Well, Gus, Asterisk and I really enjoyed our visit to Sedgefield today. It was more than 30 years since my last visit, so I'll definitely have not to leave it so long next time. Lovely, friendly place - and for a track which always used to look really chewed up on TV only a handful of years ago, the turf was in pretty good nick too. I hope that Jamie enjoyed his outing, too. He certainly should have done, as Asterisk (as I'd hoped) proved herself to be a perfect horse for someone's first ride. She looked after him and they got round safely, so that was very much mission accomplished. A real milestone achieved - and with a 'Brahma of the Day' thrown in.
It couldn't be all plain sailing on Friday 13th, so we should count our blessings that nothing went seriously wrong. As it was, the only problem which did arise was a source of mirth, rather than pain. Whenever I take a horse to the races on my own, I usually forget something. My last words to Terri before I left were that I was wondering what I would have forgotten this time - but I couldn't see that I had forgotten anything, as I had all that the horse would need, and I'd even remembered to pack a colour-bag ... but, of course, when I was 35 minutes up the road, Terri rang to say that, while I had clearly packed a colour bag, I'd omitted to put it in the box,
as there was a packed colour bag in the tack room containing a grey saddle pad and a set of my colours. At this stage I didn't have time on my side to turn around and get it, so "F***, F***, F***"! It was really eating at me that I would cop a hundred-pound fine, or whatever it is, for not having the colours - but then it dawned on me that the advantage of her racing in my own colours is that, unlike most other sets, plain royal blue is pretty easy to get hold of. I own an old, stained royal blue sweat-shirt and it was only unfortunate that I was wearing a shabby black one rather than that - but I 
was wearing a blue shirt ... Anyway, I decided to take pity on Jamie and, rather than ask him to ride in this shirt, I'd stop off and buy a blue sweat-shirt somewhere, as any clothing shop would surely have one. There's a big clothes shop just off the A1 north of Grantham, so I called in there and duly bought one. The main part of the problem was now solved, and I just needed a dark blue cap. Amazingly, only one other horse at Sedgefield was due to race in a dark blue cap - so on arrival I checked that that horse wasn't a non-runner (which he wasn't) and when he arrived, I asked his trainer (Rose Dobbin) if I could use the cap for our race, which request she very kindly granted. So that was grand. What, of course, I 
hadn't bargained on was Jamie's vanity, and it took a surprisingly long time for him to grasp that he was indeed going to have to ride in a sweat-shirt, rather than the set of silks which he'd spent years dreaming of donning. He kept asking me if I was joking, only truly getting the message when I said, "Look, you can count yourself lucky that you've got this smart new blue sweat-shirt to ride in, rather than this old shirt that I'm wearing". Anyway, all was well that ended well, with my new sweat-shirt (which can now give me a couple of decades of good service, and which will bring a little smile to my face every time I don it) completing a lap and a half of Sedgefield, perched slightly less high above the saddle than would have been the case had I not dropped Jamie's stirrups by a few holes when I saddled the mare (pictured once cantering to post and twice walking back in after the race).And Jamie's report of the day on Twitter? "Enjoyed my first ride for @JohnWathenBerry despite the colour issues. First of many hopefully!"!
No comments:
Post a Comment