Christopher was in this morning - we are beginning the countdown until his first ride which is on the 22nd of this month - He must also be having a mid-life crisis as he is over 50 and has lost two and a half stone in the last three months, as they don't allow fat boys to take part anymore. (The weight limit is now 13 stone whereas before it didn't matter too much) We are training his horse, Cyril, who is a great schoolmaster, and today Will took Jess and they went over the big fences, then they did a canter around the round gallop and then back over the six big fences again. Jess (We Never Give Up) was giving Cyril a lead and Will came back beaming saying that she was absolutely awesome - Quite incredible for a youngster. She is quite an enigma, as you can put a complete novice on her back and she literally goes to sleep, or a 'proper' jockey and she gives you no feel at all, but then suddenly she will do a fantastic piece of work and take anything on. It will be very interesting to see how she is in a race - but at least we don't need to worry about her jumping. Christopher also did really well and him and Cyril are beginning to form a partnership, which hopefully will stay intact for the duration of the race....

While Will and Christopher were going over the schooling fences the rest of the horses were doing a piece of work around the grass field. Everyone went out except for Dolly who works every other day. The horses are all in a really good place at the moment which is very pleasing.

As there isn't an imminent race for any of them Doug and I are escaping for a week in the sun as from tomorrow - We are going to the Canary Islands and coming back on the 14th. The team are in charge in our absence and the great thing is, we know they will do a marvellous job.

Better go and do some packing - At least I've got the right date this time!! For those that haven't been following my blog for more than a year you won't know that last year I got the wrong date and told everyone we were off on our annual skiing holiday a week early - bags all packed and just about to set off to Gatwick to stay the night before the early morning flight, when I happened to phone one of our skiing 'chums' about another matter, and just as she put the phone down she said "See you next Saturday" NEXT Saturday?? I thought, horror in my heart, I trawled back through our e-mails and found that I had completely got the dates wrong. As you can imagine it was highly embarrassing and Doug was none too pleased but it caused a great deal of mirth amongst all our friends which considerably brightened up their January. Oh dear. What a plonker!