A fortunate life

Before I go off on one of my usual tangents, I must begin by mentioning David Knights' departure. As many of you will know, David worked here for several years. One of the stable's fixtures, he was invariably cheerful and reliable, and was a pleasure to know as well as to employ. However, life doesn't stand still, and I'm pleased to say that he's deservedly found, and taken, the opportunity to move onwards and upwards. Rae Guest's excellent head lad John Wilsoncroft is due to retire at the end of the year, and David has joined Rae's stable as John's understudy, the intention being that he will succeed John on the latter's retirement. This is an excellent opportunity for David, and he has left here with the good wishes of us all. From me he has good wishes and thanks for all his help and friendship. The departure of a long-standing member of the team can be a sad moment, but that doesn't apply here, not only because it's so obviously the correct move from David's point of view, but also because he'll only be on the other side of town and we'll still see him just about every day.

On other matters, our trip to France has been the stand-out event for me over the past week. Being away for three nights was a real treat. I used to be amused/bemused by the assertion of my late grandmother, who lived in an idyllic small farmhouse in a valley off Dartmoor in what was seemingly the ultimate peaceful environment and who seemed to lead a life devoid of stress (not that one referred to stress in those days), that she couldn't relax at home and could only switch off when away. Anyway, I now know what she means because I'm like that, so a break of at least three days is bliss: I don't normally sleep well because I always have too much running through my mind, but a three-night break produces one good night's sleep. The first night of any break doesn't usually produce sound sleep because I'm still a bit on edge, and the last night isn't great either because I'm starting to worry about what I'll have to do when I go home. But basically when I'm away from home I stop worrying about everything, other than for the first and last 24 hours, so if the holiday lasts three days, then it contains the luxury of a solid night's sleep, at the end of which I enjoy the rare luxury of starting the day fresh and enthusiastic.

So I awoke on Monday morning feeling tremendous and relishing the day, which turned out to be the correct way of feeling, because we had a really lovely day. Emma and I were staying with Alix Choppin and her parents at their flat near the Arc de Triomphe, and Alix took the Monday off work to show us around. Paris looked wonderful under clear blue skies, and it was a pleasure to stroll around it. We spent much of the day in the Louvre - it hadn't been the intention to make that almost the sole port of call but, once one's inside it, it's hard to leave - but also enjoyed a walk through the Tuilleries Gardens (along the 'magnificent axis' which, including the Champs Elysees, runs from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and beyond) and then a further stroll alongside the Seine and a visit to Notre Dame. It really was a lovely day. There were, of course, so many things one would have liked to see that there wasn't time to see, but that's inevitable. And that, of course, refers as much to the contents of the Louvre as to the contents of the city which contains it.

The previous day had been similarly special. We spent it in Normandy, having stayed Saturday night in Alix's family's house near Deauville. I'm hoping that this chapter might eventually become lavishly illustrated, because I have a few suitable shots on my camera (which I don't know how to download). I have a lovely one of the house, and another which shows that Alix's parking can be better than a previous chapter of this blog suggested it to be: as the photograph from Sunday shows, she was, for once, able to park her car without hitting anything.

That, actually, wasn't as great an achievement as it sounds, because the car park was virtually empty, but even so it was a start. If she'd been able to fit her car into one parking space, that would have been the icing on the cake. The photograph below was taken at Arromanches, the site of Sword Beach of the 1944 Landings and where ghostly chunks of Mulberry harbour still stand in the sea and on the beach. Thence we headed farther west to the American cemetery at Omaha Beach, a very special place which reminds us how very, very fortunate we all are. Such a reminder does one no harm at all.

This drive around the beautiful Calvados countryside during which Alix only nearly ran into the car in front of us once (funnily enough this happened right in front of three customs officers who were, strangely enough, standing beside the road in the middle of nowhere - I think that they were tempted to reprimand her for wild driving, but they desisted because their brief seemed to be to apprehend smugglers or illegal immigrants rather than to try to make French roads less dangerous) also included another highlight, which was our first view of little Grey Panel, as I suspect Minnie's Mystery's Largesse foal will eventually be called. We were due at Haras de la Cauviniere, which is near the lovely village of Notre Dame de Courson, south of Lisieux, early in the afternoon, and it proved to be a very pleasing visit. This was the first time that I'd met the stud's proprietor Sylvain Vidal and his wife Elisabeth, and I came away really happy with everything. The foal is starting to turn his off fore in slightly, which was something that his mother at one stage did to an alarming degree, but Sylvain is confident that this will not become a problem, so that's not a concern. Mother and son both look great, and they are with good people in a lovely place: what more could one ask?

Well, I'll tell you what more I could ask just now: a working boiler. We returned to England yesterday to find the country really cold, so the timing of the boiler giving up the ghost is not good. Fortunately I subscribe to British Gas' homecare insurance policy, and consequently when I called yesterday evening I was given an appointment with an engineer, who was to visit this afternoon between noon and 6pm. Predictably he didn't show up. I got really angry when I rung the gas office to find out what was happening, only to be told that the man had supposedly come here at 3.17 pm and found the place empty - and that consequently nobody would be visiting today. Having stayed in all afternoon - Emma is away so I didn't risk leaving the property and finding that the man had arrived in my absence - to let the man in, and having given the office my mobile number in case he couldn't find us (which always happens), it was very hard to swallow being told the lie that the man, who had clearly gone to the wrong house (odds on he went to Beverley House), had been here and that I hadn't, and then to receive no explanation at all of why he hadn't had the wit to call my number when he couldn't find me. I did, though, eventually think that I'd made a breakthrough: I asked the person who had taken my call to put me through to his supervisor (so that I could complain about him as well as about the non-appearing engineer) and to my surprise he agreed, handing me over to a woman who eventually grasped the fact that the engineer really hadn't turned up, at which point, to her credit, she seemed so embarrassed by this that she agreed to make sure that someone would, after all, come here today. Anyway, it's now 8.45 pm, I'm very cold and there's no hot water, and I suspect that the appointment which was re-scheduled for this evening isn't going to be honoured either. I've actually now reached the stage where I don't want it to be, because I just want to go to bed, rather than stand around for half the night while some 19-year-old genius who hasn't even the brain to find his way to the front door spends five hours discovering that he isn't able to mend the boiler. Still, Sunday and Monday were two really lovely days, so I think I'm still in credit as regards things going right this week. And that, in itself, is another reminder of what fortunate lives we lead - if a couple of days without a boiler counts a major setback, one hasn't got too much to complain about.