Groundhog day

Today was a groundhog day here. We don't have a groundhog in Exeter Road,sitting by his old front door, sniffing the air and sniffing some more as a harbinger of spring or summer; but what we do have is the day when we move the horses across from the winter field to the summer field. And that day was today. It's always lovely to see them roaming through the larger, grassy area, stuffing their faces, and this evening is the first evening of the year on which we are treated to that sight. The only shame is that within a few days it will be radically less grassy than it is now - but just now it is perfect.

Another landmark of today was that I completed all my end-of-year PAYE paperwork, well ahead of the 19th May deadline. That, I know, will be of minimal (or less) interest to you, but the reason why I mention it is so that I can put forward an excuse for not having blogged for a while. There's been plenty to say. I had a pleasant trip to Goodwood on Saturday, even if it was a day which featured a lot of driving to be at the races for one race - I heard the call of the preceding race while I was still in the car park, and I had left before the race after ours was run - and the filly ran unplaced in that race. However, it was a lovely day, Goodwood is a lovely place, and the filly ran adequately. Cathy Gannon rode her nicely and has instructed me to run in longer races henceforth, so I'll do that. One actually didn't need to be Einstein to work out that a Hernando might want to go farther than seven furlongs, but she'd been showing plenty of speed in her work and I thought that a try at that distance was worth having; and, as she wasn't beaten very far, I don't think that I was completely wrong. I'd hoped to get there in time to watch the 2,000 Guineas on TV, but I missed that by nearly two hours, courtesy of the fact that I kept changing my route because of seeing motorway signs warning of long delays, or hearing similar announcements on the radio. The fact that the final delay which I suffered was where they are digging up a gas main (or whatever it is that they are doing) in Farnham High Street (when normally I'd go to Goodwood via the M25, Dartford Bridge and M23) says it all! Anyway, not seeing the race live meant that I had to listen to it on arguably the world's worst radio station, Radio Five (OK, it doesn't use Jeremy Vine, but it might as well) which was actually an unexpected bonus because, sandwiched in between an interminable over-analysis of soccer, we had something like 100 seconds of a superb commentary by John Hunt, which was really, really good. The 2,000 Guineas which I most remember watching was the Pennekamp / Celtic Swing duel which I saw on an outside TV set at Thirsk races, but I'll long remember the excitement of Sea The Stars' win being conveyed to me by John's really good commentary.

I finished Saturday by watching the Racing UK broadcast of Churchill Downs, which was very good indeed, courtesy of James Willoughby and the horses involved. There is a big can of worms to be opened here, which is the crassness of on-the-spot TV interviewers, but I'll save that for another day (tomorrow, I hope) because I think that my dinner is on the table.