A day for goodbyes and one hello

It's been a sad morning. Aisling left us for her six-month stint in Dubai. We'll all miss her terribly - she's a huge asset to the place and is the regular rider of Lady Suffragette and Imperial Decree. We're already counting down the days until her return after the Dubai World Cup.

A week and a day after his thrilling Bumper win, Take Me There also left the stable today and is now en route to Paul Nicholls in Somerset. We wish him and his owners well - he's a smashing horse who should record plenty more wins for his new stable. It's always awful to watch horses leave the yard for the last time and it was particularly hard for Jackie, who has put such a huge amount of time and effort into this horse. He's a credit to her and I hope whoever ends up looking after him in Ditcheat lavishes as much attention on him as she did.

Allouette also left us earlier this week and a new life as a riding horse beckons for her. Having come here as a nervous wreck with sore feet and clear signs of having tied up that had been completely overlooked, some tender care, time and patience had worked well and her homework alongside Take Me There (they are pictured above together on Warren Hill) was good. However, her fear of being at the racecourse is not something she will leave behind so readily. Her one run for John was disappointing to us all. What hurts me most is that nobody sees the sensitive handling that went into even getting her back into shape to be ready to race. She'll make a wonderful ladies' hunter and I hope she gets the good home she deserves. I'm sure Greg and Henry will see to it that she does.

There's a new little face peeking over one of the boxes this afternoon as we've just brought home a lovely Halling yearling filly, bought last night as Tattersalls. Halling's a very good stallion who gets a lot of good racehorses so let's hope she's one of them.

We were pipped at the post by Tony Hide's team in the Newmarket Horseracing Museum quiz last night. After dead-heating with them, we lost out on a tiebreaker over the number of perfomances of Miss Saigon. Some very confusing arithmetic ensued and bloodstock agent Larry Stratton confidently predicted there had been 6428 shows of Miss Saigon in the West End. It was actually 4000 and something and Tony's team was closer. We tried to lodge an objection with quizmaster Mike Cattermole as it was Tony's wife Sue who had set the questions for the excellent quiz, but he was too busy flirting with various female members of Camilla Milbank's team (who came last and won all the raffle prizes) to listen to our cries.

John blames me for our loss over a cock-up between One Man and The Fellow but luckily for me he's lost his voice so I don't have to listen to his whingeing, particularly as I keep reminding him that he needs to recover in time for his Melbourne Cup stint on At The Races on Monday night. A mute commentator is not much use, although it would be quite a bonus if it was Matt Chapman.