Barnard Castle and beyond

It's quarter past ten at night.  I should have been in bed two hours ago, but I'm not.  I'm writing this blog.  I've had to cram a quart into a pint pot to get ahead of myself as tomorrow will be a write-off.  And that's why I have to write this chapter: because Alix (whose shadow this morning accompanies this paragraph) got in at Hexham tomorrow so we'll be heading off there.  And that's really exciting.  The debut of any horse is exciting, but the debut of a six-year-old horse is particularly exciting as one's been waiting for the day for long enough.  It'll be particularly exciting for Emma as she bred him so she's really been waiting a long time for this day, but it's exciting for all of us, including her part-owners Bob and Jon, and including me.

So that's why I'm still up, just to give a brief preview.  And that's the preview, that he's running.  How he'll go, we'll find out tomorrow.  I feel he's ready to run well, but disappointment visits all too often without opening the door and beckoning it in. We'll see.  And we'll see late in the day as the race is at 5.50, which is quite a daunting thought.  The clocks have changed so lack of daylight won't be a potential worry, but we won't have daylight for most of the journey home.  I'd be delighted to be home not too long after midnight, and even more delighted to be in bed by 1.30 (which is only six hours after my preferred bed-time, even later than I am tonight.)

I did something today which I never expected to do, ie clip a horse on the penultimate day of March.  I was always brought up that one never clipped a horse after the end of January.  However, I felt I had to do so.  He has a long coat as I didn't clip him in the winter, and it's only in the last few days that he has started to moult.  I wasn't worried about running with a long coat as the forecast was for Wednesday in Hexham to be raining with a top temperature of 7 degrees, so I wasn't concerned about him being too hot.  However, lovely weather has been covering the country, and the closer we have got to Wednesday, the more the forecast has been upgraded.  Today it was showing 17 degrees and sunny in Hexham, so I felt that I had to clip him, as it wouldn't be wise to run him in that with a long coat.  So that rule about not clipping a horse after the end of January ... well, rules are to be broken, as Dominic Cummings has encouraged us to think.