First chapter

I always used to attend Tattersalls Ireland's Fairyhouse September Yearling Sale, and we've had some lovely, inexpensively-bought horses from there.  However, prior to this week I think that my most recent visit had been to the sale from which Ethics Girl came - and she's seven now, so that was six years ago.  However, I was reminded recently what a great value-for-money sale it is when writing a preview of this year's edition for 'Thoroughbred Owner & Breeder'; so I'm pleased to say that I retrod the previous path this week (although it's not really the same path, because the roads in that area, and the buildings around them, have changed almost out of all recognition in the intervening six years), going there with Jason Carver, hoping that I could help him to unearth as good a purchase as he and his friend/farrier Chris Bunting did when they found Town Plate winner Start Me Up at Doncaster early last month.

Anyway, time will tell how well we selected.  But the upshot is that a yearling filly (pictured at the sale grounds in the first paragraph) arrived here today, a daughter of Dylan Thomas and the Kalanisi mare Rockahoolybaby, from the family of Kasthari and Kargali. (And one can assume that
Rockahoolybaby's dam, the Habitat mare Karamana, was sold by the Aga Khan while she was carrying the Kalanisi foetus who would become Rockahoolybaby - because, while recent events have suggested that the Aga Khan's operation works very differently to how it did in days of yore, it would have to change out of all recognition for him to give the name 'Rockahoolybaby' to a filly by Kalanisi ex Karamana.

Anyway, let's hope that this is the first chapter of a very happy saga.  And it was a very happy chapter too, because I had a lovely couple of days (well, 36 hours) in the Emerald Isle, catching up with so many nice people including some of my best friends over there, e.g. John and Terri McNamara (pictured in the second paragraph with the Captain Marvellous yearling whom they sold), John Egan and Suzy Quirke.  And the bonuses ('boni'?) were that the weather was OK, and that I returned to find that warm, sunny conditions still persist here, as this photograph of some of Jeremy Noseda's horses descending the side of Long Hill mid-morning today suggests.