Joey Ramsden
It is impossible to get things going down here with the miserable weather, with another poor forecast set for today. I was actually looking forward to spending 24 hours in Natal, and I believe it was their awards dinner on Thursday evening. Although I did not receive an invite.
I wished all our horses which were nominated for the awards well. My birthday this past Tuesday got off to a good start with me not getting wet on the tracks. It is extremely windy and the rain could well be on its way. I am sure it is. As we all know, everyone in Cape Town is a weather forecaster. We have a number of weather forecasters who come to ride work. All of them are experts as to what is going to happen weather wise.
It is amazing that all the meteorologists we see on television, who have actually studied the weather, cannot compare to the experts who ride work at my stables. One of our assistants, Burger Viljoen, is the ultimate weatherman. He swore blind he was busy getting wet, despite the fact there was not a raindrop in sight. Mike de Kock swears the south easter sends us Capetonians mad. It certainly has done the job with Burger. Anyway, we will never let him live this down and we will probably have him in tears by the end of the day. Life is tough at the Ramsden yard.
I have chatted with the course maestro, Dean Diedericks, and with the storms that were predicted, the Cape meetings were always in jeopardy. However, with the strong winds we had, I had thought hopefully that the rain would hold off long enough for us to get through the meeting.
The weather forecast for the weekend was also not good (and this has been confirmed by master weatherman, Andrew Fortune, who has just popped in). Everyone is a weatherman!
I managed to stay awake during the Manchester United vs Chelsea football game and it has left me even more convinced that Manchester City will win the premiership this year. One can say Mourinho came there to defend but neither side looked in any danger of scoring. Chelsea certainly have no Ronaldos’ this year, that is for sure.
My great mate, Peter White, was there at the game and I am sure it must have bored him silly despite the fact that it looked to be a tremendous atmosphere. As I mentioned, birthday celebrations were stymied due to us having to attend a concert in Goodwood to watch the Elkanah thrush (Holly, my daughter) sing in the school choir. It is a two and a half hour show and she sings in 3 songs. Should be a cracker!
My only hope for salvation was Andrew Fortune’s daughter – who is also in the choir – and was also having to sing. So at least I HAD someone to chuckle and giggle along with and shorten the evening. Not a lot of birthday cheer on the horizon this year but I saved a few bob. We managed to get a few horses out on the baby grass at Milnerton.
I am sure there are some people who would like to stone me for doing this but the grass is there and open for everybody. We really do look to have some smashing unraced horses. I am very excited and cannot wait to get them going. We only had one runner in Durban last week in Captain’s Bounty. I thought we would run extremely well. We had Anton up and he told me he could not miss a place.
I personally told him I would run him over with a bus if he did not find a place and I was hoping that he would do even better than that. However, as we all know, Anton knows best! He ended up running second.
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