, and he replied with a grin, "Yes, fine thank you. When I left home, third lot were just pulling out to trot around the indoor ride. I just wanted to know how it had gone, and apparently everything has gone smoothly, and there have so far only been 43 dangerous occurences in the hour I've been away!".

I digress. Anyway, the reason for the H&E man's visit was that we had a 'work experience' pupil booked in for the summer, this being one of the very few racing stables happy to take pupils on 'work experience'. (As I found out a couple of years ago when we had a girl from Wales here on 'work experience' who came here rather than to a stable closer to home because her parents had not been able to find one closer to home happy to take part in 'work experience' placings, the vast majority of stables won't have a bar of 'work experience'; I don't think this is because of an unwillingness to help, rather a disinclination to be dicked around by the red-tape commissars any more than is necessary). Anyway, our Health And Safety paperwork is up to scratch, as it has been proved sufficient to satisfy not only our annual BHA inspections, but also the redoubtable Jacquie Hodge, the Racing School's itinerant Health And Safety czarina who put us through our paces last year when David Knights was doing some interminable course. One of the many advantages of keeping the business to a level where there are never as many as five employees is that the Health And Safety paperwork is RELATIVELY straightforward, so that's all fine - except that this visitor made Jacquie seem as laid-back Neil from the Young Ones. The upshot is that we have now, sadly and involuntarily, been added to the 98% of racing stables who don't take pupils on 'work experience'. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this man came up with a gem. When he asked to see my Health And Safety Policy document, I proudly took him to see my work of art which is pinned to the wall of the tea-room. I am very proud of this document, which I think covers every eventuality, but the man was horrified: "What do you call this? This isn't a Health And Safety Policy ... it's ... it's ... it's just a collection of sentences!". I've been chuckling about this on and off ever since. I tried to get him to expand on the difference between a document and a collection of sentences, but the best he could come up with was saying, "That's just one sheet of paper; when I go to Waitrose, they have a sheaf of papers THIS THICK" (holding his hands horizontally two inches apart". Anyway, isn't it a gem? You could describe just about anything as "just a collection of sentences": the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, 'A la recherche du temps perdu' ... In fact, I suspect that James Joyce's publisher might have said just that when presented with the manuscript for Ulysses. And my final thought was, "If this is just a collection of sentences, what would he say if he read my blog?"!

But this hasn't been the only gem. I'll go from the ridiculous to the spot-on, and mention that Norman Williamson came up with a cracker on the BBC before the Ascot Chase a couple of weeks ago, when William Kennedy was due to ride The Sawyer against Voy Por Ustedes and co. The Sawyer, who is a lovely horse and one whom William rode to victory at Cheltenham on New Year's Day, was out of his depth and was clearly just going round to collect the seven and a bit thousand pounds for finishing last of the four, so there wasn't too much to be said about the horse's chances. Even so, Norman managed to hit the nail on the head: "This is a very, very good jockey, and he deserves to have ridden a lot more than the sixteen winners he has had so far this season." Hear, hear! It's up to 18 now, and let's hope we can do our bit to help him keep the score-board ticking over.

One other very pertinent racing comment came from down under last weekend. Mick Mair is a very good trainer in Queensland, at Caloundra I think. He's 60 and has enjoyed a lot of success for many years - but top-class horses in Queensland, rather than Vic or NSW, don't grow on trees, so until Swiss Ace, a $6,000 yearling, won the Oakleigh Plate at Caulfield seven days ago, he'd never trained a Group One winner. He was asked about his feat of finally training a Group One winner, and came up with a very good analogy: "It's like making tiger soup - first you've got to catch a tiger", i.e. it's no harder than making any other type of soup once you've got the right ingredients, but getting hold of those right ingredients is the hard part. A lovely way of putting it.

And finally John Francome must be mentioned in dispatches. I don't usually see 'The Morning Line', but I put the television on for ten minutes or so after first lot today while I was doing the list to work out who would ride what for the rest of the morning. A lovely horse whom I particularly admire was due to run today, The Package, and they showed the film of him running second on his last outing in the race in which Tony McCoy rode his second 3,000th winner (if that makes sense). Many people felt that Timmy Murphy's riding of The Package that day was unacceptably subdued, and John Francome is evidently one. He said that Timmy had gone around the wide outside all the way and then, "I've seen dead people make more effort going up the run-in"! I don't think that John was being entirely fair because the ground was extremely heavy at Plumpton that day (if it wasn't for the fact that they did actually race, one would have called it 'unraceable') and on heavy ground at Plumpton it's usually a case of the wider the better - but even so, it's a rare pleasure to hear someone whose thoughts are worth hearing saying what he thinks on television. (There are, of course, plenty of other people who say what they think, but they are generally the ones whose thoughts aren't worth hearing - and I think you can probably work out who they are).