Rain keeps falling

Gosh, today was grim.  If we thought that yesterday was wet (which we did), then today was even wetter, as it had been forecast to be.  Still no news on the end of the so-called "drought", but I'll keep you posted.  My view, for what it is worth, is that the drought is a myth put about by the water companies to justify their raising their prices, and to try to browbeat their customers into using less water (which is an admirable aim, as most people are very water-inefficient).  As most domestic customers are paying a set rate rather than being on a meter, if the water companies can persuade them to use less, it's great: they still receive the same amount of money for providing less water.  And if they myth of the drought can be used as justification for putting the prices up, then so much the better.  But anyway, as you'll see here, if we are in a drought, we are indeed in a very wet one.

One of the good things, though, is that we can use good ground on the grass.  The Heath drains very well, so when we galloped five horses in heavy rain late morning today on Railway Land, even after God knows how many hours of rain over the past few days, the ground was still no worse than soft.  That was lovely.  The ground looked very heavy at Epsom, while over in Ireland Punchestown raced in conditions which would have been deemed unraceable in England.  I see that we lost Hereford today and that tomorrow's meeting at Uttoxeter has already been called off.  Let's hope that Silken Thoughts, whom I really enjoyed galloping in the rain today, can get a run at Sandown on Saturday: there's a query over her effectiveness in really wet conditions, but if racing takes place she'll run.  Batgirl is entered at Doncaster the same day but we might want to wait a while longer before sending her out again.

Just before I close, I must mention the best result of last weekend.  As outlined in yesterday's post, we had a satisfactory run from Wasabi at Newbury on Saturday - but the result of the day came at Thirsk where Hannah (pictured on Grand Liaison a couple of weeks ago, coming home from a gallop 'Across The Flat' on Racecourse Side, adjacent to the Rowley Mile) took her statistics thus far for 2012 to 50% by winning on the Peter Salmon-trained 22/1 shot Half A Crown.  Peter, a very nice man who used to be down here working for the Quinlans but who now trains near Wetherby, has been an excellent supporter of Hannah.  She'd ridden this horse in a couple of apprentice races last season, and Peter gave her the chance to ride him in a normal race (the Thomas Lord Handicap, funnily enough, named after the founder of Lord's cricket ground, who apparently came from Thirsk - and that's your bit of trivia for the day) on his seasonal debut.  Peter has done really well with this horse (who was given away by his previous connections) and he's clearly still improving, because he won impressively under a very polished ride from Hannah.  So that was just really, really good.