Cup Day

Well, I've had a different Melbourne Cup this year.  Since the Makybe Diva days I've enjoyed it each year in the ATR studio, firstly in London and then in Milton Keynes, firstly with the still-missing Dave Compton and then with Matt Chapman; apart, that is, from the year that the Japanese horses filled the quinella, when I was there.  This year, though, was different as ATR had lost the contract, so the race was instead shown on Eurosport, a channel I don't think that I'd ever watched previously and which I think I'm unlikely to watch again, for 52 weeks anyway.  So I've watched the race at home, and watching it was a thrilling and very happy way to start the first Tuesday in November.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining of not taking part in our usual show (which I always used really to enjoy) was that I won't be heading off to Redcar daunted by the prospect of eight hours of driving after having had no sleep whatsoever the previous night.  That's probably not a bad thing.  Let's hope that we can have a good run up there and back, and also a good run there with Zarosa.  There's been quite a lot of fog about (you can see some mist in these photos, which I took on Sunday morning before heading off to the ATR studios for the Sunday Forum) and I think that yesterday some roads were badly affected by fog-related accidents.  Today, in Newmarket anyway, it doesn't seem so bad, so let's hope that that doesn't present any problems.