GSP Club Annual Working Test success for Sam at Eastwick, a long telephone call to Wiggly on the way, talking about last night and she apologised again for being moody and depressed and then a quiet evening in front of the TV with my feet up.
The Sunday Times started a serialisation of the official biography of The Prince of Wales, written by Jonathan Dimbleby on the eve of The Queen's historic visit to Moscow
I was very late back last night and sat up even longer with my Bournevita, listening to the news and reading teletext match reports of Norwich City's draw away to Aston Villa.
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Then up early at 7.00am, awakened by the alarm clock, and then to make two flasks of tea before running Sam and packing the car ready to drive down to the Eastwick (near Harlow) training ground of the GSP Club Eastern Region. I was one of the first to get there and first settled Sam down before I would let him out of the car to meet other people and dogs.
Then a chat with the others for a good while, getting Sam used to those handlers and dogs that were to run with him. There were eight other dogs competing against me and I reckoned the best was Tim's Matham's Bias, an older dog handled by one of the club's trainers, but I reckoned that Sam stood a chance of beating him if I could run him at his best.
In the event, Sam was quite ragged and distracted and I was lucky to get second place. He ran around on the simple retrieves instead of delivering the dummy smoothly and we lost a point on each of three of the four tests as a result. A break for lunch and then we were one of only five running in the open in the afternoon.
Sam performed the first test, a difficult downwind retrieve across water, better than the Field Trial Champion running later but then we were eliminated from the second test for poor control at a distance and then, to cap it all, he ran wildly in the quartering to finish a poor 5th but it was still a learning experience.
I stayed on afterwards to help the organisers clear up and then got some tracking training with Martin before setting off quite late for home. A long telephone call to Wiggly on the way, talking about last night and she apologised again for being moody and depressed. We agreed that the whole point of our relationship is lost if it makes her unhappy and she will try to brighten up.
A call home to book my tea and then greeted the family upon my arrival with my blue rosette and box of shortcake biscuits won in the club raffle. A quiet evening in front of the TV with my feet up after the activity of the last two days. Daimon Hill had failed to beat Michael Schumaker in the last Grand Prix of the season in Europe, but can still beat the German with two races to go.
Nigel Mansell spun off and retired with no result. The Sunday Times started a serialisation of the official biography of The Prince of Wales, written by Jonathan Dimbleby on the eve of The Queen's historic visit to Moscow as the first monarch to go to Russia since the Revolution and regicide of the Tsar's family.
The biography contains frank revelations about the Prince's upbringing and marriage which are highly embarrassing to the rest of the Royal Family.