ANOTHER DAY OF REST!
Having hardly slept a wink last night, thinking about this and that, today has been spent tidying up loose ends - responding to mail that has sat unanswered, getting photographs of the race on Tuesday printed for the folks back in England and Spain, trying to give my pocket camera that died on Saturday the kiss of life, and dealing with little things I said I'd do for people as soon as I got five minutes. One of those latter jobs brought about a very interesting chat with a friendly chap from my neck of the woods - speaking a whole conversation in English was a breath of fresh air, as was the subject matter, which naturally centred around horses. I hope to go up to Hokkaido and see this gentleman in the near future.

Meanwhile, with Louis away and an early finish at school, Sophie was able to ride Jaguar for a long time this afternoon, with no sign of 'The Difficult Horse' in sight. In fact, in the cool weather, he rather lived up to his Jaguar name - a TWR V12 model at that - and I reckon if you'd have shown him the Nakayama turf, he'd have been off like a rocket.

Actually, that reminds me of a little story from earlier in the year. At the end of a Nakayama meeting, people were allowed to walk the course to break up the rush for the trains after the final race. Of course, in-between wild sprints for the finish line, everybody took a few blades of grass home as a memento, including my two. Louis religiously wrapped his and put the package up on his bedroom wall as soon as he got home, while Sophie put her stash straight in her pocket and left it there. A couple of days later, the same coat was used to go to the stables, and she thought it would be a wonderful idea to show Jaguar the grass, just to see what response he gave. You know what comes next, right? Needless to say, the grass never made it back home!