Monty’s Award – January 2024 Blog
Now I am twelve. Things are pretty much the same as they were when I was eleven, except that it is colder out. I am yet to deduce whether it is me or the weather that is responsible with this situation, but I have never been at fault before, so the smart money is on the weather.
A couple of my proteges have been victorious since the last blog entry and I am delighted to note that they both did it exactly as I instructed. In the case of Gold Claremont, my exact words to her were: “Just amble around in your own time and wait for the others to run out of patience. Steer clear of any puddles, however tempting they might be.” If I am honest, I was distracted by a pile of hay and misheard her, thinking she said that she was running at Huntingdon, but fortunately the advice worked just as well for Fakenham. Who would have guessed that?
With Godot, I did not have anything specific about his race to recommend, but I have been drumming it into him that winning by as small margin as possible gives you the best chance of repeating the result, and getting the due accolades and attention, plus if you leave it too late and just fail narrowly everyone tends to feel sorry for you and blame the jockey. From the horse’s perspective, it is essential that you admit no culpability and instantly join in the blame game. A generally good guideline is that it is never the horse who is responsible, unless there is 100% irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
As you can imagine, these results make me feel rather pleased with myself, even more so than normal, and the best thing about it is that it took absolutely no effort on my part whatsoever. It has been suggested that I should work alongside my team on the gallops shouting out coaching points and encouragement all the way.
“Go a bit faster! Go slightly slower! Once more round! Don’t jump in the lake!”
As you can see, I certainly have the lingo sorted. Alas, the news is that this is not going to happen. However, I am told that Aidan O’Brien drives alongside his horses on the gallops, micromanaging the work riders. If anyone wants to drive me up the gallops, I would be prepared to give it a go. Even better, if somebody would be prepared to teach me to drive myself, I will do that too. Thinking about it, perhaps a monorail from the bottom of the hill up to the top. A training aid in the morning, a tourist attraction in the afternoon. Even if I build a state of the art mag-lev line, it will pay for itself in no time at all. The parts can be flown in when the Chinese government returns my airship that they stole. I was only ten when that happened…
This month’s question is from Mr Xi Jinping of Beijing, who asks, “I told you (repeatedly!) that we did not steal your airship, the Houthis shot it down. When are you going to stop hassling me about this?” An interesting question, mostly because when I last saw it, the airship was in a field at Shovelstrode, so how did it end up near Yemen anyway? The second question comes from our old friend Mel Gibson, who advises, “The airship was stolen by a combined Taiwanese/Iranian/Israeli black ops team, in order to frame the Chinese government. Why can’t you see the obvious?” And here was I thinking that if it was not the Chinese, it might have been root vegetable rights protesters.