I enjoyed a very pleasant little outing today. We won't have any runners this week or next, but I still had a trip to the races today. Eagle-eyed observers might have noticed that the second race at Huntingdon this afternoon was named the Sid Jeffcoate - Celebrating A Lifetime In Racing Novices' Handicap Chase. This was the latest of the series of races in honour of retired stablelads which Racing Welfare organises (our friend Colin Casey had a race in his honour at Fakenham a few years ago, to name but one) and Sid was the beneficiary this time. Sid lives around the corner from here, in Jim Joel Court. He spent most of his working life in racing, having started his apprenticeship with Jack Jarvis in 1953 in Palace House (no, that is not a misprint - Jack Jarvis, of course, trained in Park Lodge, but apparently at his peak he had his string scattered over three stables in town, including Palace House, which is easy enough to understand as Park Lodge is not a big place, even by the standards of the old days when the size of even the biggest strings did not reach to three-figures). Anyway, I had the honour of being asked to present Sid with his momento, which I did after Sid had presented the race's trophy (pictured) to Mrs Carsberg, owner of the good winner Global Flyer. It was a lovely afternoon and I felt very honoured to have been asked to be part of it.
On a completely different subject, I've been meaning to mention how honoured we have been by some of the wild creatures who have visited us in recent months. Each summer we are blessed to have a family of house martens (we're guessing that they are house martens, but this could be completely wrong) set up home in a nest clinging precariously to the wall under our eaves. It's great that they keep coming back, and it's always lovely later in the summer when firstly the sound of the peeps, and then the sight of the beaks, announces that the babies are getting ready to tackle the outside world. They are hard to photograph, but the best one
which I took is reproduced here, with one of the adults just heading off foraging with the nest visible if you look carefully to the bird's left as we look at it. So that's nice - and let's hope that they honour us with their presence in 2012 too. More recently, we've had two more particularly welcome guests. The less surprising of these appeared at bedtime three days after Christmas. He didn't appear of his own volition: when the dogs went out for their final wander of the evening, Stan, followed by Gus, rushed off down to the bottom of the yard barking, and when they returned Stan presented me with this little creature. Good effort to carry him. Fortunately, Stan's hedgehog-hunting only goes as far as carrying them around, so once our little visitor had been put down (and once Gus had stared at him for a while) we left him in peace and he soon shuffled off into the night to continue his peregrinations.
Finding a hedgehog mooching around the place at night is a one-or-two-or-three-times-a-year event; but our previous visitor was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. If one walks down into the yard at dusk in the summer, one has the pleasure of catching glimpses of bats swooping around one's head. I'd always said that one never sees the bats at rest: I assume that they hang out in the loft, but I've never seen them there (although I suppose it might just be the case that I need to look harder). Anyway, a couple of days before Christmas we had a massive thrill, courtesy of a bat who'd clearly got lost. How
he'd found his way into the house at this time of year when none of the windows are open is hard to fathom, but that's what he'd done, so there he was, hanging asleep above the door into Anthony's room. (And Anthony was here at the time so he was able to see him too, which was great). He ended up being there for two nights. When I got up on the first morning he was swooping around the hallway so I left the back door open for five minutes, sure that his sonar would detect the open space and that he'd fly out. I returned five minutes later and shut the back door, assuming that he'd have gone. (It was dark
and I'd turned the light off, so I couldn't see). However, when it became light, it became clear that he'd returned to his hangout. On the second evening, the photograph I took of him was less clear than the two which I had taken on the first evening, but interestingly he seemed more in control of his ears the second evening: they'd been hanging down on the first evening, but this time they were less evident. Anyway, the second morning I repeated my open-door policy, and this time he did manage to make his escape. It was sad, really, to bid him farewell, but he was better regaining his freedom. Anyway, that was another lovely episode. I must go for a really good tour of inspection in the loft one of these days, as it would be lovely to see a tribe of them hanging out up there.
I enjoyed a very pleasant little outing today. We won't have any runners this week or next, but I still had a trip to the races today. Eagle-eyed observers might have noticed that the second race at Huntingdon this afternoon was named the Sid Jeffcoate - Celebrating A Lifetime In Racing Novices' Handicap Chase. This was the latest of the series of races in honour of retired stablelads which Racing Welfare organises (our friend Colin Casey had a race in his honour at Fakenham a few years ago, to name but one) and Sid was the beneficiary this time. Sid lives around the corner from here, in Jim Joel Court. He spent most of his working life in racing, having started his apprenticeship with Jack Jarvis in 1953 in Palace House (no, that is not a misprint - Jack Jarvis, of course, trained in Park Lodge, but apparently at his peak he had his string scattered over three stables in town, including Palace House, which is easy enough to understand as Park Lodge is not a big place, even by the standards of the old days when the size of even the biggest strings did not reach to three-figures). Anyway, I had the honour of being asked to present Sid with his momento, which I did after Sid had presented the race's trophy (pictured) to Mrs Carsberg, owner of the good winner Global Flyer. It was a lovely afternoon and I felt very honoured to have been asked to be part of it.
On a completely different subject, I've been meaning to mention how honoured we have been by some of the wild creatures who have visited us in recent months. Each summer we are blessed to have a family of house martens (we're guessing that they are house martens, but this could be completely wrong) set up home in a nest clinging precariously to the wall under our eaves. It's great that they keep coming back, and it's always lovely later in the summer when firstly the sound of the peeps, and then the sight of the beaks, announces that the babies are getting ready to tackle the outside world. They are hard to photograph, but the best one 
which I took is reproduced here, with one of the adults just heading off foraging with the nest visible if you look carefully to the bird's left as we look at it. So that's nice - and let's hope that they honour us with their presence in 2012 too. More recently, we've had two more particularly welcome guests. The less surprising of these appeared at bedtime three days after Christmas. He didn't appear of his own volition: when the dogs went out for their final wander of the evening, Stan, followed by Gus, rushed off down to the bottom of the yard barking, and when they returned Stan presented me with this little creature. Good effort to carry him. Fortunately, Stan's hedgehog-hunting only goes as far as carrying them around, so once our little visitor had been put down (and once Gus had stared at him for a while) we left him in peace and he soon shuffled off into the night to continue his peregrinations.
Finding a hedgehog mooching around the place at night is a one-or-two-or-three-times-a-year event; but our previous visitor was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. If one walks down into the yard at dusk in the summer, one has the pleasure of catching glimpses of bats swooping around one's head. I'd always said that one never sees the bats at rest: I assume that they hang out in the loft, but I've never seen them there (although I suppose it might just be the case that I need to look harder). Anyway, a couple of days before Christmas we had a massive thrill, courtesy of a bat who'd clearly got lost. How 
he'd found his way into the house at this time of year when none of the windows are open is hard to fathom, but that's what he'd done, so there he was, hanging asleep above the door into Anthony's room. (And Anthony was here at the time so he was able to see him too, which was great). He ended up being there for two nights. When I got up on the first morning he was swooping around the hallway so I left the back door open for five minutes, sure that his sonar would detect the open space and that he'd fly out. I returned five minutes later and shut the back door, assuming that he'd have gone. (It was dark 
and I'd turned the light off, so I couldn't see). However, when it became light, it became clear that he'd returned to his hangout. On the second evening, the photograph I took of him was less clear than the two which I had taken on the first evening, but interestingly he seemed more in control of his ears the second evening: they'd been hanging down on the first evening, but this time they were less evident. Anyway, the second morning I repeated my open-door policy, and this time he did manage to make his escape. It was sad, really, to bid him farewell, but he was better regaining his freedom. Anyway, that was another lovely episode. I must go for a really good tour of inspection in the loft one of these days, as it would be lovely to see a tribe of them hanging out up there.
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