Singing in the rain

Is there perhaps at the bottom of the Thames, slithering back and forth with the tides, a muddy heap of mobile phones, glowing faintly in the dark, some emitting their last faint trills and so interfering with the radar of errant amphibians? I only wonder because nobody every returns to me the mobiles which, to the despair of Mrs Oakley, I lose at frequent intervals.

I use only secondhand untrendy models of no interest to passing youth and I label each one with name, address and telephone number. The last two were abandoned in taxis but never made it to the Lost Property Centre. Presumably it is too much trouble for the cabbies and so they just chuck them in the river. On Saturday, the latest went steaming on in the luggage rack towards East Grinstead as I alighted at Lingfield Park. Goodbye, small friend.

Lingfield itself was wet, cold and almost unraceable. ‘One more shower this morning could have done for it,’ said a mud-spattered Richard Johnson as he dismounted from the victorious Happy Shopper, a comparatively rare ride for him from the Martin Pipe stable, whose jockey Timmy Murphy had elected instead to partner Henrietta Knight’s Highland Chief. Richard was probably the happiest man on the course. In the totesport Handicap Hurdle Race he was riding Wee Anthony for Jonjo O’Neill. Wee Anthony, of course, is what champion jockey Tony McCoy’s first mentor, the small-time trainer Willie Rock, used to call AP, telling seasoned jockeys who looked edgy about partnering his more mettlesome beasts that Wee Anthony rode them at home with no bother, and he was only 13. ‘I bet Richard enjoyed smacking that one’s bottom,’ said a press-room colleague.

As Jonjo’s stable jockey, AP has ridden Wee Anthony several times.