Set in the beautiful countryside of Cambridgeshire Moulton Paddocks Stud is one of the two training establishments owned by Godolphin in the Newmarket area. Recently refurbished to a state-the-art training facility.
This party was for the Asian staff, mostly Indians and Pakistanis who are based in Dubai working here at this new facility. All kinds of entertainment was laid on including a wonderful banquet of asian food which I'm very pleased to say we, the entertainers, were invited to experience.
The guests seemed slightly overwhelmed and my first iPad caricature customer ran off half way through as if the attention he was attracting by posing for me got too much for him. I was fearing the worst at this point and was having trouble getting anyone to take up my offer of a free digital caricature. I guess the language barrier was a factor but mostly the cultural barrier was bigger. These guys (almost exclusively men) were simply not used to the attention and were incredibly shy.
However I need not of worried as once a few brave souls took the plunge things returned to normal and it was the usual scrum at the end of the night with the usual arguments about who was next, who had the biggest nose, the least hair, the most wrinkles, the longest beard, the worst fashion sense etc. Seems like some things are universal.
