Love and death

I always think that Leonard Cohen's 1971 album 'Songs of Love and Hate' would have been better named 'Songs of Love and Death'.  There's plenty of both in its songs, as in most of his songs; much more than the hate.  But there you go.  And he can't have been worried that people would just think that it was a movie sound-track, because Woody Allen didn't release 'Love and Death' for another four years.  Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about both abstract nouns (ie love and death, not hate) over the past couple of days.  Animals are lucky, really, in that when they reach the stage where life has nothing to offer them other than suffering, they can be released from it.  Admittedly animals get to that stage more easily, because their pain has few off-setting pleasures.  We all know people who have been rendered infirm by accident, illness or old age, but they can still enjoy the cerebral pleasures of watching the racing on the television, reading about it and discussing it with friends, and so on.  Pain-ridden animals have no such compensation.  But humans can reach the stage too of having no compensation for their pain - except that there is no way out for them.  I've been pondering this a lot recently since the death of the former Exning trainer Peter Feilden, a very nice man who always conducted himself with decency, kindness and friendliness.  I hadn't seen Peter for years before he died because he had the misfortune of having his brain pack up before his body, which is an awful thing to happen, both for the person involved and for their loved ones.  He should have been able in his final years to have had the pleasure of seeing one of his daughters (Julia) continuing to thrive as a successful trainer, while one grandson (Adam Beschizza) thrived as a jockey and another (Ross Birkett) got himself established as a decent amateur rider.  But of course poor Peter knew nothing about it.  And there he was, a prisoner in his body until death came as a merciful release.  Anyway, I've been wanting to pay homage to Peter in this blog, because he was one of the many very decent people whom I've been lucky enough to meet in this great sport of ours, and the passing of such people should not go unremarked.

What should not also go unremarked is that another trainer is going through a tough time at present: our neighbour Dave Morris has been unwell, not that you'd necessarily know it because he's as tough as they come and is only allowing his troubles to interfere with his routine as little as possible - as you can see from this picture of him and Gus, taken only six days ago, in which you can see that Dave is about to ride out.  Otherwise, he's got his son Ben, plus some of Ben's colleagues in William Haggas' stable, helping him out, and altogether he's a wonderful example to us all that you just get on with things.  It's a pleasure to know people like that.

Let's hope that we can get on with things well enough to enjoy some success this week.  We'll have four runners in the next two days: Batgirl and Grand Liaison (pictured on Sunday) at Yarmouth tomorrow and then on Thursday it'll be Ethics Girl at Brighton and Zarosa at Yarmouth.  All four should have some sort of chance.  They've all got good jockeys booked, with Hannah, Robert Havlin, Darryll Holland and Luke Morris down to ride them respectively.  Even though they're on the most experienced horses, Hannah and Darryll will probably have the most on their plates, Hannah because Batgirl is always a bit restive in the stalls and Darryll because he's at Brighton, a track where it's not easy to make things go right.

But they'll cope - and Hannah (seen in June coming in after the more recent of her two Folkestone victories on dear Kadou) has the twin advantages of knowing Batgirl very well as she rides her nearly every day, and being in-form, having ridden another winner on the Peter Salmon-trained El McGlynn yesterday.  But we'll just see what happens and take nothing for granted.  We're currently on the unfortunate sequence of having our last two runners pulled up - which is hard to swallow (over and above that one of the pulled-ups was a fatality) as I doubt that I've had six runners pulled up in my life, so two in three days was more than unfortunate.  We've got our guard particularly up against disappointment at present - but if we could get a good result, it would be rather nice, even if sadly it wouldn't be able to turn the clock back.