Last week Monday/Tuesday

January 26-27th

THE early Monday morning flight to Leeds Bradford for the Doncaster January sale proves quite a struggle after a very late night at the ITBA Awards.

My humour is not helped at Dublin Airport where I had availed of the Fast Track service that is on special offer in January. As I am presenting my ticket, somebody waves half a dozen people through to the Fastrack channel just ahead of me.

Needless to say, they each have the full quota of hand luggage with copious amounts of hidden liquids let alone an increasingly impatient passenger behind them in serious need of coffee.

With Irish buyers likely to be the dominant force, DBS give a most enjoyable dinner that evening. I sit between Cheltenham chairman Robert Waley-Cohen and Derek O’Connor, the most successful point-to-point rider in history. Derek has recently joined DBS as an Irish agent and his knowledge of the sport should prove invaluable when attracting horses for the Spring Sales in Doncaster. This is the traditional end of season finale and the biggest National Hunt horses-in-training sale anywhere.

Before the DBS dinner, I decide to go for a long walk all around the town centre and, knowing that the town does not have the best reputation, I dress as menacingly as I can. Basically I replace my trilby hat with a black beanie and put on my orange runners (which somebody gave me on account of the NN logos).

To my dismay, a lady walking in front of me is obviously slightly anxious about somebody following her down a relatively poorly lit pavement. I try to remove her concerns a little by singing my three-year daughter Lara’s favourite song, “The wheels on the bus go round and round”, but this convinces her that I am definitely a full-on weirdo and the poor lady crosses the road at the first opportunity.

Famous natives of Doncaster include footballer Kevin Keegan, One Direction member Louis Tomlinson and perhaps, most surprisingly of all, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson. I read somewhere that Clarkson’s parents made a living (which is hard to believe) from producing tea cosies. Things however looked up when they produced a stuffed toy version of Paddington Bear, to which they cleverly added wellington boots in order for him to stay upright.

The city centre of Doncaster actually has some magnificent buildings from the mid-19th century, including St George’s Minster, which can be seen from many approaches to the town, and the Corn Exchange in the old market square. Apparently the market there is one of the biggest in the north so I must fit in an early morning walk on my next visit.

At the other end of the architectural scale, early evening business on a Monday in Doncaster seems to centre on a surprisingly large number of betting shops, kebab shops and, most strangely, barber shops. Maybe a regular teatime routine of a shish kebab and a Lucky 15 results in rapid hair growth. If so, I better give it a try.

The sale on Tuesday went really well with an average equivalent to over €12,000. Interestingly only two of the top 10 weanlings there were by Irish stallions so it would suggest that some British breeders are reading the market well. The top priced mare Night Of Passion, in foal to Midnight Legend, should produce a foal which will prove as enjoyable to name as any born this year.

Friday

January 30th

On Friday afternoon, I have to meet Lucy in Portlaoise so I head to see our 1966 Lambourn horsebox which is being restored nearby.

For this project I entrusted the help of Ger Hennessy at Goffs whose knowledge and enthusiasm for old machinery is certainly greater than mine. A friend of his, Ronan Dowling, collected the horsebox from Ballinlough back in the spring of 2013 so it is definitely time to speed things up a bit.

I am pleased to find the horsebox in his workshop although slightly alarmed to notice that it has two less wheels and two less doors than when I last saw it but Ronan’s work is of the highest quality (or so he tells me).

When I suggest that a one-armed mechanic working alone might get the job done a little quicker, he points out that the instruction from Ger was “do it in your own time” to which I respectfully suggest that this timetable should still aim to coincide with my lifetime.

Ronan’s parents Michael and Alison Dowling used to run the hugely popular Preston House restaurant on the Main Street in Abbeyleix and Ronan actually worked front of house so I imagine that he has a greater understanding of “a quick turnaround” than he is letting on.

Opposite Ronan’s yard in the village of Attanagh is the Irish Fly-Fishing and Game Shooting Museum which I did not previously know about. Further investigation on the internet reveals that it was founded in 1986 and is the work of Walter Phelan. Hopefully the museum is open next time that I am there.

The vintage horsebox is a legacy of my family’s involvement for many years with the horsebox business in Lambourn. I worked there part-time soon after I was able to drive and I remember delivering a new two-box, as they were known, to a trainer in Newmarket. The trainer’s wife kindly gave me a cup of tea and dropped me back to the station afterwards to make my way home.

A few weeks later at the races, the same lady was walking towards me with two friends. I still cringe today when I think of my innocent greeting, “Hello Mrs -----, how’s your box?”

Tuesday/Wednesday

February 3rd-4th

I am back in the DBS office in Hawick this week to go through a number of things including the Breeze Up sale, some issues from last week’s sale and the annual mailing list review.

Printing and mailing catalogues is an expensive business and it is important to ensure that we are getting the distribution right. Nowadays everybody has 24/7 access to all catalogues, past and present, via the internet and several key buyers prefer to use i-pads instead of conventional catalogues, so there is an opportunity to be more efficient.

When e-mail and the internet were beginning to become readily available, there was an element of the Goffs management that resisted its introduction, mainly for fear of security to our accounting systems. The compromise was to invest in a really effective firewall or spam filtering programme that would block any hackers and also prevent anybody attempting to use the internet for inappropriate purposes.

It is hard to believe but this resulted in our blocking any website or e-mail with the word STUD in it, in case it gave access to inappropriate films involving pizza delivery men. Fortunately the problem was spotted fairly quickly and, with e-mail only in its relative infancy, no damage was done.

Next week sees the first sale of the year at Goffs. The February Sale always has a mixed catalogue with flat and National Hunt horses of all ages. The small supplementary catalogue includes Urticaire, a Grade 1-placed winning hurdler, who is a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Trifolium. She looks sure to make a top class National Hunt mare.

As soon as this sale is over, the Goffs team will be in full inspection mode for the Land Rover Sale, for which nominations have been constantly arriving since the Goffs Thyestes day at Gowran.