The Delay and other stories

 Cheltenham's been satisfactory so far with the first two of the treble landed for me, the Professor weighing in with the 9/1 Chantry House today and some of Spenno's better chances still due to run. But it could be more successful yet with my Barbados Blue, at 2.30 tomorrow, being worth a tidy amount if it can bring together the combination trebles and 4-timer. My 10/1 looks good with it now trading at 6/1 but not as tidy as the bloke who cashed in his 5-timer before Envoi Allen fell which turned out to be a wise decision. But being okay asnd in front will always do for me and the biggest hope now is that Rachael comes out as top jockey.

-- 

As ever, having a range of interests allows one area going well to compensate for another going badly. The satisfactions of literature can make up for disappointment on the turf; a result like last week's chess tournament (LLWWWWW, 28th out of 694, top 4% of a <2000 rated hour of huge fun) can offset some other downturn, etc. But today was all set up for the arrival of the Thom Gunn letters, so long anticipated, only to receive not a 700-page book of insight into the life of the much-admired poem writer but an e-mail saying it's delayed. Until April 7- May 11 ( ! ). While the waiting can be enjoyed in a way, one has waited long enough and a downside, I soon realized, was not having the excuse to shelve the writing of Wide Realm, my ongoing attempt at a trawl through the work, while I had a week or two with essential new source material. But, there we are. Of that there is nothing we can do about there is no need to fret.

It does mean that I can begin on some of the other Spring reading that has started to arrive. A couple of old Thomas Hardy short stories last night only enhanced the enormous respect one has for everything he put on paper but this morning I began the relatively short order job of Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis, which is no hardship at all. Among memorable things she's done already in the first 60 pages is this description of a couple whose glamour, at least in their own estimation, made them,

like a pair of rapiers in a circle of umbrellas.

I'm sure I'll be helping myself to more of Violet's.

 

The delay on the Gunn book meanwhile is no doubt a bit of a drag throughout those other remnants of 1960's and 70's counterculture for who he was the consummate poet.

--

But if age brings consolations with it, and I estimate my current age as being one of the best ages I've ever been, it also brings with it those things one saw older people struggle with from the safe distance of a few decades younger, never quite beieving such things would happen to one.

The 'bad back' might have seemed like some sort of comedy set piece and until it becomes more severe I'm sure there are worse things to suffer. But setting a new track record for our Farlington Marshes jaunt this week came at a price. 

There was something to get home for, the going was good, conditions were ideal and we didn't hang around. But my trainer, Dolores McHorselady, reported to the trilby-topped hacks that I didn't come out of it well. Lying down is okay and moving around is okay but getting up or moving sideways brings forth Anglo-Saxon vocabulary and one has to think before such maneouvres to reduce the trauma. It is familar from those agonies that soon prevented me from bicycle riding several years ago. It is to be hoped that the lesser pleasures of merely walking, which always seemed to me a modest sort of activity, won't be similarly curtailed.

I have a physiotherapist in the family. I might be glad of him.