Horse: a large plant-eating domesticated mammal with solid hooves and a flowing mane and tail.

The Inuit, apparently, have fifty different words for snow. Which is about the same as we have for the ground on a racetrack….

Spring may not have sprung, but it’s definitely springing: the bulbs that we planted around the parade ring in the Autumn are poking their necks through the soil, the oyster catchers (which we christened Brian & Gillian) have returned to the roof of the old stand and the weights have been published for the Grand National.

Like many men, I have one of those finely calibrated brains which uses only 50% of the output from the optic nerves, thereby devoting maximum wattage to important things – like trying to remember the name of the horse that split Celtic Shot and Celtic Chief in the Champion Hurdle…

The Tweed and its network of tributaries are so full of water at the moment that they are backing up towards the racecourse at Kelso. A puddle, large enough to lose your car in, has developed at the road junction just below the stables which threatens to engulf the whole site.

Beneath the dark clouds that smother the tops of the surrounding hills, a whiff of apocalypse hangs in the air – first there was the Covid plague (the teeth of which have been blunted by our anti-social distancing), now it’s time for the flood…

Whether you agree, or disagree, that it was essential for Boris to visit Scotland this week will probably depend on the strength and flavour of your politics. But it’s interesting to note that there is a long history of border tensions at times of increased pestilence…

You know what it’s like. You’re party to a conversation regarding an individual who has committed some heinous act. Everybody knows the person, everyone is aware of what that person did and what they said, everyone has a view. Except you… 

Amateur jockeys will have been stung by the BHA announcement, this week, that Hunterchases will only be permitted to take place for the foreseeable future if the runners are ridden by professional jockeys. I think the professional jockeys should be obliged to change in the horsebox and wear a thick woolly jumper…

An acquaintance of mine, who I shall call Fred in order to preserve his anonymity (although she could just as easily be Freda), is frustrated about the closure of betting shops due to lockdown.

Fred, who belongs to a generation that prefers to feel the cool edge of the polymer banknotes as they’re passed over the counter, refuses to open an online betting account for fear of having his bets tracked…

In this week’s Border Post blog we take a look back at all the great things that happened in 2020.

Starting with…