How many brahmae this week?

I haven't planned this very well.  We have four runners this week, on four different days at four different meetings.  We've had one already, Kadouchski having finished fourth at Kempton last night.  I don't know why I keep running him on the AW, really (which means at Kempton, the only AW track suitable for a horse who prefers to go right-handed) because he isn't as good there as on the grass.  Or, rather, he's fine on the AW, but the pattern of AW racing isn't as suitable for him as the way things usually pan out on grass.  Two miles is the farthest they go on the AW, and Kempton is such an easy track, with such an easy surface, that it rarely presents enough of a test of stamina for him to be seen at his best.

Things didn't really work out right yesterday as we got too far back, but that was largely my fault.  While impressing on Hannah the importance of being close to the lead all the way, I also suggested that the way to do things would be to follow Wily Fox, an habitual front-runner drawn immediately outside her, all the way.  It had never even crossed my mind that Wily Fox would be ridden from the back, which he was - and which, consequently, we were too.  Anyway, Kadouchski ran his usual honest race and has come home fine, as was apparent when he tucked into his late dinner once we'd got home.

And he earned a small sum of prize money, all of which I will spend at once when I go to put some diesel in the horsebox.  And, although it drizzled all evening, I had some dry clothes to change back into for the late trip home.  There's always pleasure in any trip with Kadouchski - and in any trip with Gus, whose exercise there was restricted to a scamper through the woods at the back of the racecourse stables, which was fine as he just loves coming along however much or little exercise he gets when we're at the races.

I've been at home all day today, copping plenty more rain this morning even if it has turned out to be a lovely (and very warm) evening, but tomorrow we're at Epsom, Friday will see us at Sandown and then we'll be off to Beverley on Saturday.  Ethics Girl (pictured trotting around the lunge ring in some rare sunshine on Sunday morning), Silken Thoughts and Ollie (Orla's Rainbow) will be the three horses involved.  I hope that weather doesn't scupper any of the plans, although Silken Thoughts should be a runner whatever the conditions (dangerous thing to say bearing in mind that two more meetings were abandoned today) as she's won on heavy and won on good to firm.

There's always a brahma, and the brahma of these outings might be the fact that Silken Thoughts will be ridden by Tom Queally - and that Sandown is an RUK track.  It's less than a week since an RUK presenter seemed to come up with the weird theory that Tom Queally is a crook and that I'm involved in a cover-up of his misdeeds, so whether him riding for us at Sandown on Friday will send any further ripples across the pond remains to be seen.  Let's just hope that trouble doesn't find him in the race!  So let's hope that the race can pass without incident and that the outing can, in that respect, be brahma-free - leaving the brahma of the week to be our latest arrival, little Camelot, who is as enchanting as you'd expect from any six-week-old kitten, even if the adult cats seem to have had their noses put seriously out of joint.  They'll get over it, just as surely as, sadly, Camelot will inevitably grow.