508-day countdown

I don't want to speak too loudly, but fingers crossed Ex Con will (pictured at exercise yesterday) run tomorrow.  It's been a long enough wait as it'll be 508 days since his last race (at Sandown on Whitbread Day in April 2011) and we've had a couple of false starts in the interim, including when he got as far as being declared for Newton Abbot a few weeks ago but ended up being a non-runner.  We've only got to get through the night and tomorrow morning without any setbacks cropping up, and then he'll be in action again.

Obviously one can't expect too many from any horse after a 508-day absence, and particularly not from one as languid as he is, but it'll just be great to be taking this super horse racing again.  It was enjoyable taking Ollie to Bath yesterday as he's a straightforward little horse, even if it wasn't a productive trip.  He ran a bit better with the blinkers, but he's still really too green to do himself justice.  He's had four races now and had had a breeze-up preparation from a master of that art (Willie Browne) before that so that might sound rather a strange thing to say, but some horses are just slow learners.  He'll be right.

As you can see from the picture of Ollie, it was overcast at Bath yesterday; and it was rather windy too, so the day had a bit of an autumnal feel to it.  The rain held off, though, and it was still warm enough when we got back home in the evening.  But autumn's gradually pushing in, tonight looks like being less warm so the rugs are back on, and the blue sky over the Heath today contained more clouds than we've been used to seeing these past couple of weeks.  Still, those clouds made for some rather splendid skyscapes, as you can see here.

The first of these two cloud-busting pictures was taken around 9.15 on Long Hill all-weather, while the second of them, ie the one in this paragraph, was taken around 10.30 on Side Hill all-weather, Magic Ice and Simayill being the cameraman's cantering tripods in the pictures respectively.  We keep hearing that the weather is going to break, but there's no sign of significant rain in these parts.  I don't know if the band of rain which has supposedly moved down over the country over the past 24 hours has dropped much elsewhere (I know that it's dropped 1mm on Uttoxeter, which isn't a great deal) but it hasn't dropped anything here.\

We're still very, very far from needing rain having already, I presume, had more than our year's quota, so I'm certainly not bemoaning its absence.  We could do with some for Batgirl at Yarmouth in the next eight days, but we'll just have to see what happens and react accordingly.  We get so much unwelcome rain during the year as a whole that there's no sense in wishing it upon us - and it'll come when it's ready irrespective of our thoughts on the subject.  So if we keep getting plenty of sun, as shown in this photograph of Hugh about to be legged aboard Silken Thoughts this morning, then we certainly won't be complaining.