Eclipse Day at Sandown Park was nearly a disaster. Feeling for my wallet en route to Waterloo, my heart sank as my hand went into an empty pocket, and then I remembered. Mrs Oakley, by then uncontactable at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, had the night before purloined it to pay for a MarshRuby takeaway curry. (Don’t miss them. The perfectionist Mrs O never normally allows across our doorstep a meal prepared elsewhere but makes an exception for this one-woman enterprise in Lower Marsh.)
Shorn of cash and credit cards for rail ticket or racecard I slunk home, reconciled to TV racing. But then I wondered: didn’t Mrs O have somewhere a secret cash-stash for window cleaners, charity collectors and emergency taxis? Ten minutes’ search proved successful (and, no, friendly burglar, it was not in the cocoa tin marked ‘Rice’). Thirty seconds later, with folding-stuff in my top pocket, I was back en route for Sandown, convinced it was my day.
There were four objectives, the first three financial.
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