Horse progress

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Well, the day has been and gone. Elena went to the races. We haven’t come home from Ashburton jubilantly bearing a prize – Elena finished 11th – but with some motives for satisfaction. The result isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Firstly, she behaved. She went away well from her second line draw (see pic, she’s the yellow one) and, even though they went a cracking pace over the first half mile she went along with them. However, up front, there was a deal of cat-and-mouse going on, and during one of the sudden slowings of the pace, Elena .. tightly enclosed on the rails in the large field … got squashed for space, ennerved and ran out for a few strides. She made the ground back, but .. she wasn’t comfortable in there. And her hood had come adrift. Into the straight she was still in the middle of the field, and she trucked on past one or two of the fading ones and being passed by the fast finishers from the rear…
John, the driver, said she had done fine, and she will doubtless do better next time. But we have begun. After all this time, we have at least begun.



Back at home (where the bathroom and bedroom had been painted in our absence), it was time to turn the spotlight on baby D’Arcy. He is scheduled to leave us for his ‘finishing school’ at Motukarara this week, so it was time to teach him to walk into the barn. This is not a simple thing. Babies (a) don’t want to go ‘in’ places and (b) they have never experienced concrete under their feet. Last year it took ¾ hour and the threat of a mighty 4x2 to get little Mikie in, and finally we had bodily to winch him in.



So D’Arcy was walked down the racetrack, round the corner, up to the barn where big Boofie was acting as bait and .. wonder of wonders -- he simply walked straight in!
So he got his photo taken ‘on concrete’ (which he quickly discovered isn’t too much fun to scrape with your unshod hoofs) and I was in wonderment as to how he has grown since he was that wee boy with the bandage on his knee, just one year ago!

Kurt's Folly and the Cup

While the New Zealand Cup was running... life didn't stop! The tiles are down in the Best Bathroom Ever, and the man has been measuring up the glass walls... Progress photos are rather difficult to take, as my lens isn;t up to it... but these are the two ends .. the green waterseal will be covered with opaque beige glass panels..
well, wait for the next instalment and you will see




As for Cup Day, well my tipping wasn't so bad after all. A super win for Monkey King in the Cup, an ALMOST for Running on Time in the big trot, a fourth for Explosive Turk, a superb second for Fake Chance, and the day finished in glory when dear Raggy simply murdered a fine field in the last race. And when I went to my archive, I don't even have a picture of him .. not even as a baby .. with which to decorate this post.

Hey lads, it's the Coop!

Well, here we are at New Zealand’s biggest harness racing week of the year. Most of the best horses in New Zealand will be up against each other this week, starting with Tuesday…

If I say that, hopefully, we will be starting on Thursday, I don’t mean we’ll be part of it. Only once, ever, with dear little Dodo (Master Ado) have I had a horse run in The Cup Meeting. While all the tenors are fighting it out in Christchurch, we are going to shimmy 50 kilometres south to Ashburton, to give Elena her first race day start in slightly less town-hall company. Unfortunately, some of the big guns have the same idea, but hey .. you have to race!

Anyway, Tuesday the big boys will be up and I thought I might try to give you some tips. As with everything, except musical and theatrical history, my heart gets in the way of my head, so I’ll just give you my list of ‘I would love them to win and if I ever was a bettor (which I ain’t) I would back..’s.

Race one: De Gaulle .. a great man and a very nice horse owned by very nice people
Race four: Fake Chance for a place. The superstar favourite, who should be in the Cup, has ruined this race for the second echelon
Race six: torn between Running on Time, potentially one of the very best trotters in NZ, and The Fat Controller who is the uncle of our Duchess…
Race eight: Kotare Mach. Hot favourite, but we love the Kotares (our one is just across there in the paddock)
Race nine: Ronnie Coute .. GO RONNIE! (another relation)
Race 10: the cup. They unfairly denied Special Ops a start, so I’ll be cheering for the Monkey King. But anyone can win (and I pick Australia 1-2-3) as long as – and I have most of the right-thinking racing world with me in this -- its not that toxicomane called Changeover
Race eleven: sneaky outsider tip of the day: Passion and Glory (a little bird…)
Race twelve: Oh! Raggy! The ‘family’ horse… could he? might he? Cross your fingers for Raglan. (Alas he’s up against another horse I love called Second Wind, so maybe its quinella time)

And cheers for M J Fulham, Biella Star, Explosive Turk and all the other pals… but please, don’t spoil the Cup Carnival for me on Day One: no Changeover

4th November again already..

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Three years today.
It feels like ten.



All my love,
Kurt

The birth of a bathroom

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It's happening
Now it looks like a room at least..

Ladies' Day

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My house may be full of men – workmen – but 28 October was definitely ladies’ day.

Duchess giving birth .. and, yes, little Douche is a girl.



And to top it all off, Elena got it right today and ran her best trial to date. She was drawn at the outside of the mobile gate, number seven of eleven starters, but John (Dunn) the driver urged her forward at the start, and continued to urge her on until, as they came past the winning post the first time, she was sitting parked outside the leader. A leader, may it be said, wearing the fearsome blue with white stars of the top-notch Purdon stable.



And she stayed there. As they came into the home straight, she was still there, having a go at the two Purdon horses, and she just kept on coming. I believe she even ht the front inside the last 50 metres. But then a horse named Flash Move, which had sat behind her, in the perfect spot, throughout, turned up its wick and dove past her to win by a fast finishing length. On the line, another fast finisher nosed her into third.
It was a grand run. She’d been three wide for more than half a lap, stuck in the unloved parked place for all the rest, all the old problems of steering had largely disappeared, and best of all she had fought on keenly at the end without John having to drive her out.
As for the competition, well she beat home both of the Purdon horses, and Flash Move went out last Friday at Addington for its first race as a pacer … favourite! So, obviously it’s well thought of. We shall see. And Elena? Well, hopefully 12 November, at Ashburton, will be the occasion of her long awaited race debut. She’s earned it!

Born with the dawn

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It hasn’t been a very bloggable October.
The weather has been pretty drear, and of excitement there has been very little…
Of course, the horses have done their bit..
D’Arcy and Lucie have been slowly and gently learning their lessons… learning what confinement, leading, brushing, coats, people, handling and so forth are all about. D’Arcy has been a fine pupil, Lucie a little less trusting thus a little less confident.
They have been growing-up pals, but now – owing to D’Arcy’s male propensities -- they have to be separated. Still, when it’s his turn in the crush, she comes to say hello..



Elena has been a couple of times to the trials with not wholly satisfying results, so we jiggle with her preparation and we try again..

However, today 27-28 October, things have leaped into action..
Yesterday one boss, one lecky, one plumber, and one and a half builders descended on my house. The bathroom disappeared into a skip in record time, and the hot water cylinder walked out the French doors… the only hiccough was that the new cylinder failed to arrive on schedule (this is New Zealand where punctuality is unknown) so I have no hot water until it does. And now that all is ‘unmade’, for the next month I am going to watch my new super-bathroom arise from the ‘ashes’..



And to celebrate the occasion, Duchess has given birth. At 5h45 this morning, as I slogged out through the chilly megadew to check her out, I noticed she was lying. She got up to greet me, and I could see instantly that she was no longer battleship-size. And alongside her on the grass, a little head…
Welcome to Gerolstein little feller! Or is it a girl. Too dawnish to do the ‘one hole or two’ test. I have christened baby Douche de Gerolstein in honour of the new bathroom. I think, if he’s a boy it may have to be Duc de Gerolstein ..
Baby photos being one of the reasons anyone has babies, here are the first of what will doubtless over the next days be many..

Such is Fame...

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Do you know that in Europe there is publicity for our little New Zealandish farm just everywhere!?

A whole window in a big department store in the heart of Berlin (where I took this photo)

It appears they've even named a town, and a beer, and a cycle team after us...

Such is fame

A Bit of a Surprise

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Lucie's latest lesson. On with the gear and ..oy! .. the bit. Her facial expressions as she tries to work out how best to get rid of this thing that stops her chewing the rails simply had to be recorded!

Maddeningly Masport

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Summer is icumen in and all the jolly little barbecues are getting ready to sizzle. And I looked out at our poor, greasy, dirty old thing, entwined amongst several-year-old branches of wisteria (that’s how long its been there) and thought… ‘one day…’



Then, on Friday morning, a rare event: some of that dreaded advertising stuff succeeded in getting past xtra’s usually efficient spam-blocker and on to my email. Mitre 10 Mega-hardware, down the road, had docked a rather better machine than I’d been vaguely considering by $50, just for the weekend. And it was a Masport: a reputed New Zealand brand whose logburner and lawnmower I already (reasonably) happily own.
So I went out and I brought one home. And if you think that’s the end of the story, I assure you it’s only the very beginning.
The next evening, we unpacked the three big boxes, carefully put all nuts and washers and suchlike safely into a big fruitbowl, and opened the assembly instructions. Immediate chaos. The text of the booklet seemed to bear very little relation to the pieces to hand. We didn’t have nearly enough washers, and there were several unidentified pieces, which we put to one side. But worse, much, much worse, were the verbal instructions. We’ve all read bad manuals: this one is the worst ever. Masport can in no way be a New Zealand firm. This nonsense is definitely translated by a mentally deficient non-English speaker from some Asiatic language. Or perhaps by an Internet auto-translating machine. It explains nothing, identifies nothing, describes things in a language I don’t recognise (do you know what phenolic means? I worked out nyloc, but how to recognise it?), it gives instructions in the wrong order, and instructions for impossible feats ..
Wendy and I opened a bottle of wine and settled down to beating the odds. We eventually got in the ‘two of plain legs’ and ‘two of axle legs’ (‘of’ incorrectly used it the manualist’s favourite word), though I alone wouldn’t have been able to, tried to guess what a ‘cylinder hook’ was and where it went (it didn’t seem to have a use anyway) and two hours and two bottles later, with bruised hands and scraped knuckles from trying to insert washers and nuts in places where only a midget’s hand could fit, we gave up for the night. Putting the handle on the hood was just too much. Why can’t they sell the damn’ hood with its handle ON?
I retired to my computer and tried to register the warranty for the Masport Misfit. It takes quite a while and it won’t accept your ‘form’ if you don’t fill in certain marked areas. One of these was ‘serial number’ (another was ‘phone number’, Masport is seriously unfriendly to we deaf folk who don’t have such things). I think Masport’s website must have been created by the same man who wrote the manual.
By 9pm, I felt like dismantling the wretched piece of machinery and dumping it on Mitre 10’s doorstep at midnight.
Instead, I howled off my frustration by e-mail to the Masport Customer Service department. And suddenly things began to improve. One by one, a young lady named Kim began to set things to right. I don’t know how many emails we’ve exchanged now, but each time we ‘speak’ another frustration vanishes. I won’t say the thing is, finally,100 percent assembled as it should be (and I hold the manual writer 100% responsible if it blows up at first lighting), but at least we have a barbecue… oh, and by the way, the Masport 4 model, guess what, DOESN’T HAVE A SERIAL NUMBER!




Masport needs seriously to get its act together. I won’t be buying another of its products until I am assured that it is a New Zealand firm, with New Zealand employees, manuals written by someone with at least a pass in School Cert English (and Engineering?) and a website set up by someone feeling and competent ... and while they are at it they should make Kim managing director. Or at least head of personnel or advertising. And get her to write the manual, too, as she obviously understands these things. Thanks, Kim.

PS The machine is scheduled to make its debut tomorrow night when a small slice of the Canterbury theatre world comes to visit .. If you read in the paper that half of New Zealand’s top talent was wiped out by an explosion at Sefton, you can blame the (?) Japanese author of the maddening Masport manual.

Lucie's lesson on line

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Day two at school for D'Arcy and Lucie.
The day's new adventure was to learn to walk, on the lead, behind the jogger..
D'Arcy had to go first, because propinquity with his pretty niece has to be kept to a minimum. It took him a little while to get the jist of the thing: for a couple of paddock-laps he tried to play tug-of-war with me and my tractor, but he soon settled and when he had done a couple of model laps, Wendy trundled him down the alleyway to Yard Number One, specially set up for feisty young boys.



Safely installed, he was given the benefit of a bit of worldly wisdom from one of our Elder Statesmen



And before long, he was hooning proprietorially round his new kingdom and apparently not even thinking about fillies



We thought that Lucie, who gives an air of being a little more apprehensive than D'Arcy, would probably go less well, and need a soft and gentle lesson. Nothing of the kind! As the tractor moved slowly off, I waited for the customary first protesting tug ... but it never came. She walked nearly all the way, with just the odd little hop and skip when we went over a bump. A splendid first effort .. Wendy had no need to walk alongside her, and so was able to film the (as you can hear, decidedly windy) proceedings



Bringing up babies can be tough, but these two (so far!) are proving pleasing pupils!

Bathroom!

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Oh Lord! It's much much more expensive than I intended...
But what the hell, I'm only going to do it once in my life..
And its nothing to do with the fact that Mr Richard Revamp Design is cuter than its safe to be...

The Language of the Flowers

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On 15 February 1996, Ian and I planted a magnolia tree in our garden at Fernenland, St Arnaud, to mark my fiftieth birthday.

Not too many years later, when we quit Fernenland for Gerolstein, we took the commemorative plant along. But it never seemed to thrive, and for ten years and more it gave us just a display of leaves and occasionally a shrivelled frostbitten floral bud..

Finally, now, with my 64th birthday hovering in the near future, the tree has burst into flower ..

I wonder if it's trying to tell me something,,

What a Difference a Year Makes

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Not even a year. Here are D'Arcy and Lucie (still glued to their mothers) in December of 2008...




And here they are on 1 October 2009.
D'Arcy has changed enormously (he was, of course, only a month old in his 'hospital' picture), and has grown into probably the best-looking of all Gwen's babies. Let's hope that Beauty Does as Beauty is!
Lucie, who has the Sundon blood inherited from her mother, is rather finer than her uncle. She is also a Girl. And thus she hasn't done the boyish burst of yearish-old growing that D'Arcy has. But she's still as stunning as she was when a wee thing...
It's evident that Love You throws splendid babes..
And in a month or so we'll have another around the place!

Babes Behind Bars!

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No, it’s not what you think. I’m talking horses. As usual.
It’s that time of year when those little bundles of long legs (and monstrous knees) that came into our lives 10-12 months ago take their first lessons in practical horseship.
Yesterday, Lucie and D’Arcy were hitched to the railings inside the crush, their warm coats removed, and…
A good springtime brushing such as they have never had before.. soft winter hair flying with every stroke of the brush, enough of it to stuff a large cushion! And, amazingly, neither protested..



Every foal we’ve ever had from the ‘Robinson’ breed – from Duchess through Boris and Wanda to Fritzl and Seppl, has always protested.. but not these two! What a nice surprise!
Then, on to feet. They have to learn to let their feet be picked up so that they can be inspected and their hoofs tidied and trimmed. Once again, they were fine. D’Arcy’s trim was quite a long one, but he stayed calm and only tried a few times to nip Wendy’s back..
Lucie was a little less sure but still far better than average. Phew!



Next, the famous wormer. Most horses make a frightful fuss over taking wormers. Lucie’s mother was the worst: she’d put up a ten minute battle rather than take anything by mouth. These days she’s less neurotic, and its down to five minutes, but Lucie ... well, as of today she’s the wormer champion. Although, after having taken the stuff she wasn’t at all impressed with its flavour…



D’Arcy, in his turn, discovered that lead ropes aren’t only for leading, they have other attractions. Like, a substitute for chewing gum! Well, I suppose a boy has to have some bad habits..



Lesson number one done, covers back on, and back to the paddock..
Rather more separate paddocks than before.
For D’Arcy has realised that he is male, and that Lucie (his niece, and anyway 2 months older than him!) is a Woman …

Tomorrow, lesson two…

While that big girl is basking in her success

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and not keeping an eye on her bucket...

It's the moment for a soft-footed kitty to profit from the occasion ..

Elena's Big Day, or 'I am a racehorse'

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Well, it came at last. 23 September 2009. Three and a half years since Elena first became part of the Gerolstein family, and changed her maiden name of ‘Bromac’ for the rolling ‘Elena de Gerolstein’. She’s been through quite a lot since then, including that big operation on her throat, but since she returned to training and then to the workouts track, it’s been evident that she can run somewhat, and that she would undeniably make a racehorse. But fate still had the odd sneaky to throw at her. When she went to qualify something went wrong. When she was about to go a second time, we found that her corpuscles had been up the spout the first time and she wasn’t yet quite over it. So we scratched. Today was the third time. And this time…
It still wasn’t all smoothness. But not because of her. First of all, although it didn’t rain here, it did at Bank’s Peninsula, leaving a soggyish track which would slow the horses by a couple of seconds. Then, we arrived at the track, only to find that the naughty mare had left her bridle back at Gerolstein. So I wandered across to the Edmonds homestead to borrow a replacement. There I met a middle-sized dobermann named Weasel. When I took no notice of him, Weasel pouted and buried his teeth in my calf. So I returned to the racetrack, with bridle, but sticking-plastered behind, and with blood dribbling down my leg. Someone said it’s good luck to get bitten by a dog. If so, thank you Weasel, but next time choose a bit of me that isn’t naked.



Elena’s qualifying heat had drawn a field of … two. But the other starter was a richly-bred Christian Cullen filly from the stud of my old amateur-driving colleague Mike Stratford, trained by the all-(or nearly all)-conquering Tim Butt. Classy company.
Off the mobile gate, Elena powered straight to the front, and Murray [Edmonds] kept her there, hooning along at safely a bit faster than the qualifying-rate needed, towing the other fellow along, until the home straight, where he loomed up greenly outside her. Murray let him loom, and when he zipped past, Murray let him zip. He knew he was five whole seconds inside qualifying time, and there was no sense in gutting our gigantic girl by giving chase uneccessarily. A qualifying trial (unless you are trying to sell your animal and want to look impressive) is just that: all you have to do is beat the clock, and you’re a ‘winner’. Elena not only did the time, she clocked 3 ½ seconds better than the time. On a soggy track, and with an unforced last 400 metres. Excuse us if we’re delighted.
I haven’t got any photos of the race. Well, I have several photos of Elena’s backside: she was gone too fast before the shutter closed! But I do have this one, as she came off the track, and I love it. Wendy hurrying to say ‘well done, our girl’ as Murray brings her in... a qualified racehorse at last!



One last (for the moment) Elena photograph. I can’t resist it. Standing by the float, waiting to be loaded for the homeward journey. Upright and haughty, with that look that made me fall in love with her at first sight at Bromac Lodge in February 2006, saying: ‘I require to be taken home now, if you please’



Tomorrow, on the other side of the world, Ténor will have his turn at the ‘quallies’ at the racetrack of the city of Caen … if he can do as well as she, this will be a wonderful week. Give or take a Weasel-bite.

Half a century ago in the West End..

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It's amazing what you find when you start on a big spring-clean and chuck out..

Look at this. It was taken in February 1962, on the occasion of the London production of Noel Coward's musical Sail Away. That, of course, is the not-yet-Sir Noel looking self-consicously sphinxial in the middle. And the cute little feller with glasses is my Ian ... Ian Archibald Winchcombe Bevan of Australia .. a dozen years before we met.
I wonder if this picture has been reproduced before, or whether I'm adding something to the historical pictorial-data box.

I

Flu and fire

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It’s a week since I landed in New Zealand. A week of jet-lag and of the most awful Qantas cold (I would definitely count it as flying flu) which, between them, have stopped me from getting sufficiently out and about, even around the green, green paddocks of Gerolstein.
I limped forth for doctor, blood-letter and dentist, I made it to the local racetrack to watch Elena rehearsing for her Big Day on Wednesday, I crawled through the grocery and the hardware shops and fulfilled other such necessities of life, but otherwise … well, I have barely even hugged a horse.



Today, however, dawned a perfect spring day. It was impossible to stay indoors, even to mull my plans for building myself a beautiful bathroom as an anniversary present. I’ve never had one. A beautiful bathroom, that is. Even in my Mayfair mansions, even in my St Paul de Vence triplex, glorious and luxurious homes that they were, the bathrooms wouldn’t have passed muster in a two-star hotel. And this one is the worst of all … see below. You couldn’t swing a starving kitten in it (sorry, Minnie). So, I have called in ‘Revamp Design’ and he is coming the day after tomorrow to look at smashing down a wall and …



Getting ahead of the act, I this morning started a major spring clean and chuck out (‘if you haven’t used it in two years…’), which resulted in a vast heap of burnables, which needed to go on last year’s vaster pile of tree-toppings-in-the-paddock-waiting-to-be-burned, which meant that the mares had to be got out of the fire-paddock, and since the Grand Duchess is nine months gone, it was the perfect day to strip off her winter coat and let her feel the sun on her back, before she was moved on to the lush grass in a fresh and maternally-provocative paddock..
The Duchess is looking splendid. Big, motherly, glowing and splendid. Normally, she will foal at the beginning of November, so I had better make sure to be here. Even though, of course, the child she is carrying is not mine. Being already in possession of quite enough baby horses, I have loaned Duchess this year to The Man Who Knows More About Breeding Than Anyone. But, of course, I shall still be a godfather.



So. I’ve burned the annual fires, and with them I’ve thrown out great chunks of my old life: stuff that I’ve hiked, down the years, from London to St Paul to New Zealand. I know, on occasions like this you can burn too much. But I don’t think the National Museum/Library of New Zealand will want Gänzl manuscripts and memorabilia. This country has never really considered me a ‘New Zealand author’, any more than they consider my brilliant brother a ‘New Zealand poet’. (I will say however that the Library does annotate my cards ‘author is a New-Zealander’). Oh dear, ‘funeral’ pyres do provoke extraordinary thoughts.

But in a way, that’s what this is. During the winter, Wendy has worked magic in transforming the farm. It has never looked so lovely. But it is different. So now it is up to me. It is time, nearly three years on, to turn this place into ‘Kurt’s holiday home’ rather than ‘the place where Kurt and Ian lived, and Ian died’. The bathroom will be a good start. Go for the bathroom…?

Livia de Gerolstein

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Now, those of you who read this blog will know all about Elena de Gerolstein, Lucie de Gerolstein and D’Arcy de Gerolstein – how could you not --, but you may very well not have heard, except in passing, about Livia de Gerolstein..
Yes, another one.
But Livia lives not in New Zealand – nor even in France -- but in Australia.
And, yes, she’s ours. Mine and Wendy’s.

How did we come to own a horse in Australia? Well, its like this ….

During the weeks before I leaped on the late lamented Gazellebank and headed for Europe, half a year and more ago, a yearling sales catalogue came through the post. I do wish they wouldn’t. In the years when I wanted these catalogues, I couldn’t get them. Since I actually went and bought a horse (Elena), they never stop coming. And this one, for heaven’s sake, was from Australia. I remember it was an evening when Wendy was out, and I was dully watching Trackside and, for some reason (dull Trackside?), I picked up the despised catalogue and whoops … it opened at Lot 171. Bay filly Live or Die-Estelle Bromac. The said Estelle just happens to be my Elena’s sister. And there, on the pedigree page, were the names of our dear Tui (Hot Blooded Woman), Cliffie (Lite Gasp), Wilma (Lite Phantom) …
What on earth was this horse doing in Australia? Ah, well…
But in the days that followed, I kept opening that catalogue, until page 171 became stained with coffee, highlighter and ... well, just a little wine..



I talked (as I do), and finally Graeme Lang trekked from Melton to Glenn and Sue O’Connell’s place near Whittlesea to look her over, and reported that she was a nice and not oversized (sorry, Elena) girl…
But the sale was to be the day that I sailed out of Auckland. What to do? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Wasn’t this really a ‘coup de folie’? Well, maybe if she were really cheap…? Elena cost $20,000. So, say .. ten? ‘You’ll never get her for that’ said the pundits. Very well, I’ll go to eleven. Maximum. That way, at least I’ve tried.
And so, on the somethingth of February 2009, as the Gazellebank and I sailed forth for Nouméa, at the price of exactly $11,000, Wendy and I became the owners of Elena’s niece, the filly who we will call Livia de Gerolstein (or as near to that as the Victorian racing authorities will allow us), and who is now in work at Mr Lang’s place in Melton, Vic, with the prospects of making an early two year-old. (Hear that, Elena!).

I, of course, haven’t yet met Livia, but Wendy managed to grab a couple of days respite and dash across the Tasman Sea … ermmm, cousin Tracy may not be David Hamilton with a camera, but at least Wendy has now driven our youngest ‘daughter’ and I – until I in my turn dash across the great divide, have a kind of a photo.



Welcome to our little family, Livia. Along with Elena, Tenor, Rosy, Lucie, D’Arcy, Rose, Mikie… from Les Baux, Normandy, to Sefton, New Zealand, by way of Melton, Victoria…