I was woken up early this morning by a lot of excited hollering. It transpired that after a week of waiting Eddie’s front tooth had finally come out – he had put it under his pillow in the middle of the night but the tooth fairy hadn’t come. Jane explained that the tooth fairy comes around quite early and had probably missed it – Eddie said he’d make sure she didn’t miss it again tonight.
I dragged myself out of bed in a lot of pain. I started doing weights in the gym last monday. The first problem occurred on Monday night when I got cramp during my dinner at the pub. I had to leap up out of my seat, which wasn’t easy as I was sandwiched in in an impossible position – it caused quite a pandemonium. Yesterday I bent down to get my trousers on in the morning and my back went – I was writhing on the floor and couldn’t get up for ten minutes. It’s still painful but it’s a lot better than it was.
I made my way downstairs crouching over like an old man. Eddie was in my study typing away furiously on the computer – he’s only six but he’s a real geek and nothing on the internet seems to stand in his way – I’m quite proud of him for that. He’d opened an account on a Star Wars site and he was deciding on his sign-in name – there is a function that generates random names and you press select when you see one you like. He laughed his shrill laugh – “Dad, I’ve decided to be ‘Steviok the deafening octopus'”. It takes all sorts to make a Star Wars world apparently.
I went back to bed and lay there for a couple of hours waiting for my back to ease up. When I came down the house was empty except for Chantelle, my PA, who had come to make a start on the piles of mail and filing that seem to build up relentlessly. I started ringing around – today is day 2 of the HIT and I had a couple going through the ring. Wear ’em out Wilf had shown excellent attitude and a fair bit of ability in his two runs – unfortunately he had sustained damage to a knee, and this is not a great market to be selling horses with problems, even small ones. Foghorn Leghorn had no such problem – he’d been running well having come fifth in the Middle Park, but is on the small side.
Wilf sold for £4,500 – peanuts for a horse of his ability but there are more horses than buyers at the moment. We bought Foghorn back for £35k, which was very disappointing. I doubt we’ll sell him for now – we need to think again.
The boys had spent half the day playing “Scooby Doo and the spooky swamp” on the Wii – I decided it was time to get them out of the house. A new shop had opened down the road selling retro stuff so we went down there. I bought an old fashioned leather football, an old fashioned rugby ball, a spirit level, an old leather tape measure and one of those long wooden rulers that fold up.
Back at the house Eddie wanted to play rugby – I explained to him how he should throw the ball. He stood and the end of the corridor and I threw the ball down to him – a lovely spinning delivery but just a shade too high and it hit him full on in the mouth. I rushed up to see if he was ok – I could see blood all round his mouth. His eyes lit up – “Dad, you’ve knocked my tooth out !”. Jane rushed in looking alarmed to find Eddie grinning a huge if slightly scary grin and holding up the tooth that had just been knocked from his mouth – “I’ll get two lots of money from the tooth fairy now Mum !”. Jane gave me one of those sideways raised eyebrows type looks and I smiled and shrugged – Eddie headed upstairs chattering away to himself happily.
I have runners in the offing. Whey Sauce is down to run in a listed race on Saturday but won’t go if the ground is in at all soft, and it probably will be. Sunday Bess is down to run at Lingfield on Thursday and should go – she is one of the fillies I bought in Japan and she goes extremely well on the gallops. Maxwell Hawke also runs on Thursday and if he doesn’t show up well we may give up on him.