Elegiac

It wasn't especially elegiac but getting a later bus back from Chichester today than I'd usually be on, the more advanced hour seemed to rhyme with the advanced stage of summer we are now at and have a suggestion of that sense of 'all over' that was most keenly felt on the way home after the 12 hour races, 1994-96, with the sun setting not only on a personally historic day for me but on the summer, too. Although the last one I rode is now twenty-seven years ago, memories of that are as vivid as anything in those 'epic' rides. Done and dusted; signed, sealed and delivered; the record books can have it all now, history takes possession of it all from now on.

That is more 'writing' than it warrants but if it were all fiction or a poem, it's the sort of long perspective ending that is more satisfactory than, say, the carnage in Hamlet or one of Jane Austen's heroines successfully getting herself married off.

It's a bit odd going to Chichester not for a concert or any other cultural event but days out can be organized around things other than them, as it turns out. The bookshop in Pallant House had Maggi Hambling's The Works priced up at £120 so I'm £80 up on the deal already on their terms. To be fair to them, you can pay more than that at Amazon if you want.

I haven't actually been to the Bishop's Palace gardens before, which is ignorant of me, but it was probably best to wait to go with a guide like Graham who knows his japonica from his tradescantia, not that we necessarily saw either of those today. The canal goes all the way to the sea but we only went as far as Hunston having lunched on, I don't know, Cheese and Pepper Toasted Ciabatta which seemed not overly chic but more so than the mushrooms, pa fritter, chips and curry sauce I had yesterday.

I should know the contents of my record shelves better than I do. Any music writer worthy of the name would surely know whether they had the Shostakovich Violin Concertos or not but although I could remember the cello and piano equivalents, I now have Daniel Hope conducted by Maxim, as well as Vengerov. I probably don't need that but it takes little off the pricewise value of a haul from the Oxfam Bookshop that brought with it The James Bowman Collection in memory of a very favourite singer, the Collected Poems of Elizabeth Jennings to upgrade the Selected and Crime and Punishment with which to begin my dutiful attempt on the north face of Dostoevsky which, all being well, won't prove onerous.

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One is always reminded how good Louis MacNeice was whenever looking back at his Autumn Journal which I did this morning when adding a few more paragraphs to 'the project', such as it is but it is over 8000 words now and it is moving tentatively, even quite thoughtfully, along. The project doesn't have a title yet and doesn't need one - yet - but Autumn Journal is the sort of place where I might find a suitably telling phrase.

I'd always rather be 'commentator' than 'critic' because 'critic' sounds like 'fault-finder' even if all one does is provide gratuitous praise. But this week has found me very supportive of Auden and most of what he did and stood for while set against Ted Hughes at any available opportunity. That is what I think but hadn't thought that I'd quite so readily put it down in writing. But maybe having a point of view will be a good thing rather than those balanced, pros and cons essays I offered up at university because I was keen to get a good mark and thought it necessary to appear sensible.

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But this week, thus far, has been a bad one in the office for the Racetrack Wiseguy. It's been no serious setback from the bridgehead that has been established this year but one does prefer the gradual, careful accumulation of profit to resemble how Sunil Gavaskar used to collect runs - not always quickly but surely.

One or two steps back are fine as long as one can resume with two or three steps forward.

Tomorrow is a big day's racing, if you believe ITV and the industry that want you to believe every Saturday is a highlight of the season. It isn't for me but the Ebor Handicap is not quite the unsolvable riddle that the Stewards Cup, Cambridgeshire or other such pin-sticking lotteries can often appear to be.

We need to be afraid, very afraid, when Willie Mullins is sending two likely types over from Ireland in pursuit of a £300k pot but William Hill is giving everybody a free bet this weekend. I feel like Blanche Dubois who coyly suggests that she has often depended on the kindness of strangers but I'll take it on the off-chance of retrieving some of the week's losses.

Sweet William (York 3.35) isn't exactly 'under the radar' at 7/2 fav but is officially 4lb well-in and, by Sea the Stars, could easily still be ahead of his handicap mark on his way to non-handicap races.

But the agony of Saturdays of flat race guessing games won't go on much longer. We can start trying properly again at Chepstow in October if not before. It's not so much these days that summer comes to an end, it's that autumn begins. 

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And, finally, I thought I came out of Mendelssohn's more famous Violin Concerto in not such bad order, not giving up trying to follow the score until about bar 350. That's a big improvement on what I did with Beethoven 6. It helps having one main instrument to focus on.

However, my friend Andrew tells me that you are no longer expected to do such things at school, or not in the third form anyway.

The way education is, ever needy of proving its high standards, I think these days you can have a Music 'O' level by recognizing the violin and saying you like it. If you know the composer was C19th and his name was Felix that's an A* but you're still not Alina Ibragimova.