Tonight, tonight the strip's just right

It feels like we're properly into winter today.  It was the coldest dawn of the winter so far, 1 degree, and disappointingly it's not warming up much.  It looked as if the sun would break through, but it hasn't done so.  It's just grey and raw.  We're forecast to get to 11 degrees this afternoon but it's hard just now to see it reaching double figures.  And, as Neil Kearns rightly observes in the comments after the last chapter, we had another aspect of winter, the low winter sun, giving us run-ins of half a mile or more at both Kelso and Aintree over the weekend.  Neil makes a further very valid point.  As the bumper is generally run as dusk approaches and the sun often becomes less glaring (visible) then, why not run the bumper earlier, after the last hurdle race, at meetings which might be vulnerable, and have a steeplechase as the last race, so that, at least, can be run without omitting fences?  (Obviously sometimes the sun remains blinding until it has dipped below the horizon, but not always).

Another race-programming issue which comes to mind is City Racing.  I'd assumed that this idea had died a death, but I now find that the surface is going to be trialled down the middle walking ground dividing Southfields and the Back of the Flat (ie behind the Rowley Mile grandstand) next week.  Clearly the project is still being pursued.  (One might say that the wild goose is still being chased).  This made me think that I missed a trick when I was in London recently.  It's hard to believe that there is a street in London which would be wide enough to hold racing, especially as it's unlikely that the promoters would be given permission to remove the iron railings / litterbins / traffic lights etc which appear so frequently on the kerbside - except that the Mall always seems like a wide thoroughfare, and it doesn't seem impossible that that might be a feasible option.

I read in the paper that Oxford Street had been ruled out as a potential site, but the only issue there is how it could ever have been ruled in.  The Mall could, though, be different - although I'd need to have a look at it to know - simply because when one sees it on the television it looks wide, and doesn't appear to have much 'street furniture'.  Trees could be an issue, I suppose; I don't know how close to the street they grow.  Anyway, I was close by there when I was in London a couple of weeks ago, but was too taken up with trying to ingratiate myself with the squirrels in the park to head over to have a look.  (Plus I didn't at the time realise that the City Racing dream was still alive so didn't realise that reconnaisance might be useful).  I'm still totally unconvinced that there is any merit in the project, but it might be easier to take it seriously if it could be shown that a suitable street exists.  The fact that Oxford Street was, seemingly, once put forward as a potential route hardly fills one with confidence.