Things are beginning to pick up for the season. I’ve ridden a few winners in recent weeks, at nearly a winner a day. One of the highlights so far was my victory on Bubble And Squeak at Ascot last weekend when it was great to be a part of a treble for trainer Sylvester Kirk.

My boss Roger Charlton has been among the winners too, with another at Bath on Wednesday night. I am pleased about it all. I hope it continues.

I am getting plenty of rides, and good rides for the right people and feel very privileged to have secured such good contacts. There are people that were using my last year, when I was an apprentice, that have continued to use me this year.

Friday rides

1.30 Excellent Magic

She is well bred, quite a big, tall and rangy filly. She is bred to want further than seven furlongs. A lot depends on how the race turns out. It looks quite a strong race and on breeding I think we should be competitive.

3.20 Outofthequestion

I think stepping down in distance is probably a wise move, especially at somewhere like Newbury. It’s a pretty fair track and hopefully I will be able to go forward and kind of have the run of the race knowing that he stays further. He is probably still a bit high in the handicap but if all goes well he should run a nice race. He gets his ground as well.

3.55 Island Glen

Island Glen won second time out under David Egan and looked quite a nice horse in that race at Newcastle. This will be his first start on good to firm ground so we will have to wait and see how he takes to it. He is probably bred to prefer a bit of juice in the ground but hopefully he’ll still be good enough to win this time round.

4.25 Cambric

She has had a lot of time off and is not ideally drawn. She will relish the step up in trip.

Saturday rides

1.50 Red Impression

She is a horse I like a lot. She has shown plenty of promise in her three runs and on the last day she was very unlucky to not quite win at Chelmsford. We were drawn 14 of 14 around a track where it pays to be prominent. I had to swing round into the straight and go quite deep out onto to the track. Considering we were only beaten half a length it was a pretty outstanding run. It’s her first run on turf but I hope she will show the ability she has on the all-weather.

3.00 Headman

He has shown promise, especially in his first two starts. The last day at Newbury he was quite fresh early on in the race and was slightly needing it. Being a big horse he was still a little bit unfit after a long break. Running him back over a mile and two is probably the right idea. I think he has plenty of speed and seemed to have improved from his last race when the ground was a bit too soft for him.

4.50 Lady Adelaide

She showed promise in her first couple of runs and the other week at Newmarket in quite a competitive race she was quite buzzed up in the prelims and still looked like she was going to need the race. In the end she finished a fair fourth, but well beaten. She will improve in time and with a further trip, but I think she should have a shout on her last time out form.

5.25 Thrave

This is quite a competitive race. The drop in trip should help us out as last time she travelled well into the race and faded in the last furlong which suggests she probably didn’t stay the mile. She has won over seven before. Whether the ground could be a bit quick for her could be a problem but we will have to find that out.