Thursday September 29th 2022

Wish I hadn’t noticed it was running!

The real problem is that some people are so precious ,pompous and can't hack it being around normal blokes and have no sense of fun or humour. Ring any bells ?

Now its the CELEBS on TRASH tv shows etc

Ha! That was at Sandown for John Jenkins nearly 30 years ago. One of the amateur riders admiring the Haigh seat was the young Donald McCain and another was Lord Manton. It takes all sorts!

Fine start with a 20 to 1 winner.

What an opening gambit! Awesome.

I may have missed your reference to your annual pilgrimage to Longchamp. Are you booked and looking forward to it this year? Usually, I have an antepost bet, but not this year,as they have been ill-fated. I never did follow Dilton's tip for Sottsass, though. As it was presumably named after the italian architect and designer, I should have done.

Statues: I noticed that the highest price for any sculpture by Sally Arnup (1930-2015) (animal sculptures) was achieved the week before last for a bronze representation of a horse, about 6 feet high all told, on a stone plinth: £23,000. I think ten of these were cast.

"Arab Horse Aslan" (1985).

I don't know if this was a real horse as the ones named Aslan I found were racing well after 1985.

Sally Arnup was a prodigy and attended art school as a young teenager. She produced a huge number of animal sculptures in her lifetime. She always worked from real animals, I believe. She worked until her death, aged 85. She had a stroke in a stable modelling another large horse sculpture and subsequently died in hospital..

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/exhibitions/15396052.final-exhibition-and-sale-of-sally-and-mick-arnups-work-on-show-at-the-studios-in-holtby/

I know you are not fond of sculptures, but it might look splendid in your garden? But you'd need to insure it.

P.S . Mrs J has just told me that Hannah Arup (Sally's daughter) runs the Ballymorris Pottery,

Ballymorris, Cratlowe, Co Clare.

P.P.S I have no financial interest in any of this (unfortunately).

Quai,

Yes. Longchamp bound., laying going well.

Coldstream ran respectably on handicap debut behind a well handicapped horse.

William Coldstream is one of my favourite British artists, member of the influential Euston Road School in the 1930s, official War Artist and later head of painting at the Slade School of Art. He is one of the most respected figurative painters and teachers of the 20th century. And yet the Tate, who own 14 fine examples of his work, currently have on display precisely zero. Shameful.