Rain

Billy Connolly once declared that Scotland had only two seasons: June and winter. Perversely, though, just as the northern swallows are setting their alarm clocks and checking departure times for Cape Town and Johannesburg, it has become the Oakley tradition to head for the Isle of Mull. In recent years the accompanying essentials, Mrs Oakley, a case of good wine, long wellies and a surf-addicted flat-coat retriever, have been supplemented by author Felix Francis sending me in late August his latest forthcoming ‘Dick Francis novel’.  When Motivator won in 2005 he had more owners than any Derby winner in history – 230 of them Racing’s continuance owes much to partnerships

Gary Lineker once summed up football as ‘a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.’ Ascot’s Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup, a team contest in which four teams of three international jockeys, one of them restricted to female riders, compete for points on randomly drawn horses, is going the same way. In this month’s contest the Ladies team, led as usual by everybody’s favourite girl next door Hayley Turner and including Yorkshire’s Joanna Mason, won for the fourth time in six years. Hayley herself triumphed in two of the six races and for the third time collected the Alistair

We are blessed these days with a rare stream of jockey talent including the likes of William Buick, Ryan Moore, Tom Marquand and Rossa Ryan. Well clear of the pack though in the chase for the jockeys championship is former champion Oisin Murphy, and five minutes in the winners’ enclosure rather than on the track left me convinced at Newbury last Saturday that if I still had shares in a horse, Oisin would be the one I’d want riding it – and not just because of the two trebles he notched up last week. Successful trainer Hugo Palmer wasn’t in evidence but surrounded by a gaggle of owners after the

Laikipia, Kenya By the time I set off from the farm before dawn we’d had 22in of rain in the past month. At the bottom of the valley I saw in the headlights that our lugga, or seasonal watercourse, had become a roaring torrent of brown water after yet another downpour overnight. If I tried to cross the Landcruiser would be swept away in the flood. This rainy season the land has become a sea of mud, with a thousand streams of water splashing down from the plains, our days and nights serenaded by bullfrogs. Normally I would stay put, give up on any travel and wait it out. There