If I were as gifted as Rupert McCall, I could come up with a poem to get across how really special was our evening in the Portland Arms in Cambridge last night. I'm not, though, so I'll just say that Paul Kelly's concert (or rather, I should say, Paul Kelly's and Dan Kelly's concert, because his nephew Dan did a great job as second guitarist and second singer) was at least as good as I was hoping it would be.
It seemed too good to be true that we could spend the best part of two hours in a crowd of less than 100 in a room the size of our tack room a dozen miles from our home but half a world from Paul's: someone who has been making music so very successfully for over 30 years really doesn't need to go so far to earn so little. But that's exactly what happened. And the fact that it happened explains why it was so very, very good: some people are just born to perform. It was as good as any concert ever could be - and the icing on the cake is that my well-thumbed copy of Paul's book 'How to make gravy' is now signed by the writer. That tome is now even higher on my list of most-treasured possessions than it was previously.
No such excitements today, of course, but a pleasant day nonetheless. It has indeed, I am afraid, proved to be the case that the lovely weather of the weekend hasn't stretched out into the week, but we can live with that as it's still very pleasant - here at any rate, even if conditions at York today looked pretty grim. One of the highlights of the summer has been saying G'day to Ortensia and her rider Leah Gavranich several mornings a week, so it was good to bid them good luck today for their assault on the Nunthorpe in this morning's sunshine (which was considerably nicer than the dull conditions in this photograph of them doing their pacework on the first sand two days ago) - and then considerably less good to see two consecutive races from York on the TV run in torrential rain, which won't suit that mare at all. Ah well, let's see what tomorrow brings.
Today was nice here, though, as you can see from a shot in the yard (of Gus following our farrier Darren Rose, which is a pretty standard routine, Darren and his assistant Bernie finding Gus their constant companion at any time when there might be a slice of hoof to be handed out) and on the Heath, of Roy and Terri (and the tips of Many Levels' ears, if you look closely at the bottom of the shot) going along the Cambridge Road all-weather.
Oh yes, what I was going to say earlier was that, if the name Rupert McCall seemed to ring any bells, the reason is that one of his poems appeared in the Racing Post during Royal Ascot. You might recall it, a lovely little tribute to Black Caviar. I wish that I'd kept that paper (although it could conceivably still be somewhere on the floor of this room which can be loosely described as my office) but, even if it isn't, I'm sure that it should be possible to track the poem down, because it too was one worth re-reading.
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