Local stories

It was a real pleasure this morning to start not only in daylight, but under clear skies too.  Admittedly I was out a bit later than usual, but even so the difference that putting our clocks back last weekend has made is terrific - even if it will be only short-lasting as we'll be back to late dawns all too soon.  But this morning was lovely.  As you can see (through Ethics Girl's ears).  We'll just hope that these drying conditions persist: Ethics is entered at Huntingdon on Sunday and it was good to soft, soft in places there this morning.  If it can dry out a little, that would be grand.

We had Magic Ice declared at Newmarket this afternoon, but she, unfortunately, had to be a non-runner as she had a slightly elevated temperature on Wednesday evening.  It's back to normal now and she went for a trot this morning so the problem should not be a long-lasting one, but that obviously ruled out her running today.  As it was, Newmarket's meeting still provided us with some interest as Hannah rode a winner for Peter Charalambous.  That was great.

This was Hannah's second win of the week as she rode Half A Crown to win for Peter Salmon on Monday.  She's also had two falls (one a second or so after the line on Half A Crown, the other one at home, ie at Robert Cowell's yard, on Tuesday) but she's tough and that clearly hasn't knocked her out of her stride.  So that's terrific.  Apparently her career statistics are now 9 wins from 57 rides, which is very good.  I think that she's had three for us, five for Peter Salmon (with her best servant having been El Mcglynn, on whom she is pictured above at Nottingham on Wednesday) and now this one for Peter Charalambous.  Rosie Jessop had won on today's winner the last two times, but she'd ridden too many winners to be eligible for today's race - hence Hannah's good fortune.

With no trip to Newmarket races, we instead went very close by: the National Stud.  The reason?  Well, Panto came home today, three months or whatever it is since he nearly died, only to be saved by the excellent surgery of Mark Hillyer of Newmarket Equine Hospital and by the great care of numerous of Mark's colleagues; and more recently helped by great convalescent care at the National Stud.

So it was great to welcome him home, healthy and healed.  And it was particularly good to do so on such a lovely day, because it was a real treat to go to the National Stud in perfect autumn conditions.  As you can see.  So that was lovely.  And I was glad to have my camera with me as I drove past the statue in the middle of the roundabout up there, as well as when I was driving through the stud.

There were also great autumn views as I drove back into town down the Bury Road having dropped the box back at Waterhall Farm, and this one really tells us that we're well into autumn: it was taken before 4pm, but as you can see dusk was about to fall.  I'd heard one interesting thing on local radio while driving which was an interview with the Wellington Street butcher Grant Powter about the granting of official recognition to the Newmarket Sausage, which has been one big bit of local news recently.

The big local story, of course, though has been the rise and rise of Jamie Hamblett the pop star. Jamie's a local lad, his father Paul having ridden for a while in Scandanavia before settling back here before his children Ashley and Jamie were born.  Paul still race-rode here after his return and was jockey for the owners of the Rae Guest-trained 1,000 Guineas place-getter Aldbourne for a while; and Ashley has had a reasonably successful race-riding career too.  Jamie rode as an apprentice for Michael Stoute with a bit of success - and rode a place-getter for this stable, on Rem Time, a few years ago - but he's been working for John Gosden (in whose string he's pictured here last year, third in the string) most recently.  And now he seems to be on the verge of stardom as a member of the 'boy band' (all of whose members look like teenagers, which is a bit odd as Jamie would be a fair bit older than that) Union J, who are doing well in the X-Factor.  Such shows are complete nonsense, but it's good that Jamie is doing well as he's very deserving of success.