Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Onset of winter?

I noticed in a calendar the other day that winter is supposed to begin this coming Friday, on 21st December.  This is quite a thought, as you'll understand if you've seen some of the frosty/snow/sodden photographs illustrating recent chapters of this blog.  If we haven't yet started winter, what awaits??  Still, I think that we can take that with pinch of salt: as far as I'm concerned, winter comprises December, January and February - except this year it started well before December arrived.  So it's safe to say that we're already there.

The further irony, of course, of winter being supposedly about to begin is that the weather isn't too bad at all at present.  Sunday and Monday were really rather springlike, while today (Tuesday) was only a very small step back in the wrong direction.  And I read that we have no frosts forecast between now and Christmas (one week hence), even if inevitably there will be a fair bit more rain.  Anyway, you can see from the photographs illustrating the first two paragraphs (the first photograph showing Toby Coles' string, with the trainer at its head, coming off the Heath yesterday morning, and the second showing Terri on Honky Tonk Queen a few minutes later) that yesterday morning really was rather nice.

Anyway, before this supposed start of winter we'll have our final three runners of the year: Simayill at Kempton tomorrow and then Honky Tonk Queen (above) and Silken Thoughts at Lingfield on Thursday.  So that's exciting - as is the fact that we have three generations of Berrys under this roof at present.  Berry maximus (Claude) is visiting for three days as is Berry minimus (Anthony), while Berry minor (yours truly) lives here.  That's good, particulary as we've rediscovered one of my favourite games from childhood: L'Attaque, or, as it is now known, Stratego.  Here you can see two members of the clan battling it out, with Camelot adding to the intrigue.

2 comments:

racingfan said...

Good Luck with the runners John, and all the best for christmas and the new year to you and your family,

Ian

John Berry said...

Thank you very much, Ian. Have a good Christmas.
With best wishes
John