Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

Morning and evening stables aside (obviously) I'm having a very lazy weekend which isn't ideal as there's always a backlog of administration which needs to be attended to, but I'm exhausted.  We have a less busy week ahead as regards runners so I hope that I'll be less tired next weekend than I am this one.  Well, I hope that I'll start it less tired than I started this one but I'm hoping that I'll end it tired as we're hoping to take Dear Alix to Hexham next Sunday.  It's annoying that, having made his debut there on the last day of March, he wasn't able to run again during the cold, wet period which lasted for most of April and May, but he just needed a bit of time to get ready to run again, and was only just coming ready when the good weather reasserted itself.  I'm hopeful that it won't be too hot and dry next weekend in Northumberland and will be watching the long-range forecast on Countryfile this evening with interest.

Between now and then we only have one outing lined up: to Nottingham tomorrow.  I actually declared both of the horses who ran well there on Thursday (ie Turn Of Phrase and Dereham).  I hadn't meant to declare Dereham as he had had a fairly hard race, but just before declaration time it was clear that it was going to be a small field over the same course and distance, so I thought that perhaps we should be in it.  The only hitch was that I like to have the horses checked by a chiropractor after every race, and we weren't due a visit for another couple of hours.  So it was possible that when the chiropractor came at the end of the morning, I might find that either or both of the two horses whom I had just declared might be found to need a bit of work done, which would rule them out of running 48 hours later.

Anyway, the upshot was that Turn Of Phrase was given the thumbs up (which I was expecting and hoping would be the case, having been very happy with her when I'd ridden her) but Dereham was found to have a few muscles a bit tight, so it was a no-brainer immediately to make him a non-runner.  So we'll be off to Nottingham tomorrow evening with Turn Of Phrase only - and that's evening racing, so I'll be bloody tired by the end of tomorrow, so thank God I had an early-Sunday-afternoon sleep in the armchair just now!  She should have an obvious chance, but the much wider draw this time won't help, and we won't have a free 3lb claim this time, Thore Hammer Hansen having been directed to Windsor by his boss.

I know that some people get very hot under the collar about non-runners, but I can't see that I've done anything unacceptable, have I?  We are always encouraged to supply runners for the good of racing (we're always told that small fields are a bane) so I had a choice of not declaring Dereham and guaranteeing that he wouldn't run, or declaring him and giving him a chance of running.  He then became a non-runner so far in advance of the race that his absence won't have inconvenienced anyone doing the form for the race and he hasn't prevented anyone else from running as the small field meant that no horses were eliminated.  I don't like having non-runners and we have very few, but in this case I don't feel guilty about having one of our rare ones.