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AP – yep, that’s the same Clive Boultbee-Brooks as has given training a go himself most recently.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
A human rather than equine retirement, this, but William Easterby has hung up his boots today after 102 pointing winners and 45 under Rules.
He’s just got too much on now to fit in raceriding, being variously heavily involved in the running of Charm Park point-to-point course in Scarborough (a venue which would be one of the best in the country at present, as exemplified by the calibre of present and future stars it’s attracting now); in the Point-to-Point Authority (has just been appointed as an independent board member thereto); in the riding career of younger brother Tom; and of course in the “family firm” with father Tim.
I expect the retirement will be marked in an appropriate manner at his home hunt’s point-to-point, the Sinnington at Duncombe Park this weekend.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The previous season’s Scottish, Irish and Midlands Nationals, perhaps? Also an undertaking to reschedule any of those qualifying races lost to the weather.
That would then mean just shy of one quarter of available starting places would be ringfenced for qualifiers, though, with the possibly unintended consequence of even more sharp practice as regards protecting handicap marks, etc. as is already assumed if not proven.
As such, I’m not sure whether introducing qualifiers is a fix to be implemented in isolation, without some further tweaking of other criteria. The need for only one prior chase outing in the present season seems to me like somewhere to start.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
That Music List continues. Edition #238 includes music from Hydroplane, Miki Berenyi Trio, Robyn, The Field Mice, Bill Nelson, August Actually, Care, Die Ärzte, Ming, Dry Cleaning, Manu Chao, The Yummy Fur, Lande Hekt, Dubstar, Future Bible Heroes and many more.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
That Music List continues. Edition #237 includes music from Cardiacs, Lightning in a Twilight Hour, Nev Clay, Stereolab, Duck, Telex, Red Pony Clock, David Leach, The Lemonheads, L Dopa, Martha, Labradford, Nina Nastasia, I Jordan and many, many more.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Moe, it sounds as if you’re going through a little rut music-wise at present not dissimilar to mine. This will pass, trust me; the good stuff will find you once more.
Hazel continues to write and perform, musically as one half of alt.folk.rock dup The Jesus Bolt. Two EPs and two albums in almost eight years so far, so not wildly prolific. She’s had poetry published in the recent past also.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
You’re very kind, Drone, thank you! I’m not sure last week’s post heralds a step up in posting activity to anywhere remotely close to my mid-late 2000s levels, life being very different now; but it’s nice to know there are still longstanding posters who remember me, and me them.
Still in the Steel City, aye, though with the family commitments still on the intense side I rarely venture further from home than the Yorkshire and Midlands for pointing these days. Kimble last Easter Saturday was very much an outlier in the present reality, the family having made a weekend of it with a stay in Oxford.
Music blog updated again this weekend just gone, and will be again this Saturday.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I’m no great believer in life targets, objectives, New Year’s Resolutions, etc., as enough about the last few years in particular reminds me that life’s vicissitudes can frequently derail them in ways unforeseeable or unimaginable.
One thing I did get round to doing last weekend, however, was finally make good on a promise to myself to reactivate my music blog That Music List after a hiatus of an unintentionally long seven and three quarter years.
It’s taken a while to get back to writing about music, and indeed enjoying listening to music it to its fullest again, after somehow, somewhere along the way, falling out of love of doing both at the turn of the decade.
Writing my annual Eurovision analyses, plus a short-lived occasional Twitter feed reviewing every UK chart entry for a given week in history, were both persevered with, but each often felt like a chore at times.
For the latter in particular, there’d frequently be more songs I disliked than liked, and writing quite so much about those felt unrewarding, a drain of energy and broadly at odds with my generous disposition.
CDs were still being bought and downloads downloaded, but more of them were finding their way onto the unplayed pile and staying there. Gigs were still being sought out and tickets bought for, but ultimately only two gigs were attended in four and a half years from the start of 2020 (a length of time lockdown alone can’t legislate for), with every excuse possible dreamed up for not going out.
Was this marked disengagement a manifestation of depression? I’m not convinced. Most of my other interests continued to receive attention in a way they wouldn’t have were it that.
Was music a victim of significant other competing distractions, notably adoptive parenthood? Unlikely. The kids love music, and love when we compile them playlists for holidays.
Who knows where that attachment went. It certainly wasn’t borne out of a lack of anything interesting to listen to, as there’s *never* not good new music being made, if one knows where to look with a sufficiently open heart, along with a musical past so big that the task of exploring it all in our lifetime will defeat every one of us.
Either way, the ennui evidently just had to run its course, and run it it did.
It was my wife Linda who spotted my returning enthusiasm first; initially when I was agonising over a three-way clash of gigs in Manchester/Middlewich/York last July in a way I hadn’t for an eternity (I plumped for Nev Clay in York and regretted it not one iota), and then when catching me using every conceivable opportunity to have Spotify playing playlists of Europop favourites in the holiday home of our French break a few weeks later.
The fire had been relit. Since then, it’s been a case of catching up with my backlog (a long way to go yet), seeing what else is new out there, and reawakening my old penchant for serendipitous discoveries on mailing lists and YouTube.
I’ve also felt a stronger desire to revisit the various nooks and crannies of my music collection than I can remember for a long time. It’s eye-opening to consider my absolute peak record-buying years – 1993 to 2004, I suppose – started more than half my lifetime ago now. Ah, anno domini.
There are scores, hundreds even, of albums and singles from that decade-long glut of purchasing that deserve to be working harder than they have for a good while, and all the more so with the kids likely to want to start exploring them in the round before much longer – hints are often dropped.
These reawakened behaviours cumulatively informed my thoughts on restarting That Music List, and I spent a good bit of time over Xmas determining how I envisage it nowadays.
Very much not as the slavish, rote exercise to find as many new songs as possible every week which the List sometime became in the latter period of its original lifespan (2009-2018), not always engaging fully with what I’d find.
Instead, rather, I see it now as a love letter to the music in my collection, and to the music I intend to add to it, or am in the process of doing. I see it as a more thematically driven resource than previously, in the hope of keeping it interesting for compiler and viewer/listener alike. And I see it as a thankyou, direct or implied, to the people who led me back to a place of loving music again, whether they actually knew they had or not.
Anyhow, this (rapidly becoming last) week’s List includes some personal 2025 highlights from Cardiacs, Lightning in a Twilight Hour and Stereolab; some Eurodisco brilliance from your favourite deadpan Belgians; some Lemonheads loveliness from over three decades apart; tracks from Nev Clay and Duck as an expression of love and gratitude; some Peel-endorsed progressive house; a psychedelic mariachi ensemble (their words) from the first Indietracks I attended; a tribute to Dave Ball; and plenty more. I hope you find something you enjoy in there.
I don’t recall at this remove what the theme of the early Family Cat single Remember What It Is That You Love was all about, but shorn of any context that’s a song title that works well as a mantra for life.
And remembering what it is that I love is music is something I’m very glad I’ve been able to do.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
From Olly Murphy’s Facebook page:
I’m delighted to say Thomas Darby has been retired and will have an amazing retirement with Holly Tetsill who has devoted her life to TD over the last 7 years!
A winner of 7/27 starts, including a long distance hurdle at Newbury. He was also placed in 2 Grade 1s reaching a mark of 158 at his peak!
Happy retirement Thomas 💙
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The final point-to-point until the autumn takes place this Sunday at Bratton Down (EX31 4SG) up on Exmoor. There should have been another fixture the following Saturday at Umberleigh, but that’s already fallen foul of the ongoing very dry spell.
The 2025-26 fixture list won’t be published for another three months, I’d have thought, but recent precedent suggests it will all kick off again on the first or second week of November, most likely around the Knightwick circuit in the Malvern Hills. Two of the winners at last November’s Knightwick fixture, Barton Sun and Gracchus de Balme, have had a pretty good day of it again today.
The new season up here in Yorkshire will resume a couple of Sundays into January, at Mick Easterby’s own course at Sheriff Hutton.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
That’s splendid, espmadrid, many thanks indeed for sharing! (I’ve long since owed you a reply to a private email, incidentally – my apologies).
Obscured a little as it was from that sideways view, it’s nevertheless on the softer sides of unseats, isn’t it. We’d give that as “rfo” (rider fell off) in the pointing comments in running, for sure.
The middle one down the straight at Fontwell isn’t notably trappy, as far as I can recall – certainly not compared to the downhill one at the start of the back straight.
Yeats– this would have been among Alan’s very first Racetech calls, as he joined the roster in 2004 alongside Malcolm Tomlinson and Phil Curry.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Dale Benkenstein sent on his way by Lancashire earlier this week, it appears, and an opening night’s victory in the T20 Blast immediately follows. Possibly coincidental, equally possibly not.
I suspect that’s it for Dale as a coach in this country, having taken two counties to the foot of CC division two in the space of two and a half seasons. A shame on a personal level, considering his more fruitful experiences as a player over here for a while.
Let’s see what the future holds for his son Luc at Essex going forward. It’s been quiet from him so far this year, but I’d have assumed to see more of him in the one-day format anyway, what with Matthew Critchley continuing to block his most obvious path in the CC starting XI.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
£30k would be weeny as an outright prize, let alone a prize pool. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the code or of the time of season.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Just watched the video for the first time. Unless I missed them there’s not a single hurdle or fence jumped, no sign of any artificial surface racing, and not the merest suggestion of rain.
It’s certainly selling a pretty narrow, and not especially representative, tranche of what a raceday experience might comprise.
Think I’ll stick to the £15 or under entry, access all areas, unvetted picnics and (usually) absence of cokeheads at the Yorkshire Area point-to-points, where the going is not just good, but reyt.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Large update on this thread to follow sometime in the near future.
More immediately, however, a quick question to the floor. Would anybody happen to know the precise dates between which there were two separate commentary feeds directly from the racecourse, please – one from the Racetech-booked caller and one from the commentator for SIS/Sky/whosoever else?
I’m thinking this must have started around the early May Bank Holiday in 1992. That does appear to have been the week in which both John Hunt (Salisbury 06/05/92; Racetech booking unknown) and Richard Hoiles (Bath 09/05/92, whilst Bruce Friend-James did the Racetech shift) made their respective first ever racecourse commentaries. John confirmed that was his first go in a YouTube interview with Simon Nott not so long ago, detailing how he’d even done a full recce to the course and back the day before.
The excellent Robin Carmody, responsible for so much of the original impetus in this thread, suggested to me that the practice ceased in spring 1995 ahead of the Racing Channel launch that November, though if anyone can absolutely nail it down that’d likely be hugely appreciated by the both of us.
I’d long assumed that the two streams were in deadly competition with each other, but that’s likely not actually true. They were serving two distinct audiences, one on-course (with a need to refer to colours, etc.) and one off-course (to mostly listeners rather than viewers), and of course there was a degree of overlap between the personnel working each service.
Indeed, fellow anorak and point-to-point/Equida commentator Mike Crolla recently sent me the link to an edition of Channel 4’s Morning Line, in which Graham Goode actually launched an impassioned defence of the parallel services, citing how a merged team would see some commentators go out of pocket and the remainder would be sent all round the country more than previously thereafter to the detriment of their wellbeing.
Certainly Graham’s first point was borne out, with the likes of Doug Fraser edged out of the commentary picture for a few years and the likes of SIS’s Paul Alster never making it onto the Racetech roster in the form we’ve come to know it since.
Thanks in advance!
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Cool Roxy won eleven at Fakenham, of course, with nine other podium finishes from 26 course visits all told.
My favourite pointer Chesnut Annie won on ten of her twelve visits to Howick, including all nine between 2007 and 2012.
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
It’s interesting that Ice Saint pecked at the same fence a circuit earlier.
Horse or pilot error?
And error or “error”?
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Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
