A feeling in your bones

Racing at Newbury on Stan James Day was more like yachting, once defined as standing in a gale tearing up £20 notes. Nor did it help when the heavens opened that my umbrella was in the stands 200 yards away and that, thanks to a back injury, I could only hobble at the pace of an asthmatic turtle.

It just wasn’t my day. On the way from Kennington to Paddington I had been foolish enough to question the sainted Mrs Oakley’s navigational skills and only narrowly escaped being turned to stone in the froideur which followed. I had mistimed my trains and was bound to miss the first race anyway, then First Great Western could not find a driver for the next train. If I had had any sense I would have turned back and spent the day on the sofa.

At least I had a more romantic explanation than usual for those kind enough to notice my back pain and inquire, ‘How did you do it?’ Not this time retrieving a fallen soap bar in the shower or bending for a loosened shoelace. ‘It must have happened while I was stretchering a casualty out of a minefield,’ I told them, bringing their eyebrows back down to horizontal by adding that at my age perhaps it was unwise to have undertaken a Hostile Environments course with ex-SAS instructors. I have suggested they hire lighter actors for future simulation exercises, but there has been scant sympathy from Mrs Oakley. Having lived with too many of my holiday injuries, she merely sniffed ‘Boys’ games’ and returned to her Kazuo Ishiguro.

A feeling you get in your bones is the biggest bane in racing, too. Like sentiment and greed, such urgings should be suppressed if you are ever going to make money.