Early (and presumably temporary) spring

We're still getting off very lightly with the weather. We've just enjoyed two lovely spring-like days. I was particulary well placed to enjoy the sight of the weather yesterday as I spent much of the day driving around the countryside collecting horses from various winter quarters, including finding myself in the perfect place to enjoy the dusk: Primrose Farm (aka Horse Heaven) whence Gus and I collected Silken Thoughts, leaving Ethics Girl and Zarosa (pictured) to return anon. It's a lovely spot and you can see in the first of the pictures how much a wriggling-with-delight Gus enjoys visiting it. Then today I was particularly well placed to enjoy the conditions as there was plenty to do during both morning and evening stables. We'll be getting busier again so there'll be plenty of riding to be done, but when the weather is good and the horses well behaved (and today scored highly on both counts) then that's not much of a hardship. Yesterday we saw five horses return to the stable from winter breaks in various locations, four of whom had been here previously. Our new arrival is called Nurai and, if you look up her form, you'll see that when she last "ran" (at Yarmouth in May) she refused to race. However, you'll also see that she has some ability and is a well-bred mare, so we'll see what we can do with her. She was with a good trainer previously (Paul D'Arcy) so it's far from certain that we'll be able to get her career back on track, but we'll try. A change of scenery can sometimes work wonders; and, before you point out that Paul and I both train in the same town so the scenery won't be that much different, I might mention that Paul trains on the other side of town - and that the scenery in this yard is a bit different from that in most other stables in these parts anyway. I remember when Niall Moran, formerly Barney Curley's head lad and now a trainer in Ireland, was heading back to Ireland to start training, he was trying to explain his future set-up to me. He was telling me that I had to understand that stables in Ireland are generally very different from how they are around here, and maybe he thought that he wasn't making things clear. So he was saying, "... and stables in Ireland tend to be like, like ..." pause while he tried to work out what they'd be like that I might be able to relate to "... your place"! At that point, he realised that I probably wouldn't be finding it too hard to envisage your typical Irish racing stable, so the monologue rather ground to a halt at that point. Anyway, that's an illustration that things do tend to be rather less formal and more rustic in this stable than elsewhere, so perhaps hoping for the magic of a change of scenery might not be quite as stupid an idea as it sounds! I'll keep you posted on how we go, but as of now I'd just say that I'm delighted to have her here. We already have one big strong Danehill Dancer (Ex Con) so it's great to have another - and just to inspire her to follow in Ex Con's hoofprints here's a photograph of her father in Neville Callaghan's stable with Michael Tidmarsh, who was head lad there at the time (1996). Also in the picture is the redoutable Richard Sims, who now too ranks as a champion sire having recently produced Anthony (pronounced with the 'th' as in 'the' rather than as in 'thyme', I'd hope and imagine) David Sims, whose initials are obviously (and this is too good to be true, bearing in mind that Richard's life's mission is to sell ads) ADS. In addition to becoming a father, Richard has also recently become a 50-something, so a glimpse of him when he was less far from the prime of life than he is now won't go amiss.


Aside from the lovely countryside, the joys of driving northwards into Norfolk include keeping one's eyes out for American military aircraft from the Mildenhall and Lakenheath airbases, and the delights of BBC Radio Norfolk, 104.4 FM. There were plenty of interesting planes to be spotted yesterday, even if the photograph of the only one I managed to photograph (and please make allowances for the fact that photographing fast-moving aeroplanes while driving isn't that easy) doesn't add much to the chapter. BBC Radio Norfolk, though, always adds plenty to the journey. We can, of course, just about pick it up here, but the signal gets stronger as one heads north. And why the excitement? Well, it's Alan Partridge's station, of course. I've never picked up his graveyard shift programme, but yesterday I had the next best thing: straight out of his creative department we have noon to 2pm 'One foot in the groove'. Yesterday they were playing songs from this week in both 1963 and 1977 which was great - particularly the latter as that was around the time when I was starting to take music seriously. But the icing on the cake was the discovery that, for those who miss the midweek shows, there is a weekly 'One foot in the groove' compilation show, 1pm to 4pm every Sunday, called 'One foot in the gravy'. That's got good old AP written all over it - superb! Mind you, the real excitement I've had in recent weeks was hearing Hot Chocolate's 'It started with a kiss' on BBC Radio Norfolk - and anyone who has ever seen the Valentine's Day episode which ends with Alan singing along to that song while his microphone is turned off ("You don't remember me, do you - YOU DON'T REMEMBER ME, DO YOU") will appreciate the terrific brahma of that.


I'm told (by Emma) that brahma of today is that she's signed me up to Twitter (as JohnWathenBerry). If you've got this far on the blog, you'll have worked out that being concise, which of course is compulsory on Twitter, is not my forte, so don't expect too much on that front.