Looking for some sunshine

This autumn really is getting beyond the joke.  It seemingly rains all the time.  We've twice this week looked to be set for a nice, dry day - and both times we got a drenching, seemingly out of nowhere, in the afternoon.  There's just so much water everywhere.  Still, it could be worse.  We don't get extremes of weather in this country, and our bad weather tends to be uncomfortable and inconvenient rather than life-threatening or fatal.  Under the circumstances, and particularly this year's circumstances, if the weather is the worst of our ills, we haven't too much to complain about.

I wrote the last chapter in advance of our trip to Chelmsford last Saturday night.  I was hoping that we wouldn't get too wet, but those hopes were in vain.  It actually stayed just about dry for our race (in which The Rocket Park ran fairly well but found himself, as feared, unfavoured by the sit-and-sprint tempo that one often finds in AW races and which pertained in his one) but then we got drenched afterwards.  Fortunately I had planned ahead and had brought a spare pair of trousers with me so I could change before the journey home and thus didn't have to wear sodden clothes all the way home.

We have two more runners coming up: back to Chelmsford tomorrow with Hidden Pearl and then Kryptos at Newmarket on Friday.  Hidden Pearl ought to run a nice race, but her double-figure draw won't make it easy.  Kryptos has an obvious chance and goes well on a rain-affected track, but the ground is likely to be considerably more testing than merely soft and that isn't ideal.  He can handle it to a certain extent, but there will be a couple of proper mudlarks in opposition, and he might find things tough.  But he'll do his best, as she will tomorrow.