The eaglet has landed

Word has reached us from Melbourne that 'Little Ben' Morris and his girl-friend Emily have touched down. I'd like to hope that Ben is in for a great year (or however long he plans to spend out there) because Ben's an excellent lad. I can't say that I've known him all his life, but I've known his parents, Dave and Linda, longer than he's been alive, and I've got to know him well since I moved in here 13 years ago. Dave, of course, was training across the road in Hackness Villa then, and subsequently moved into the other side of this property three or four years ago. Ben formerly worked for his dad (for whom he has ridden a few winners in amateur races) but has spent the last year or so working for Sir Mark Prescott (on one of whose horses he is pictured here). I'd guess that he's now around 19 so it's a good time for him to broaden his experience, and I hope that he will enjoy doing so in David Hayes' stable. Good on 'im.


Ben, of course, isn't the only creature being exported from Newmarket to David Hayes' stable this autumn. At least two nice European horses have headed down that way after spending some time in Newmarket. The flashy chestnut colt Rebel Soldier, winner of the Gordon Stakes at Glorious Goodwood on his last British start, has been here the longer, having been with Jeremy Noseda last year and this before spending his final weeks in town in the stable of Jane Chapple-Hyam (in whose string he is pictured exercising here). While waiting there to go into quarantine, he was joined by the grey Aga Khan-bred Sinndar colt Laristan, last-start winner of the Derby du Languedoc (over 2400m, which ought to go without saying, but sadly doesn't, as one can't take such things for granted, as umpteen shorter - but probably no longer - Derbys around the world suggest) at Toulouse, when he was trained by Jean-Claude Rouget. How much either of these horses will do during the current Spring Carnival I don't know -in Rebel Soldier's case at least, I'd suspect not very much - but they're both exciting horses and it'll be interesting to see how they fare down under. Which reminds me: the TAB's Star Stable competition begins for the Spring Carnival this weekend so I better get my 'stable' selected in the next 24 hours. With At The Races kindly showing us all this good racing, the least we can do is do the homework to make sure that we can appreciate and enjoy it.

Ex Con rolls on

It's hard to believe it because today it's pretty much rained all day, but yesterday was a lovely day. A bit cold maybe, but great. Of course, over and above the sunshine, the highlight was Ex Con recording his fourth hurdles victory of his current preparation by winning at Market Rasen, putting up a magnificent display under a typically excellent ride from William. After my scare-mongering about what ground we were likely to encounter, it looked to be a very good surface, one which could have drawn complaints from no one. Not that I was able to inspect it close up, mind, as I went to Wolverhampton with Alpen Glen, leaving Hugh to hold the fort at Market Rasen - just as he had done the only other time we'd had a winner there, when Lady Suffragette won there a few years ago. So that was really good - as was the fact that the win was particularly well timed as it coincided with the birthday of Ken Gibbs, one of the great bunch of people who make up the All Points West Partnership.

My trip to Wolverhampton was not successful, but that's not the end of the world as we were travelling there with a small amount of hope but no expectation whatsoever: Alpen Glen had given fairly solid indication already that she was never going to recapture her former good form, and this was just one final throw of the dice to make sure that, when we retired her, we would do so knowing that we had given her every chance to show something. Which we have now done, so she can head off to be a mum with us knowing that we aren't missing anything through her absence from the racecourse. I'm just pleased that she ends her racing career sound and happy because, having had a few things go wrong with her over the years, she's found it physically and mentally rather a strain. However, as this photograph of her approaching the stalls ever so calmly last night shows, I'm happy that, while ultimately racing was no longer for her, she wasn't upset about being asked still to compete, because she was very calm and relaxed both before and after the race. If she'd been unhappy about it, she'd have let us know. I've become very fond of her, so I wouldn't have wanted her to be worrying about her racing.

A big part of giving the filly every chance last night was having John Egan on her back. If we believe the press, the best rides are the winning ones, but of course you and I know that that is nonsense. It's great to be seeing John in action again as he's such a good jockey, and predictably his ride on Alpen Glen yesterday was spot on, notwithstanding the fact that she wasn't able to take advantage of the help which she received from saddle. His winning ride an hour previously, just before the sun disappeared under the western horizon, on the David Griffiths-trained Not My Choice was similarly good, with that horse benefitting from the help of probably the best European jockey at getting a horse out of the stalls fast. Two lengths clear from the start, he did as little as possible through the middle of the race, and the others never looked like getting near him. These photographs suggest that John was pretty happy with the result, and he was entitled to be. Less happy, I'm sure, would have been young Tom Fanshawe today, who was set to take part in a pony race at Ascot but who ended up having his mount withdrawn at the start after he had lost control, and very nearly his seat, on the way to post. Howevever, if it's any consolation to Tom, he did very well indeed because it was a great feat of horsemanship, having found himself nearly off the horse at speed with both legs on one side, to get back into the saddle at the gallop and regain control of the pony. As we know, Matt Chapman doesn't give out compliments liberally, but he was fulsome in his praise of Tom's riding, saying that he deserved 'Ride of the Week' for his acrobatic display, which we saw on ATR. So, while Tom didn't get the result which he wanted from his trip to Ascot today, he's certainly done himself plenty of good in letting the world at large know of his promise as a horseman.

It ain't broke - yet

One never knows what one's going to receive when the postman delivers. (They rarely knock any more, as the custom of collecting as well as delivering seems long gone, so it's just a case of depositing the load safely). Sometimes one gets a pleasant surprise, sometimes one gets an unpleasant surprise, and sometimes one just gets a surprise. Today was just a surprise: I was slightly taken aback to receive a letter from William Muir offering me the chances to buy shares in some horses he is trying to syndicate. That was enterprising of him, but he might have been wiser to save himself the postage. Much as I like William, I'm happy enough with myself as my trainer; and if I wanted to have someone else training for me, there are plenty of good trainers locally, with Chris Dwyer, Stuart Williams and James Eustace being names of people to whom I'd be more than happy to entrust my animals. We in Newmarket have got think locally at present because if we don't, who will? Certainly not the Racing For Change genii, who've stumbled upon a set of bright ideas, including that holding the Champion Stakes at Newmarket doesn't work, that winning both of Britain's best two-year-old races (the Middle Park and the Dewhurst, a double last achieved by Diesis but more recently almost landed by Three Valleys) is so unexciting a thought that it should be rendered impossible, that trying to entice Britain's best milers to graduate to ten furlongs in the Champion Stakes after our final weight-for-age Group One mile race of the year (the QEII) adds nothing to the competitiveness of British racing, and that we should not learn from the fact that a previous attempt to replicate the success of Royal Ascot in the autumn (with the ill-fated Festival of British Racing in the late '80s, which had bucketfuls of money thrown at it in vain) proved a fruitless task.

I think that I've been very good at holding my peace over the Racing For Change shambles thus far, but I can do so no longer. I was lucky enough to be a guest at a function earlier this year in which the topic of debate was the problems facing British racing. The unanimous consensus was that the problems facing British racing are thus:- (1) that an ever-expanding proportion of the British betting market is going to the exchanges, which proportionally give a much smaller return to racing, (2) that an ever-expanding proportion of the British betting market is going off-shore, which gives no return to racing, and (3) that the bookmakers who remain are encouraging their punters to do an ever-increasing proportion of their betting on other sports, simply because then they don't have to pay any levy. These are the problems. What isn't a problem is racing's popularity, which is currently enormous, or attendance at race-meetings, which is far healthier than one could expect in a country supposedly in the grips of recession and which has a huge racing programme over which to spread the race-going public. So what do we have to cure racing's problems? We have Racing For Change, which does nothing whatsoever to solve racing's problems, but has a massive budget to address the things which currently work very well. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And, to make matters worse, Racing For Change does not have only a massive budget, but it also has on its side the mantra that "At least we are trying to do something, which is more than can be said for our critics". Well, as one of its critics, I'm trying to do something too: I'm trying to point out that the old adage that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' still exists, and that doing nothing is far, far better than doing something destructive. And doing something destructive, I'm afraid, is what has been done to a race-meeting (Champions' Day) which has been working very, very well. I suppose that they might have ended up replacing it with something which works even better, but I have my doubts - unless they can guarantee a sunny day with temperatures in the 20s in the middle of October and find some good (sorry, popular) bands to play after racing, which seems to work well enough if Ascot wants a good crowd in July or August.

It's hard enough finding good weather in September, never mind October - but we had some earlier this week, with the mercury hitting 24 degress on Wednesday, when the supposed warning of a pink sky in the morning proved merely the fore-runner of a lovely day. That, though, I'm afraid is likely to be our last day in the 20s between now and - when? April? May? Or even June, but that's too depressing a thought. We've had quite a lot of rain today, as apparently has Market Rasen, which is quite a worry as Ex Con, who likes good ground (and who is pictured here keeping his eye in on the AW schooling strip at the Links a couple of days ago under Gerald Tumelty), is due to run there tomorrow. Still, they watered the track yesterday, which suggests either that soft ground isn't a worry or that things have been got badly wrong. At least we're in the first race tomorrow, so we should get the best of the ground, whatever that might actually mean. I won't be there to see conditions for myself as I'll head to Wolverhampton with Alpen Glen; usually I'd invariably go to the jumps meeting if we had runners under both codes, but as I ride Alpen Glen and feel very protective towards her, and because she's as quirky as Ex Con is straightforward, I wouldn't feel very comfortable heading off in another direction while she was going to the races.

I wouldn't have minded being at Wolverhampton last night, because if I had been there I'm sure I'd have backed the last winner. Cotton King (trained by the very promising young trainer Toby Coles, who is indeed as brahmatic as this photograph of him riding out with binoculars slung over his shoulder would suggest) had caught my eye when loose on the Heath on a few occasions, so I kept an eye on him in his maiden races, in which he caught my eye too. After his most recent maiden race, I'd been bold enough to pass on the prediction to a couple of people that he would win his next race, which turned out to be yesterday. At lunchtime yesterday, both people independently told me that the horse had been backed from 16/1 to 6/1 so, as I assumed that the horse was making his way to favouritism, my interest in having a bet lapsed. I did change channels on the TV to watch the race on ATR just after 9.00 last night, by which time his race was underway, so I was able to see him grind his way to a narrow victory under Tom McLaughlin - and you can imagine my consternation to see the result after the race and discover that his SP had been 20/1. That surely was the one that got away!

Good lessons

Hope is what keeps us all going, so it's great when horses' lessons go well. Schooling sessions for young prospective jumpers which go well are real fuel for optimism; happily we had one of those today. I had the services today of a jockey who had never ridden for me, the good conditional Gerald Tumelty. He works for Alan King but was in town today to school for Jeff Pearce, and seemingly was keen to widen his list of contacts while he was here. William had given him my number so he called me a couple of days ago to offer his services, an offer I was only too happy to accept. I duly kept him busy. He started with the easy task (taking Ex Con, who is due to run on Saturday, up the line of French hurdles on the all-weather strip) but then he moved on to some less experienced jumpers over the mini-jumps, and everything went really well, which was great. When you see an inexperienced horse (Alcalde) jumping as well as this in his first lesson, I think one's entitled to view the future with optimism. I didn't know Gerald at all prior to today, but he's clearly a very good horseman and, while I'd never look farther than William for a jockey in a jumps race, having a young rider like this on one's side has got to be an asset.

The other main area of teaching which can go either right or wrong is stalls-work for Flat horses. Asterisk, who I hope will make her debut next week, has been our on-going project in that respect over the past few weeks and this project, too, has been going pleasingly well (touch wood!). The two main people to thank for this have been the famed stalls guru Steve Dyble (better known as Yarmy) and Iva, both of whom are pictured here with her a couple of weeks ago. Iva, of course, won't be able to reap the benefit of her work in the immediate future as she'll be sitting at home watching the race on TV with her broken leg up when Asterisk runs next week, which is a real shame as she and Yarmy have turned a filly who was very, very nervous of the stalls into one who goes in them and stands in them very calmly, something which really is easier said than done.

Life goes on

Life does, of course, go on, and that's just how it should be as it's in human nature to try to survive. Happily for us, life went on very successfully at Yarmouth last Wednesday as Batgirl won in very gritty fashion. Dane O'Neill had suggested that when she'd won on firm ground over six furlongs, she'd done so despite, rather than because of, the ground and the distance, and her victory last week on a wet track over seven furlongs suggests that he got that one spot-on. The only shame was that Tony Fordham, her owner, was not there to see it, the only time that he's had to miss one of her runs, but I'm sure that it was nearly as exciting watching on the television as it was there. The victory also provided an illustration of the adage that one should back the first jockey one sees: I'm not sure that Tom McLaughlin was actually the first jockey whom I saw on Wednesday, but he was surely the first jockey whom I saw twice. When we were returning first lot we passed him heading out to the Heath among Ed Dunlop's first lot, and then when I was coming home on my second horse I saw him heading out on a second one of Ed's horses, as the photograph at the top of the chapter shows, with him riding alongside Lyndsey Hannah, formerly a good apprentice with David Barron but now best known for looking after the Oaks winner Snow Fairy. I saluted Tom with a "See you this afternoon", and happily that is exactly what I did, seeing him riding into the winner's enclosure on Batgirl (pictured) after the last race, by which time conditions were considerably gloomier than they had been a few hours previously.

Leaving aside the fact that the runner won, it was very good just to have a runner at Yarmouth that day as it provided an opportunity to visit Iva in hospital. It turned out that she had chosen a very good day to get injured: being hospitalized on the first day of a three-day meeting ensures that one gets plenty of visitors on one's first couple of days of confinement, even if not thereafter. Sure enough, there was a good turnout of colleagues and friends taking the opportunity to call into the ward either before, during or after racing - and happily she came home five days later, her operation having taken place last Friday. All she has to do now is wait two or three months, and fingers crossed she'll be as good as new.

Our trips to the races later in the week unfortunately didn't turn out as well as the outing to Yarmouth. Unfortunately, Silken Thoughts didn't get the run of the race at all at Wolverhampton on Friday evening so, although I was sure that she headed there in great form, she had a very low-key end to her season, it having been decided in advance of the race that - win, lose or draw - she'd have done enough for one year by having her seventh start of the campaign. Still, no real harm done and she lives to fight another day - and we can spend the winter dreaming of getting things a bit more right with her than has been the case in 2010. I'll be very disappointed if she doesn't enjoy a rewarding campaign in 2011.

Saturday was more straightforward. Ethics Girl, well ridden by Hayley Turner, did her best at Newmarket, but in a very competitive race her best wasn't good enough. I watched that race from Catterick, where Destiny Rules (pictured at the start under Paul Quinn) ran. Her run was disappointing, but she gave it her best shot and we had no excuses. She's a sweet filly, but sadly if she is going to make the grade as a racehorse, it won't be in the immediate future, so she has now come out of training. However, all might not necessarily lost. She has several of the attributes necessary in a racehorse (she is sound and she tries her best) but what she doesn't have at all is maturity: if one put her in a parade ring of two-year-olds now, she'd probably look less mature than most of them, which is remarkable as she is three. Immaturity, however, is always cured by time, so it might be that a very long spell will see her a much stronger horse, and better able to cope with the tests which training and racing impose. It's not uncommon for horses to show no worthwhile form prior to the age of five and still end up as very satisfactory racehorses (Ex Con springing immediately to mind, and, from a few years back, Monacle, a dual winner for this stable both on the Flat and over hurdles, being another classic example) so who knows what the future may hold for her? Anyway, I came home from Catterick very, very tired at the end of a long week, disappointed by the confirmation that Destiny Rules was indeed finding things too tough - but not unhappy, because how could one be unhappy about taking a nice, genuine horse to a nice racecourse on a nice day? Further cause for pleasure was the fact that, out of the blue, John Egan popped up there with a full book of EIGHT rides on an 8-race card, not having been down for anything mid-week and not having ridden in the UK for several months. Needless to say, even though none of his mounts had an obvious winning chance, John (pictured here cantering Mark Johnston's second string, old Record Breaker, to post before the mile-and-a-half handicap) managed, great jockey that he is, to find his way to the winner's enclosure, on board a 20/1 shot, and it was very good to catch up with my old ally again. Fingers crossed that, now I know that he's around again, next time he'll be riding for us, not against us.

Finally, on the recurrent subject of life and death (not, of course, that this blog is in any way influenced in its choice of subject matter by the writings of either Woody Allen or Leonard Cohen), I think that we should leave the final word to one of Britain's best trainers and, seemingly, best philosophers: David Evans, as quoted in Peter Thomas' excellent feature in Sunday's Racing Post. "It would be nice to get a couple of decent horses off some nice people, but my ambition is just to stay alive these days, and that's ****ing hard enough."

A very sad day

Tuesday was a very sad day, featuring as it did the funeral in Letcombe Regis of John Kirby, to which I travelled with with John's good friend Richard Perham. When Richard did his Q&A session in the Racing Post a year or two ago, he nominated John as one of his notional dinner party guests, which makes it clear how big a part John had played in Richard’s life. John played a big part in my life too, being a rock-solid support during the tricky years when boyhood ends and adulthood begins.

Looking back on it, it's astounding that my friendship with John ever happened. When I was at school at Wellington, which is in a village in east Berkshire called Crowthorne, John and his family lived nearby in Finchampstead and he had two shops – an off-license and a delicatessen – in Crowthorne. He trained a couple of National Hunt horses under a permit and in my final year at school I was bold enough to approach him to introduce myself and ask whether I might ride out for him in the mornings before school. You know how, when one looks back at events quite a long time in the past, one can remember that they happened but cannot remember any of the details: well, I know this approach must have happened because I did ride out for him, but I struggle to envisage how I, shy and diffendent as I’ve always been and particularly was at the time, was bold enough to introduce myself to a complete strange thus, particularly bearing in mind that what I was asking for was clearly against the school’s rules – and it’s even harder to see what prompted him to accede to my request, when it would clearly have been much easier for him to turn me down. Nowadays, it is hard to envisage anyone in such a situation saying, “Yes” – one would be too worried of the idiot boy getting injured (either by a horse or by falling off his bike on the way out to the stable) and one getting sued! But the world's a very different place now to what it was then, and, anyway, that’s what John was – if the choice was between being kind to someone and taking the easier option, he’d be kind. Full stop.

Anyway, my final year at school was hugely improved by these early-morning rides with John and his friend Chris Salmon, and also by the pleasure of being made to feel at home by John and his wife Veronica and their children Caroline and Angela. Looking back, I still can’t really take in just how lucky I was. Anyway, a couple of years elapsed. I’d started work for Andy Turnell near Marlborough, and then Andy moved his stable to East Hendred, a few miles east of Wantage – and then, coincidentally, the Kirby family moved to Furzewick Farm, a mile south of Wantage on the Hungerford Road. And my role of surrogate child resumed. It was a pleasure to go over to help John every afternoon (although I’m sure I could just as easily describe my contribution as hindering him) as he and I rode out together along the Ridgeway and up the steep gallop owned by his neighbour David Gandolfo. Again, I was made so welcome by the whole family, made to feel totally at home in their house and basically just given a real home from home. John even let me loose in a couple of races on Long John – over hurdles at Towcester and Warwick – and was kind enough not to point out to me how badly I rode the old horse.

I moved to Newmarket in May 1987, heading up here armed with much that I’d learned from John and also fired by his recollections of this special place. John had hailed initially from London and, while horses had always been his passion, in his youth it had been prevailed on him that he’d be wise to work hard to establish himself in business before making his passion his profession. And that is what he had done, only doing the horses full-time once he was in his 40s and had got his interests in Crowthorne established and running smoothly. He had, though, spent a brief period in his youth in Fiddler Goodwill’s stable in Newmarket, and I came here full of the magic of John’s recollections of his happy days here. I particularly recall him telling me of Fiddler sending him down the High Street on his bicycle in the early mornings to read the board outside the Jockey Club to find out which gallops are open – and, to this day, every time I go into the Jockey Club and see that board, I always think of John.

Anyway, I’ve stayed here and John has stayed in my memory as one of the friends whom I’ve been most blessed to have made along the way. I’m saddened to say that I had much less contact with him and Veronica than I should have done over the past few years – but that’s life: you don’t know, ie appreciate, what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. I think that the last time I saw him was when Jill Dawson won at Salisbury. He and Veronica were there as guests of Mr and Mrs Bill Robbins, who owned an Andrew Balding-trained runner in the same race, a horse which John had broken and educated for them, as he did with all their horses. It was great seeing him because, as with all true friends, it didn't matter that too long had elapsed since the previous meeting: one just felt at home with them straight away. I only wish that I'd seen more of him over the past decade, but I'm afraid that is the way of life (or it is if one is as self-centred as I am): you get so busy running around in circles in your own little corner of the world that you find yourself losing touch with the friends whom one doesn't meet in the normal course of events. No matter, you believe - they're still friends, and you meet them odd times and the friendship remains strong. But of course it does matter, because none of us lives forever, and suddenly someone's not around any more, and all you can do is rue the fact that you didn't see enough of them while the chance existed. And, of course, you rue the fact that you didn't let them know just how much you appreciated their friendship while you had a chance to do so. I once heard a great phrase on the radio, on the anniversary of some massacre somewhere in which people had lost loved ones completely out of the blue: the phrase was, "Don't leave it too late to tell someone you love them". Of course, in practice, you don't go around telling your friends that you love them because they'd start to worry if you did, but I only wish I'd put it on record before John died just how much I appreciated what a great friend he'd been to me. I'd like to think that he knew, but even so I should have told him. Even if nothing else, I hope that he knew how much I appreciated the fact that, when he wanted to give one of his horses a couple of runs on the Flat (he only had a permit to run horses under National Hunt rules), I was the person given the honour of training Tissisat for him, which really was an honour because John was the complete horseman, so being entrusted with the care of one of his horses really did mean something; and, obviously, it would have been far easier for him to put the horse with a trainer in the Wantage area than up here in Newmarket.

Tuesday, thus, was a very sad day, celebration of John's life though it was. We weren't to wear black because we were under orders to celebrate his life rather than to bemoan his absence, and John's family were towers of strength, most notably Caroline, who spoke very movingly of her father - as did Chris Salmon, who gave a beautiful address in honour of his lifelong friend. They were both lovely speeches; the tragedy was that John wasn't there to hear them.

Compared to the death of such a special man, setbacks to one's friends which are not matters of life and death are, by definition, not matters of life and death. Even so, after I'd come out of the church, my mood certainly wasn't lightened by hearing of Iva's terrible accident at Yarmouth. As I was in church when it happened, I didn't see it, but I'm told that, even by the standards of stalls mishaps, it was a frightening incident, from which she appears lucky to have emerged with merely a broken leg. She'll mend, but it was obviously a horrible accident - while further cause for sadness that day came in the evening when reading on the internet that Rebel Raider, whom our friend Clare Lindop rode to win two Derbys two seasons ago, had fractured a sesamoid, thus shattering the dream (which had seemed justifiable) that he and Clare might win this year's Melbourne Cup. Still, for all of us still alive, life goes on - even if, thanks to John's absence, it goes on in a world now missing one more good man.

Weekend reflections

I really enjoyed our trip to Sandown yesterday. In advance of the weekend, I'd expended quite a bit of nervous energy worrying about which of our entries (Rhythm Stick at Sandown yesterday and Ethic Girl at Goodwood today, ie Sunday) should run. Rhythm Stick doesn't want fast ground but she does. Anyway, I think I got it right. I declared Rhythm Stick and the ground at Sandown turned out to be good, which was fine (and this photograph, taken today, suggests that has indeed taken no harm from the race); and I didn't declare Ethics Girl, a decision which I'm now sure too was correct. Mind you, early yesterday afternoon I was suffering from grave misgivings in that latter respect. I'd have loved to run Ethics Girl; and yesterday morning the ground at Goodwood had been upgraded to good to soft, good in places - and when we arrived at Sandown we found lovely weather down there. Of course, this got me thinking that maybe the forecast rain would be missing Goodwood too and that Sunday would end up with perfect ground on the Sussex Downs - but happily (for me, anyway) when I watched a race on TV from Goodwood, my fears were assuaged: the ground there was as bad as it had been at Randwick the previous weekend, and that really is saying something. It looked very wet, and very, very loose. It would have been in poor condition anyway (when I walked the track there at the end of July I found it to be in bad condition, the loosest ground I've seen on a racecourse this year) and apparently they had torrential rain there yesterday after the first race (causing a downgrade in the track rating to soft, good to soft in places) which guaranteed that conditions there this weekend would not have been suitable for us. So at least I got those decisions right.

Rhythm Stick's race was an interesting one. He's a nice horse who seems to try hard, but he isn't very fast and, as such, he's always seemed likely to find maiden company rather too tough. (One of the paradoxes of British racing, of course, being that, leaving aside Group and Listed races, maiden races are just about the most competitive types of race that there are). But he tried his best and got from A to B as efficiently and quickly as he could, and that's all one can ask. As one would expect from a maiden race at a top track such as Sandown, there were some good horses in opposition, of which I am sure that the winner Conduct (pictured) will prove to have been the stand-out. He's a lovely-looking grey colt trained by Sir Michael Stoute. Apparently he looked very good as a two-year-old this time last year but sustained a setback which delayed his debut by twelve months; but, having won impressively first time out yesterday, he can now be expected, I think, to continue to make up for lost time. I took a photograph of him in the stable after the race, saying to his lad Gary Corney that he was the best horse Rhythm Stick would ever run against, and it's very possible that that opinion could turn out to be true. We'll see. The best bred horse Rhythm Stick will ever run against also surely ran in yesterday's race, but as he finished a distance behind the second last horse it's fair to say that his form is unlikely ever to match his lineage. I'm assuming that Arco Felice (pictured) started his career in Aidan O'Brien's stable, but he made his debut yesterday trained by Keith Goldsworthy, having presumably been sold privately. By Giant's Causeway from Better Than Honor, he's a full-brother to last year's Breeders' Cup Marathon winner Man Of Iron and a half-brother to the Belmont Stakes winners Rags To Riches and Jazil and hails from the Best In Show family which has produced the likes of El Gran Senor, Redoute's Choice, Hurricane Sky, Try My Best, Peeping Fawn, Al Maher, Manhattan Rain and Xaar, so on paper it seemed strange that he'd been moved on so early in life (still being aged only three). However, the noise he was making when he walked off the track gave us a clue to that one - but he's with a good trainer and has a great pedigree, so he could end up having the last laugh after all. Time will tell: after all, it is not without precedent for a horse who sounds as if he has a wind problem to show good form.

Yesterday's highlight, of course, was the splendid St Leger victory of Arctic Cosmos, who looks a lovely horse. The St Leger usually produces a great race and some lovely stories, and yesterday's edition was no exception. There had already been plenty going on during St Leger meeting, including Harry Findlay's much publicised encounters with Nic Coward and other BHA identities. These have got me thinking. Harry appears to believe that the treatment which he has received from the BHA disciplinary committee has been dictated by the BHA leadership, ie Nic Coward and Paul Roy, but that is at odds with how I've believed that BHA justice runs: I think that the theory is that the disciplinary committee, having been appointed, is autonomous, rather like the courts are autonomous from Parliament. With the courts, there is always leave to appeal to a higher authority and similarly with the disciplinary committee there is leave to appeal to a higher authority, as Harry has done. But that's by the by - the thought which occurred to me is that, if the disciplinary committee was to be doing a bad job, what could be done about it? Would the BHA leadership have the power to disband, discipline or direct it? I don't know. If it has been set up, as I believe it has, to make its judgements independently and is not acting at the behest of the BHA top brass, does anyone have have any power over it? Does anyone know? Harry appears to think that it is a puppet at the hands of the BHA leaders, but is he right?

Moving on to someone else who has exercised the disciplinary committee, I had the great pleasure last week of receiving contact on Facebook from the former jockey Luke Fletcher. Luke, as many of you will remember, was a very good apprentice and then jockey (mainly on the Flat but also over hurdles, I seem to recall, towards the end of his career when his weight was continuing to rise) whose career ended prematurely when he was disqualified, along with Robbie Fitzpatrick and possibly others, for offences whose details I cannot remember. Robbie, who was Mark Polglase's jockey when Luke was the stable's apprentice, was a good jockey and likeable man, but when it became clear that he'd been up to no good it was fairly easy to believe it; Luke's involvement, on the other hand, came as a complete shock. I am aware that one of my many faults is being too ready to see good in people and too slow to see their flaws (although to call this a fault isn't necessarily correct as it is a fault which does harm to nobody, except to me). But, even so, I think that I'm being accurate in saying that Luke, despite what he did wrong, is a very decent man whose past mistakes prove nothing other than the fact that it is easy for good people to be led astray - and I'm sure that if you were to ask James Eustace, the other trainer in Newmarket who used to use Luke regularly, he too would have nothing but good to say about him. Anyway, I'd understandably lost touch with Luke while he was warned off, so it was a genuine pleasure to hear from him again and to learn that he is well (more so than when he was riding, I'd guess, because he used to have to waste very hard) and happy, and still involved with horses.

Finally, I have Stewart Leadley-Brown to thank for some oil about the Hambleton Cup. Apparently, the race is indeed one of the country's most historic as it can be traced back to 1714, when Thirsk's racing took place on Hambleton Hill above the town. (The current racecourse is one of the country's newest, having been built in the 1920s to replace the town's previous course). The earliest references to racing taking place on Hambleton Hill are from 1612. As anyone who has been up Sutton Bank onto the plateau of Hambleton Hill will know, this is a splendid settting. The main feature of the racecourse up there was the winning post, which was a stone obelisk with a sundial on it (which I believe, unlike the old starting post in the field up by the A14 on the way to Cambridge, is sadly no longer in evidence). The Hambleton Cup used to be placed on top of this obelisk. Hambleton Hill is, of course, home to two training stables, currently occupied by Bryan Smart and Kevin Ryan. Former occupants of these stables include Les Eyre, Ben Beasley, Will Pearce, Joe Carr and Sir Noel Murless. So that's a nice bit of history - which makes Ethics Girl's winning of the Cup (not the original, sadly) all the nicer.

Good results

There have been several results this year which have given me great pleasure - the six winners I've trained obviously coming into that category - and today saw another: the win at Epsom of Amber Sunset. This filly has spent her racing career in Exeter Road, having initially been trained by Jonathan Jay in Exeter House and now being in Dave Morris' section of our yard. She obviously had to leave Exeter House when Jonathan disappeared, so she was one of three horses to migrate up the road to Dave's yard. Dave's staff was simultaneously swelled by the addition of our friend Nigel Walker, who started his working life with Dave many years ago, who had more recently been Jonathan's head lad at an earlier stage of Jonathan's career and who had more recently still been kind enough to help us out while we were very busy. (Dave's current workforce is pictured here approaching the Fordham Road crossing a couple of weeks ago, Dave being closest to camera on Sleep Over with Nigel beyond him and Dave's famously gorgeous son Paul leading the string.) Nigel rides these three new horses each day and Amber Sunset has visibly thrived since her arrival. She and Nigel are pictured above after exercise two days ago enjoying the current Indian summer, and I had an even closer look at her yesterday evening when I went over to that yard to give Nigel a copy of the current edition of 'Thoroughbred Owner & Breeder', which features a very interesting interview with his erstwhile employer and mentor, the Duchess of Bedford. The filly looked so well and so happy yesterday evening that I was sure that she would run well today - and that's exactly what she did, fighting hard to post a thrilling victory under the excellent Adam Beschizza and rewarding those wise souls who had backed her from 6/1 to 7/2. Good on 'em.

Another really nice recent result was Cathy Gannon's Group race win at the Curragh on the David Evans-trained Dingle View. That was really well deserved because Cathy is not just a top-class jockey (and I don't mean a top-class female jockey nor a top-class light-weight jockey, I mean a top-class jockey) but she is also a hard-working, conscientious and decent professional. She's never ridden a winner for us, but we've used her intermittently since shortly after her arrival (including on Ethics Girl at Goodwood last year, as this picture shows) and she's ridden every horse faultlessly. She really struggled for patronage when she first came over, despite being well known here as a former champion apprentice in Ireland and bearing the well-respected credential of having been apprenticed to John Oxx - and we know that the standards of riding in Ireland are so high that to be champion apprentice there one would need to be very, very good. (This example of British xenophobia, parochialism and sexism, of course, makes it easy to understand why Iva finds it so hard to get any recognition here because if nobody gave Cathy much respect for having won Ireland's apprentices' premiership, it's not surprising that her former status as one of the leading jockeys in the Czech Republic is not paid much heed). The first horse Cathy rode for us was, I think, Lady Suffragette, and she was working for Kevin Ryan at the time, but having not a great deal to show for it. Happily, she is now thriving thanks to the patronage of Dave Evans and of other trainers such as Chris Dwyer; and her first Group race success suggests that she has now, at last, broken through, which is really good. Good on 'er.

And good on the Indian summer, too, which happily seems still to be with us. At this time of year, every nice day is a bonus, and happily we're still getting nice days. And the great thing about autumn is that nice days often have spectacular starts. I'm still on a routine of starting quite early but I suspect that that might have to be altered before the end of this month because we're reaching the stage where my current timings mean that, while it's currently light enough when we reach the Heath (as this view of the canter through Asterisk's ears on Monday shows - and you will be able to spot at least one of Asterisk's ears if you look closely enough), another fortnight of ever-shortening days will mean that we might have to reconsider our schedule. However, on clear-skied mornings such as this, once the sun gets up the views can correctly be described as brilliant, as this shot of Aisling and Ex Con leading the way around Bury Hill grass on Tuesday confirms. Today was very nice and I think that the forecast is for another nice day tomorrow - but of course that'll have me agonising over running plans, because I've declared Rhythm Stick for the maiden at Sandown on Saturday on good ground, and it might be wise to have a re-think for this heavy and immature horse if the ground was going to become significantly firmer than that. But then, on the other hand, if conditions don't dry up down south, we might want to re-think my aim to run Ethics Girl at Goodwood on Sunday, where the track is currently rated good to soft (which would probably be softer than is ideal for her). Can both horses' preferences be satisfied in the same area on the same weekend? We'll just have to watch the weather, wait, and see.

Went our way

By a fortunate chance, it transpired that, after musing in the previous chapter about the quirks of fate by which things either do or don't go one's way, I found that things definitely went our way the following day, ie Saturday. It's only right that a day which turns out well should start well, and Saturday duly started with a lovely dawn. As it was set to be a busy day, I only rode one lot, but that lot was a pleasing one, not least because of the conditions: by the time that we got to the far side of the Heath, a beautiful dawn was breaking as light was starting to appear above the eastern horizon, enough to light up both Asterisk's head next to me (spot her pricked ears) and the stalls in the distance as they poked up out of the mist which was lying across the grass. This surely was a good omen, and the omens continued to come thick and fast: Mr Shammie was parked at the top of Hamilton Road as I drove out of town at 9.00, while an hour later I overtook a stretch Hummer on the A1, something (for reasons which aren't totally clear) I'm always enjoy doing. This stretch Hummer appeared to be in the queue into the Burghley Horse Trials which was rather odd: it wouldn't seem strange to see a hen party arriving in a stretch Hummer for the post-racing concert at a Newmarket Nights evening meeting, but I'd say that one might rub one's eyes a bit if one were in a car park at a horse trial and such a vehicle were to pull up alongside one's car or truck. Still, such is the diversity of the human race that what seems strange to one man seems entirely normal to another.

The afternoon at Thirsk also started well, even if not quite as sunnily as the morning had started at Newmarket. Our friend Lucy Wadham sent out the winner of the first race, the Elusive City filly Picabo becoming what I am sure was Lucy's first ever two-year-old winner (she, as you probably know, mostly trains jumpers) by winning under Paul Hanagan, thus helping that admirable young hoop on the way to what I am sure most people hope will be the jockeys' championship. (Not, of course, that I have anything against the other two potential champions - but Paul is such a decent, likeable and assuming lad, as well as reliable jockey, that it would be lovely to see him end the season as the first northern-based champion since Kevin Darley a decade ago, and thus only the second in the past hundred years). An hour after Picabo's win, Ethics Girl lined up for the impressively titled Hambleton Cup, a race which must surely have a rich history (any information in that respect would be much appreciated, please) - and we duly found that, for once, things did go our way: every aspect of the race went just as I'd hoped/planned and she got home under a copy-book ride from Franny Norton by half a length from the filly who had stood out in the parade ring as the classiest horse in the race, a daughter of Galileo called Lady Luachmhar who carried saddle-cloth number one and found the concession of a stone to the bottom-weight Ethics Girl slightly beyond her. After a succession of races in which Ethics Girl had raced with merit but without victory, it was just so pleasing to have things work out just so; she's a lovely, tough and genuine filly who is raced by the our long-standing and loyal patrons Lawrence Wadey, Gerry Grimstone and Bill Benter, so it was great to see her land her first win of the year - and particularly as it came in what, by our standards, could be described as a big race, being a Cup race and a Channel Four/Scoop Six race to boot. It was nice also to see her score with Franny Norton, who has been a very lucky jockey for us over the years, riding umpteen winners for the stable, including in the same colours in years gone by on both Il Principe and Warring Kingdom. And a further nice touch was added to the success by the fact that the filly was led up by Toby Stewart, a really nice young lad who has been coming in to the stables on the weekends during his recent placement with Tattersalls. I am sure that Toby (pictured leading the filly out onto the track) has a bright future as he's a very likeable and diligent man and, being keen to make progress in the bloodstock world, has been doing what he can to increase his hands-on experience with horses - which is what he found himself doing on Saturday when, after inviting him on the trip to Thirsk, I steered him, rather to his surprise, into the task of leading the horse. Ethics Girl is such a trouper that all went well, so Toby has a 100% strike rate of leading up winners, and I hope that he enjoyed the day nearly as much as I did.

Things also more or less went our way yesterday too, despite the fact that Silken Thoughts didn't win. She did, however, run another pleasing race, finishing second to the Sir Mark Prescott-trained Red Oleander, which was definitely no disgrace: at Thirsk, Lady Luachmhar had clearly been the best horse in the race and thus carried top weight, but by a quirk of handicapping yesterday Red Oleander, who I suspect was the best horse in the race, had bottom weight! So our filly clearly ran very well to finish second to her, albeit beaten three lengths (and it would have been more had Red Oleander been ridden out to the line). I suspect that Red Oleander would have won however things had worked out, but had we been well drawn and Red Oleander drawn out in the middle of the track (as opposed to the other way round, as it was) and had it not rained extremely hard after the first race (Red Oleander is by Pivotal from a Montjeu mare so would clearly relish any cut in the ground) ... well, you never know! But that's racing: things work out as they work out, and sometimes they work out to one's advantage and sometimes they don't. But while horses are running well, as Ethics Girl and Silken Thoughts have been done in the past few days, one can't be unhappy, whatever the actual result.

You must, by the way, forgive me for rambling on at such great length about our own horses. I do pay attention to the rest of the racing world, but this little corner of it is (understandably) what most enthuses me. It's a bit like when I'm on the At The Races International Review show, as I was yesterday, and we start to discuss the Australian racing: I like to think that yesterday I was able to talk with a reasonable degree of authority about the events from Longchamp, Veliefendi, Baden-Baden and Saratoga - but when we looked at Flemington, Robert Cooper could hardly shut me up! So what of other people's horses? The ones to whom I generally pay most attention are the ones whom I enjoy seeing out on the Heath in the mornings, and one of my favourites retired last week: the Sir Michael Stoute-trained Ask, winner in the last few years of such races as the Coronation Cup, Yorkshire Cup, Prix Royal-Oak, Ormonde Stakes, Cumberland Lodge Stakes and Gordon Richards Stakes. I saw Ask, ridden as usual by Kevin Bradshaw, heading over to racecourse side early last Wednesday morning with a handful of his stablemates, but sadly the gallop which he had shortly afterwards proved to be his last as he sustained a tendon injury during it and has been retired. I don't know what the future holds for him but I imagine that he'll go to stud, presumably as a National Hunt sire, and I expect that he will do very well because he has proved himself to be everything one would like a horse to be: brave, sound, durable, genuine, extremely handsome and very, very good. I remember the first time I knowingly saw him. Kevin Bradshaw sometimes rides one of the stable's hacks and late one morning I saw him out on his own on Warren Hill, seemingly supervising the string as if on a hack - except that he was riding the most magnificent horse. I saluted Kevin on what a lovely hack he was riding, which greeting brought a smile to Kevin's lips before he put me out of my misery before revealing the 'hack's' identity. And I've loved admiring Ask ever since that day. I'd never taken the opportunity to take a photograph of him until the middle of last month, and now that the horse has retired I'm very glad that I finally did so.

Last week also saw the announcement that Ask's stablemate Harbinger, whom I've liked ever since catching him on the Heath when he got loose last autumn, is off to stud in Japan, which is a pity as Richard and Sara, the owners of Destiny Rules, had been harbouring a dream of sending their filly (whom I'd been riding when the riderless Harbinger had appeared) to him one day. That, of course, now seems unfeasible - but then history shows that stallions who head to the far east don't always do so with a one-way ticket. Once he's gone to Japan, though, he'll be nearly as well travelled as another horse I've caught this year: the Luca Cumani-trained Librettista, who is Australian-bred. It was a very cold day (as you'll see from this picture of her, being led by the Heathman who relieved me of her) on which I caught her last winter so I presume that she had just been jumping around to keep herself warm. Our good summer has probably been much more to her liking as she's thrived during it, and I was pleased to note that she won two races last month, at Brighton and Yarmouth.

Photo-opportunity missed

I really kicked myself this morning for not having my camera in my pocket because we had a truly glorious morning. I had no excuse because I felt foolish enough not having it first lot, and it was quite plain then that conditions would be even more photogenic second lot. It was still quite dark when I set off first lot on Asterisk towards the stalls, where I was to meet Team Yarmy and where I was more than happy to hand over the riding to Iva and the leading to Yarmy. Asterisk is a sweet filly but she really doesn't like stalls, but happily the session ended with her standing quietly in the stalls, shut in front and back, thanks largely to having a top-class horseman at her head, a top-class rider on her back, and Yarmy's "Monty Roberts" blanket over her bum. There was a very heavy dew on the ground and thick fog in the air just above it, but even at that early stage it was plain that above the fog there wasn't a cloud in the sky and that, once the sun broke over the horizon, we'd have a sensational morning. I was then later duly cursing myself all the way up Warren Hill second lot at around 7.00 am while I was riding Alpen Glen up the walking ground adjacent to the Moulton Road: string after string was filing down towards me, the sun was dazzling through the mist directly in my eyes, I couldn't make out the identity of each horse and rider until they were about three yards away from me and the farther the horses were away from me, the more blurred they were in the fog - and above us we had a brilliant bright blue sky. Even a clown like me would have been able to take some superb photos in such conditions - but not with my camera left behind in the house I couldn't. What a fool! I took a couple of pictures a couple of weeks ago as I approached the Bury Road crossing from the Severals, with one of them containing a couple of George Margarson's horses coming in the opposite direction (ridden by the ex-jockeys Gary Foster and Alan Mackay, but you'd hardly know that from this photo) and another of the back view of my companions, and I thought at the time that they were reasonably splendid - but compared to the shots which I ought to have taken today, they are dullness itself. But I'll put them up anyway for want of a superior illustration.

The rest of the day was very nice too, even if the first couple of hours had already provided the day's highlights. I hope tomorrow will be nice too as I'll be heading up to Thirsk with Ethics Girl. Nathan asked below a recent posting about how going racing has changed, but I wouldn't really say that it has very much. Not in my working lifetime anyway. The traffic is bad but it's been bad for a long time and I don't think that getting around the country is harder now than it was, say, 20 years ago: in fact, I'd say that it's probably easier, as there were millions of cars and trucks on the road even then, and the road system has been improved, even if sometimes it's easy to overlook that fact. Stableyards, hostels canteens in general have improved since I started working in racing, and the space for passengers in horse-boxes has definitely improved: formerly if you weren't driving the truck, you'd be likely to find yourself perched in a very small, uncomfortable and cold place for the duration of the journey, which is rarely the case nowadays. There are probably more people at the racecourses nowadays telling you what you should or shouldn't be doing, but that's the modern world in general, and by and large our supervisors are decent and helpful people. And that's probably it: taking a horse to the races nowadays is by and large a more comfortable procedure than it used to be, but otherwise things are pretty much the same.

I'll have now to get myself organised for tonight's Australian racing: there's a great card at Flemington and I'll have to be au fait with what happens as I've got the ATR International Review Show slot again on Tuesday. I don't know whether I'll have time to watch much of it live as I'll have plenty to do before heading off to Thirsk at roughly 8.30, but videos are a great thing (if they work). I've just re-watched the tape from a couple of weeks ago (as I'll tape over it tonight) because I wanted to refresh my memory of James Winks' interview after winning a sprint at Caulfield: when the interviewer Bruce Clarke put it him that he was in good form at present, he looked rather pissed off and just shrugged, "Oh gee, you just keep showing up, and you just hope things go your way". I remember a few years ago Micky Fenton sardonically telling me that an owner for whom he was having a few rides at the time had told him that "you're riding very well AT THE MOMENT" (believing that he was giving Micky a compliment and that Micky would be pleased to hear it) - and training is like that: we were top of the Hot Trainers' List in July, but we must now be close to regaining our position on the Cold List after an August with plenty of runners but no winners. But it's the same as with the jockeys: you get up in the morning, spend the day doing whatever seems best for maximising the horses' chances of winning, and then go to bed in the evening. Sometimes, as James Winks would put it, things go your way and sometimes they don't - but you aren't approaching or doing the job any differently when they do or when they don't. So let's hope that things go our way again soon. We'll see.

Bank Holiday brahmae

It's been a pleasure to have summer back, for a short while at least, after the rain, chills and gloom of the last full week of August: this week has been lovely so far. Conditions were pleasant at Warwick on Monday and even balmier at Lingfield yesterday, and the ubiquitous soft ground has been replaced by conditions on the faster side of good. I never used to think of Warwick as providing a nice surface in the second half of the season, but I'd have no complaints whatsoever about the ground on which the horses had to race on Bank Holiday Monday. Even Ian Watkinson was happy! Ian, as many of you will recall, was one of the leading jumps jockeys of the '70s until his career was ended prematurely by injuries sustained in a fall in 1979. Ian really loved race-riding and he found it very hard to have to give it away so suddenly at at time when his career had seemed still seemingly on an upward curve. He's done plenty of non-competitive riding since that sad day, and trained successfully for a while at Cootamundra (NSW), but nowadays he contents himself with transporting horses to the races - while marvelling all the time at the general lowering of standards across the board, including the test which National Hunt racing imposes. It was good to bump into him shortly after our arrival - and even better to receive a text from him shortly afterwards, at which point I hadn't yet ventured onto the track, although he clearly had: "Without exception, every course I have visited since my enforced retirement has appeared to have reduced the size of the 'chase fences; this cannot be said of Warwick, as you will see."! When I bumped into Ian later in the afternoon, I chuckled that I'd inspected his fences, to which he replied, with a gleeful smile, "Yes, they're higher than the wings!". They will, of course, not remain this height and will have been brutally trimmed by the time that Warwick's new jumping season commences, but they have at least provided a good Bank Holiday brahma. I don't know, though, whether their forbidding aspect would have proved inspirational to one of the competitors, the notoriously unenthusiastic steeplechaser Najca De Thaix (pictured above, looking very well) who must surely have come close to setting some sort of record by making his first appearance of the Flat for 2,144 days! Unsurprisingly, he didn't run very well, but then again neither did our two runners, Alpen Glen and Batgirl, so we'll just have to see if we can't get things a bit more right/a bit less wrong in the future. Alpen Glen did, at least, show a tiny bit more than she'd done on the previous two occasions we'd run her.

A similar remark could be made about Destiny Rules, who ran at Lingfield yesterday. She's a sweet filly who really deserves to do well, and her owner/breeders Richard and Sara are similarly deserving of success. She'd shown very little in two previous starts, but we'd been hoping that more time and more distance might help her, and she ran competitively enough yesterday on her first attempt at a mile and a half to suggest that such a hope might not be forlorn. She was really good yesterday because she's previously found racing quite daunting, but she seems to be gaining in self-confidence, which can only help her in both the preliminaries and the races themselves. We'd done a lot of work with her in the stalls since she'd got upset in them at Thirsk on her resumption, and yesterday all went very well. Part of the credit for this must go to the starter Willie Jardine, who was helpfulness personified: when I asked him if we could have a blindfold on the filly and I could lead her in, he readily acceded, but gave me an alternative of not wearing a blindfold but going in last (the other option, of course, being that if we wore a blindfold, we'd have to go in first). We opted for his suggestion, and it worked very well indeed. Mind you, as she left the stall only about two seconds after I did she didn't have much time to get worked up, but everything ran so smoothly that I think we'd have been alright even if we'd had a delay.

Shortly after my return from Lingfield, a major brahmafest ensued because we welcomed Peter Hutchinson and his partner Sarah for an overnight visit. All of you should recall Peter's father Ron riding in Europe with huge success in the '60s and '70s, and some of you might remember Peter riding here for a while as an apprentice in the mid-'80s - and also his elder brother Ray being champion amateur on the Flat here. Peter's still riding, which is a good effort as he gave it away for seven years prior to making a come-back two years ago. Although he's enjoyed plenty of success, winning the premiership in Adelaide several times and landing several Group One victories including the Caulfield Cup on the David Hayes-trained Fraar, he's also been very unlucky throughout his career, sustaining numerous injuries. It was, therefore, no surprise to see him arrive with his left arm strapped up, courtesy of the elbow being broken in a fall at Geelong six weeks ago. Happily, this has not blighted his trip to Europe, his first for 22 years. He's such a nice and entertaining man that it was great that they included this place on their itinerary, and I'm pleased to report that it worked out really well. We went on a tour of the Heath this morning and everything fell into place nicely. We bumped into Jon Adams, with whom Peter had been apprenticed in Geoff Lewis' stable and who is now one of Jeremy Noseda's head lads, on the Severals (pictured above); Jane Chapple-Hyam, whom Peter had first met when she'd worked alongside him for Colin Hayes at Lindsay Park, gave us a great tour of her stable (in which, of course, so many of Peter's father's big winners had been trained by Harry Wragg); and then we bumped into Lester Piggott, whom Peter has known since he was a little boy, on Warren Hill with William Haggas and Michael Bell, who trains in the stable (Fitzroy House) in which Peter's brother Ray trained when he was in Newmarket 25 years ago. So that was just really nice. He and Sarah, though, haven't been the only Aussies here in the past week because, for reasons at which one can only guess, we've had a rosella flying around. This bird, of course, almost certainly, won't have come from Australia, but we can regard him as such because that's whence rosellas in general hail. At first glance, you might struggle to spot the rosella on this cyprus tree at the bottom of the yard; but home in and there he/she is, which is just lovely. The sun's shining and it's nearly time to feed so I might head out now to see if he/she's still around.