Well, Panto's still holding on, but we're still waiting for normal gut activity to return to him - and the longer that takes to arrive, the less likely it becomes that it will arrive. He's being incredibly stoic, he's being incredibly well cared for by Mark Hillyer and the team at NEH, and Emma's life is revolving around giving him comfort and willling him along - but whether that's enough remains to be seen. King Canute showed us that there are some tides which can't be kept at bay, so we'll just have to hope that this tide is one which is going to turn. I can't put into words how keen I am that he survives - but wanting something to happen doesn't necessarily guarantee that it will. We'll see.
This morning was a perfect illustration: we've had a week of lovely weather and this morning duly broke without a cloud in the sky - but, of course, the forecast had said that it would rain in the afternoon and, while we'd all have loved to see the sun continuing to shine all day, that communal longing was not enough to prevent the arrival of the thunder, cold winds and heavy rain which duly showed up midafternoon. I saw that the rain had reached London earlier because I had turned on the television at lunchtime to watch a bit of the dressage phase of the eventing competition and noted that conditions looked very unpleasant - and also that only about 20% of the seats were taken, which was hard to fathom for an event for which tickets were meant to have been like gold dust.
Still, if one approached the Olympics with the expectation that they will be one stuff-up after another, one can't be disappointed - which was probably the best way to approach Friday's late-night (and why did it have to be late at night? Surely it was something which children would enjoy watching?) opening ceremony, the first 15 minutes of which I watched before coming to the conclusion that life's too short to suffer such nonsense. Inspector Wallander dressed (supposedly - not that I have any idea what Isambard Kingdom Brunel looked like) as Isambard Kingdom Brunel reciting Shakespeare (was Brunel a fan of Shakespeare? Seems very unlikely) proved to be the straw which broke this particular camel's back.
Anyway, if all these Olympic non-sequiturs are baffling, what do we make of the Hereford/Folkestone fiasco? How can Arena/Northern say that Hereford is closed permanently? That declaration is not theirs to make. They don't own the track; they only lease it. Presumably they are cancelling their lease, because I can't see that they'll want to continue paying to lease the course for the next 17 years without having a use for it. In that case, surely someone else can lease it from the council and run it as a racecourse. Everything is there, and it has a quota of fixtures. It tends to run only low-value races and it needs no capital investment, so surely anyone with any experience of running a racecourse could take it on and make a go of it. I'd imagine that the council would, now that they've lost their tenant, be happy to take a fairly low rent for it, as that would be better than taking no rent at all and having it stand idle and decaying. So who's going to step into the breach? Jockey Club Racecourses? Or what about the BHA? Surely this is exactly what the BHA should be doing? It shouldn't cost them anything and collectively there should be enough experience among their existing employees to run a racecourse. Or is this solution too sensible?
Anyway, enough of that. As these photographs show (the first three taken yesterday, the last two today) we're still hanging on to nice weather, notwithstanding the fact that it seems as if one idyllic week is going to prove to have been our limit. And we've got a busy week coming up, starting with Ollie at Yarmouth tomorrow and then Silken Thoughts in the first race of Glorious Goodwood on Tuesday. Both horses are very well. Ollie is pictured in the chapter's third photograph, trotting along on the Severals ahead of Oscar and the Smart Strike colt. The first two photographs are of our third runner of the forthcoming week (Zarosa, set to run at Nottingham on Thursday and shown here cantering down Railway Land sand and then galloping back up the Al Bahathri) while the last two photographs show that the first part of this morning had proper summer weather: if you think that the dogs are looking a trifle discomfitted and licking each other, it is because they had just been bathed to rid them of their fleas, the presence of which pests is, of course, one of the inevitable drawbacks of summer.
Well, Panto's still holding on, but we're still waiting for normal gut activity to return to him - and the longer that takes to arrive, the less likely it becomes that it will arrive. He's being incredibly stoic, he's being incredibly well cared for by Mark Hillyer and the team at NEH, and Emma's life is revolving around giving him comfort and willling him along - but whether that's enough remains to be seen. King Canute showed us that there are some tides which can't be kept at bay, so we'll just have to hope that this tide is one which is going to turn. I can't put into words how keen I am that he survives - but wanting something to happen doesn't necessarily guarantee that it will. We'll see.
This morning was a perfect illustration: we've had a week of lovely weather and this morning duly broke without a cloud in the sky - but, of course, the forecast had said that it would rain in the afternoon and, while we'd all have loved to see the sun continuing to shine all day, that communal longing was not enough to prevent the arrival of the thunder, cold winds and heavy rain which duly showed up midafternoon. I saw that the rain had reached London earlier because I had turned on the television at lunchtime to watch a bit of the dressage phase of the eventing competition and noted that conditions looked very unpleasant - and also that only about 20% of the seats were taken, which was hard to fathom for an event for which tickets were meant to have been like gold dust.
Still, if one approached the Olympics with the expectation that they will be one stuff-up after another, one can't be disappointed - which was probably the best way to approach Friday's late-night (and why did it have to be late at night? Surely it was something which children would enjoy watching?) opening ceremony, the first 15 minutes of which I watched before coming to the conclusion that life's too short to suffer such nonsense. Inspector Wallander dressed (supposedly - not that I have any idea what Isambard Kingdom Brunel looked like) as Isambard Kingdom Brunel reciting Shakespeare (was Brunel a fan of Shakespeare? Seems very unlikely) proved to be the straw which broke this particular camel's back.
Anyway, if all these Olympic non-sequiturs are baffling, what do we make of the Hereford/Folkestone fiasco? How can Arena/Northern say that Hereford is closed permanently? That declaration is not theirs to make. They don't own the track; they only lease it. Presumably they are cancelling their lease, because I can't see that they'll want to continue paying to lease the course for the next 17 years without having a use for it. In that case, surely someone else can lease it from the council and run it as a racecourse. Everything is there, and it has a quota of fixtures. It tends to run only low-value races and it needs no capital investment, so surely anyone with any experience of running a racecourse could take it on and make a go of it. I'd imagine that the council would, now that they've lost their tenant, be happy to take a fairly low rent for it, as that would be better than taking no rent at all and having it stand idle and decaying. So who's going to step into the breach? Jockey Club Racecourses? Or what about the BHA? Surely this is exactly what the BHA should be doing? It shouldn't cost them anything and collectively there should be enough experience among their existing employees to run a racecourse. Or is this solution too sensible?
Anyway, enough of that. As these photographs show (the first three taken yesterday, the last two today) we're still hanging on to nice weather, notwithstanding the fact that it seems as if one idyllic week is going to prove to have been our limit. And we've got a busy week coming up, starting with Ollie at Yarmouth tomorrow and then Silken Thoughts in the first race of Glorious Goodwood on Tuesday. Both horses are very well. Ollie is pictured in the chapter's third photograph, trotting along on the Severals ahead of Oscar and the Smart Strike colt. The first two photographs are of our third runner of the forthcoming week (Zarosa, set to run at Nottingham on Thursday and shown here cantering down Railway Land sand and then galloping back up the Al Bahathri) while the last two photographs show that the first part of this morning had proper summer weather: if you think that the dogs are looking a trifle discomfitted and licking each other, it is because they had just been bathed to rid them of their fleas, the presence of which pests is, of course, one of the inevitable drawbacks of summer.
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