Boots and things...

A lot of things have made me happy this week but none more so than Teddy Grimthorpe's report in the Racing Post that Henry Cecil ate a lobster, a grouse, and even pudding in his box at York after Frankel's win on Wednesday. I think everyone was a little taken aback at how ravaged by illness he looked, but he has been there before and we can only pray that his fortitude will once again see him through.  I was also happy to hear that Sir Henry had bought some sets of the extremely expensive equine boots for soft tissue therapy that I rather nervously bought at Blair Castle International  Horse Trials yesterday.  Almost as expensive as the boots that I bought for myself, dangerous place for the wallet.  Also happy with the state of the horses that have stepped up to full work, they seem healthy and strong, a few more stepping up next week.

On the Riverbank

Some of the new boxes

Happy to have six new stables finished, an excellent job and a bit of a queue waiting to take occupancy, added to this week by Back on the Road, a grand type who has come over from Ireland and will point-to-point and Hunter Chase for brother Jamie.  Happy to have a big stack of haylage and a shed full of hay, miraculous considering what the weather has thrown at us; even this week it has rained every day in one way or another, the farm is sodden, harvest looms.

Horses grazing with cattle at a soggy Kinneston