Bush and his partners in crime have gone and now it's time to head home to California; Rachel Pagones has had some interesting times and made some true friends in her eight and a half years at the Racing Post: TAKING STOCK.

Byline: Rachel Pagones

THIS is my last column for the Racing Post, and the end of my third-tolast week in Britain. Like David Ashforth, from now on I'll be living with the great and the flawed excesses of the United States, although in my case on the opposite side of the country (California) where the economy is, in surfers' parlance, being sucked over the falls - that awful feeling of the ocean's awesome power lifting you up by the hair and propelling you upside down in a series of dizzying somersaults as you hold your breath and hope some day to figure out which way is up.

Yes, things are that dire in the Golden State, land of the lotus eaters, the place Joni Mitchell yearned to go home to while sitting in a park in Paris, France, reading the news and it sure looked bad. There was a war on then, and people were fed up with their government. For years I felt like Joni Mitchell on that bench in a foreign land, but then there was the presidential election last November. When CNN called the results, I called my 82-year-old father in Washington DC. It was about 1am there, but he was awake, celebrating. "I can come home now, Dad," I told him.

Of course my eight-and-ahalf year stint at the Racing Post hasn't been all about George W Bush and his partners in crime, but they did play a relentless backbeat, as did Tony Blair and co. My arrival in Britain came at the same time as Labour's to Whitehall, and it does seem a cycle is completing as the nefarious Texans have been smoked out at last while the once-hopeful Labour fizzles to cinders in another wet British summer.

What does horseracing have to do with global politics, anyway? Well, this, for starters - the world's biggest horse owner is the ruler of Dubai, a not inconsequential spot in the Middle East. Some influential people are involved in an influential way in racing, and I submit it is not just a sidebar to the main narrative of their lives, but a prism through which they view their world.

Much the same can be said for those of us living somewhere in the scuffed grass beneath the ladder of influence. When we interpret non-horsey events, we often do so using our deep understanding of horseracing - whichever aspect we happen to love best, the horses, the gambling or the people. "Here comes another 100-1 shot," an ex-jockey friend of mine used to say whenever a dubious character swam into view. Even the mainstream loves a horse-racing metaphor - how many dark horses have entered elections, how often do big plans fall at the first hurdle, and how about all those "stalking-horse bids"? The last decade has seen the racing industry rise and fall along with our larger economies and political aspirations. Britain seemed so hopeful for a while, with Cool Britannia and its offshoots like the Millennium Dome rising high under the congenitally smiling Tony Blair. Half of America may have been in despair, but aside from the dotcom blip, Wall Street loved those Bush years, and bloodstock prices rose and rose across the globe, while highclass racing spread all over it.

This was the time of the rise of the Dubai World Cup, and later the Dubai Carnival, in the consciousness of the increasingly internationally minded racing set. Remember the Emirates World Series? It was high-minded and shortlived, and later followed by the still more fleeting Sovereign Series proposal. These were not ideas before their time, but ideas very much of their time - it just happened to be a short time, like the life of a butterfly.

ITHINK the times are now such that the luxury jet-liners (even many of the budget planes, apparently) may be effectively mothballed as people stay closer to home. That old bumper sticker, 'Think globally, act locally' will now be pasted to the horsebox as it bumps down the local roads. We still care what happens far away, but we're too tied up in keeping things functional here at home to have the desire or the money to go there.

That's my take, anyway. The best part of living in Britain for me has been the true friends I've made and the interesting times I've had, for all of which I am eternally grateful. But you know, it's still old and cold and settled in its ways here.

California, I'm coming home.

CAPTION(S):

Going home: Joni Mitchell sang about going home to California and that is where Rachel Pagones is heading