An early, and probably temporary, spring

We're having some lovely weather. I never thought I'd say that during the winter, but it hasn't rained for over a week, and it's very mild. Yesterday, 1st February, was a glorious spring day. Mind you, I wouldn't go overboard about global warming, because it seems as if it just happens that we haven't had many north or north east winds. When we got them for two or three days last week we soon started to descend into winter proper. And there's still plenty of time for them to turn back to that direction again before we're out of the woods. But as things are now, it's both mild and dry, which is rare so we'll enjoy it while it lasts. The horses are particularly enjoying it, as we've had some out of the field in the afternoons, which we hadn't been doing, other than on Sundays when they weren't ridden, while the field was under water. It's still deep mud there - but just not quite as bad - which is particularly appreciated by Brief, Jill and Millyjean, who are three real hippoes who just love to wallow. I took one or two poor photographs yesterday to illustrate the point, so if I get some help one of them could find its way to accompanying this piece.

We're unusually quiet in the stable just now. I'd normally think of January and February as just about our busiest months, but just as we were starting to get busy, we had a round of coughing arrive, so at any given time over the past three weeks there have probably been three or four horses 'off games'. Plus now Carol is back in action she's been looking at a few horses each Tuesday, and anything which requires treatment has a few days of rest afterwards. Which means that nobody is under much pressure, but that will change shortly when all the inmates are back in their normal routines. I've been particularly spoilt, and I've probably only ridden two horses a day this week: yesterday it was Bilkie and Panto, and today it was Bilkie and Millyjean, and things don't come much more pleasureable than that. Especially when the weather's ok.

I can't reiterate enough how good it is to be able to benefit from Carol's expertise again. Glen Garioch is just one of the horses she has treated recently, and the little phase of misbehaviour he went through seems to be totally a thing of the past. Any sign of discontent a horse shows normally has a physical root, but finding it can be easier said that done.

With all this time on my hands (relatively speaking), I'm able to be less behind with the administration than normal, and to embark on another little project, which is to attempt to do something towards finding a solution to the ever-increasing problem of danger from motorists to horses and riders. We have near-misses every day. The thought came to me that the Racing Post is seemingly always keen to mount a crusade on behalf of stable staff in any area in which the paper believes that staff are suffering. Very often the suffering is solely in the journalists' minds, but what struck me was that - never mind Bill Adams, bosses, back protectors, overtime, travelling, hours, canteens etc - far and away the biggest enemy of stable staff is the motorist. And the paper never mentions this. So Emma contacted the editor, and the upshot is that I think that the paper is going to start highlighting this issue, which I hope may assist in the gargantuan task of persuading the Highways Authority that the current measures, such as they are, to prevent motorists from endangering the lives of horses and riders are totally inadequate. This really is a task, as I've found to my frustration on a previous occasion when I found myself banging my head against a brick wall in trying to get the ball rolling, and as Mark Tompkins, as the very good president of the Newmarket Trainer's Federation, has been finding for years. Mark is being very encourageing towards our efforts, William Gittus (C-I-C of the Heath in his role as Jockey Club Estates head honcho) less so. I would say that I'm trying to help William differentiate between what is relevant and/or important and what isn't; he would probably say that I'm annoying the shit out of him. We'll see what, if anything, happens.

And I'll have even more time to bang my head against this particular brick wall once I've finished Mark Johnston's book, which just gets better and better. I'm taking my time because I relish every word. Reports of his staff meetings are so just so funny. He apparently still tries to make his staff take things as seriously as he does, which of course is impossible. Only he still hasn't realised that. It must drive him mad. Take, for example, his thoughts on his staff conferences in which he feels everyone should be brainstorming to try to find ways of raising the stable's collective game still higher: "Too often at meetings, all the staff would do was complain about people not pulling their weight, or wages, or the standard of food in the cafe. I gave them a lecture and said, 'This is not what it's about. It's about winning races'.". This book is superb, and just full of gems like that. As I've had it pretty easy the past couple of weeks, and as I'm adopting the best winter strategy of making the evenings consist solely of bathtime, dinnertime and an bedtime (with the odd Northern Exposure repeat thrown in, because Emma has unearthed the DVD of the first series, which has made for some really special viewing of 'Fleischman!' and crazy gang) it has become the norm for me to wake quite a long time before the alarm is due to go off, so what I've been doing is getting up and reading a couple of chapters before going outside. In the absence of having a Mill Reef in the stable, that really is something to brighten the morning. And let's hope Panto can brighten things still further with a bold show at Kempton on Sunday.