the view from the cab (take two!)

as the sun rises at the top of the gallop this Sunday morning.. (two weeks on)

Crikey I feel fat, for as long as I can remember the farm has been frozen and covered in snow and every day has been spent rotovating the gallop, exercising the horses, feeding the horses, rotovating the gallop again and nipping into the house to fill up with Mrs A's endless supply of yummy things to eat & drink. There hasn't been a squeak of any racing in the North and it doesn't look like there will be any in the near future which makes the gargantuan effort from the whole team appear somewhat futile.

Remarkably we have been able to canter the horses every day (so far!) despite some very low temperatures and over a foot of snow now lying; all we can do is hope that the weather relents soon and we can go racing and produce some winners, we have at least a dozen ready to run and I have been doggedly determined to keep them going so that we don't have a fitness issue as and when the weather eases.

So the coldest December followed the wettest November which followed the driest October & September and the wettest August, climate change yes, global warming - not an obvious description from where I am sitting. Tales of extreme weather events abound, it certainly appears that the Roads Department is running seriously short of salt and lack of funding in the local Councils meant that they refused to pay snow-plough drivers "Sunday" money with the result that even some motorways remained untreated at 11am this morning, the knock-on effect of course of untreated roads and pavements is a sharp increase of activity and cost in the A & E departments at the Hospitals... ho ho, plenty to look forward to though, new website is there but has one or two little glitches that I want to iron out in the gallery department, will hopefully be including a few more videos, Mrs A gave me a very natty little camcorder for Xmas; I did grumble a bit for the first few days about how blurred the images appeared until one of the children kindly explained that I ought to remove the protective film from the lens...

p.s. still looking for a part-time lorry driver as and when........................