And they can put a man on the moon!

So much for a quiet week.  We had just one runner - Turn Of Phrase at Nottingham on Monday evening - but it doesn't seem as if it's been a quiet week.  But it's been a productive one: I've finally tied up my end-of-year accounts (just over two months after the end of the financial year) and got my 2021/'22 files in order, and I submitted my VAT return yesterday, 12 days before the end of the month, which is very good going for me.  And as for the one runner - well, I wish we'd had none.  Backing Turn Of Phrase up four days after her good second place was a recipe for either her winning or my wishing I hadn't run her.  And she didn't win.  She didn't run badly (7th of 16) and maybe didn't really handle the quick back-up, but overall the most valid lesson was that, as we already knew, it's harder to get a satisfactory position in the race drawn 14 than drawn 3.

So that was the week that was, with Ascot dominating the racing landscape obviously.  For us, though, the focus is now on the new week, starting tomorrow (Sunday).  I'm hoping that we'll have four runners: Dear Alix at Hexham tomorrow, Hidden Pearl at Brighton Tuesday (in the Roy Rocket Amateurs' Handicap Stakes), Dereham at Nottingham on Thursday and Cloudy Rose at Yarmouth on Friday.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it! (Never mind the other three, relatively local, runners: I'm exhausted just thinking about tomorrow.)  What's also been wearing me out has been the Hexham weather-watching.

This wet weather has been purely a south-eastern thing, unfortunately from our Hexham point of view.  I'm hoping that the ground will be no firmer than good tomorrow as Alix is a very big horse, but it's been nerve-wracking just watching the ever-changing weather forecasts.  The lesson learned from all this has been how bad is the standard of forecasting.  Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about: at declaration time yesterday (Friday) morning, the internet forecast for Hexham on Sunday was a daytime high of 11 degrees and 12mm of rain.  Wonderful!  By teatime, the same weather site had altered its projection for Hexham on Sunday: a daytime high of 14 and zero millimetrs of rain.  And they can put a man on the moon!