Planning permission

I really enjoyed the Open Day - well, Open Morning - today.  The smaller stables obviously don't get the numbers which the higher-profile operations receive.  (And this morning's bad weather probably kept numbers down across the board anyway).  That, added to the the fact that uncertainty over whether we would be opening meant that we weren't in the brochure, meant that we didn't have a huge attendance.  But that's perfect.  I'd feel uncomfortable if we had so many visitors that some people went away feeling that they hadn't received much of a welcome or sufficient attention.  I'd hope that nobody felt that today.  Everyone who came really seemed to enjoy their visit, and I enjoyed the visits too.  It's always a pleasure to show off the place, and it's particularly good to show it off to people who seem really interested, which was very much the case today.  A very happy day.

Mind you, we were lucky to have any visitors at all!  We have one runner this week (Wasted Sunsets in the 8.30 at Newcastle tomorrow night - I repeat, 8.30 at Newcastle tomorrow night, so it'll seem a long, long, long drive home if she runs badly) so I rode her out this morning before we started to get things organised in advance of our visitors.  It was lucky that I did so because as I rode down Exeter Road, I found that Open Day signs had been put up on gateposts - but not on our gateposts, rather on our neighbour's gateposts.  Unbelievable.  Signs on the wrong property.  Happily, having discovered this, I was able to move the signs and put them where they should have been put.

Mind you, it might have been a boon for the visitors if the signs had been left where they were.  Well, it wouldn't have been, but it would have been if the Open Day had been earlier in the summer because Frankie Dettori was living in the house next door.  That would have been a very pleasant surprise for anyone hoping to run down a lower-tier trainer: to knock on the door and find the world's greatest jockey answering instead!  Frankie was supposedly renting the house for a year while, having sold his previous house, he was having a new house built.  He and his family ended up living there for two and a half years but they've moved on now, so that wouldn't actually have happened.

It was his previous house, not the one next door to us, which featured in one of the best examples of quick racing wit that I have heard.  Frankie rode Tony Fordham's Batgirl for us on a few occasions, including winning on her twice at Yarmouth.  Batgirl could be very difficult at the start, but she knew me well and I knew her well so I used to go down to the start to lead her into the stalls and stand with her while she was waiting for the others to be loaded.  On one occasion, Frankie happened to ride her at Yarmouth only a few days after I had become a Councillor on Newmarket Town Council.  As I was leading Frankie and Batgirl around behind the stalls, I heard an Irish voice (which sounded very like Kieren Fallon's) shout across, "You know he's only riding for you because he wants permission to build a conservatory on the side of his house!".  Very good!