Things are different in the Fens

Guy brings his pet ferret into church today.

On a lead, though, so clearly from one of the better parts of town.

We know the deal with flat racing’s transitory heroes, spare us the cant

What a bizarre comment by racehorse owner Khalifa Dasmal in the wake of his colt Dream Ahead’s win in the Qatar Prix de la Foret in Paris last weekend.

“I believe the plan is now to retire him. If he raced next year, he would just be winning the same races he won this year.”

Well of course he would: that’s how sport works; with a series of annual renewals that builds tradition and history. I’m trying to think of a sport that produces a completely different set of challenges every year but I’m afraid I’m struggling.

Imagine if everyone had the same attitude to such humdrum routine as Mr Dasmal. Tiger Woods would have retired a decade ago with one of each Major title to his name and Red Rum would have been booed across the Aintree finishing line in 1977, his audience resentful of the fact that it had seen that particular party piece twice already. As for Sir Alex Ferguson: 12 Premiership titles? The poor bloke must be bored out of his mind.

I think Dream Ahead’s owner is being a little bit cute here, hitting upon a silly euphemism with which to mask the same old, same old where the Sport of Kings’ summer code is concerned.

Top-drawer Flat horses retire because their owners feel they have hit the perfect sweet spot between winning enough races to boost their stud value and not losing enough races to prejudice it. Hence, the reign of too many great Flat stallions lasts about as long as a pint of milk: you bunk up their marketability and then retire them pronto – often in the same season – so that they may embark upon an equally lucrative career making babies.

That’s the real reason Dream Ahead may have galloped in anger for the final time. Having several more cracks at winning “the same races he won this year” could possibly make him a legend. Avoiding defeat, however, definitely makes his owners a fortune.

There’s the rub.

Feline human, after all

Even at 8am, they’re starting to feel it.

A week of warm, unabated weather (or “summer” as we’ll come to know it) has sent them scarpering for shade beneath trees. They lie there, breathing heavily, as if already waving a white flag in the face of what’s to come.

When I locked my front door just minutes earlier, those I left behind barely knew where to put themselves, forsaking sofa and basket for patio slabs and even kitchen worksurfaces. Anything to get something cool beneath their overheating bodies.

So much of their life is a serene blend of sleeping, prowling and eating that even this cat-lover feels a certain gratification at watching these magnificently aloof creatures briefly dragged down to our level.

Hot and bothered.

Feel my pain.

Will I ever eat chicken again?

Image via Wikipedia

Ah, the byzantine thought processes of the human mind.

Older Son and his mother are joshing around in the kitchen. With that urbane charm for which teenage boys are renowned, he calls her a foreskin.

“Ooh, that reminds me,” she says, “I need to defrost the chicken…”

I may skip dinner.

The whole world must stop for dogs

Late for a blood test.

Half way across the park, I find a terrier busying itself in and around my feet, like a small ball of motorised tumbleweed.

“You need to stand still,” barks the woman who owns it.

I stop, he leaves. I start walking again, he returns.

“You have to stand still,” his owner shouts again, this time slightly with feeling.

Of course I do. I’m in a public place, minding my own business, being told what to do by someone whom neither employs, hires nor knows me and I must stand still so that she can carry on chatting to her friend without being troubled by anything so onerous as getting her dog under control. Or training it not to lose control in the first place.

“Sorry to be a nuisance,” I say, as her animal finally finds something else to pester the hell out of.

Either she doesn’t hear or the irony goes straight over her head.

It’s not an irony kind of town.