The turf | 12 October 2017

The mission was simple: take a load of garden refuse to the council dump and be back in time to drive Mrs Oakley to an urgent appointment in Oxford. On my return, there was no Mrs Oakley in sight. Strange, since she is the sort who will camp out at the station the evening before to catch a 9 a.m. train. She had a house key; I didn’t.

Half an hour of fretting later, as I mounted a ladder to peer through the bathroom window for fear she might have slipped over and knocked herself out, an enraged Mrs Oakley appeared beneath me. She had frozen stiff on the nearby bridge, where she had walked to cut me off on the only route home to save us motoring time. How could I have been so stupid not to have seen her, she inquired, employing a vocabulary distinctly richer than I had known her to possess. How could she have been so blind not to have seen me pass, I replied with equal acidity. Well, probably with added acidity.

It was only after several minutes of such marital pleasantries that we both realised what had happened. The back gate of Oakley Towers, through which I had returned, is not visible from the front door. Mrs O. had clearly left through that front door to intercept me down the road at the precise second I drove in at the back. As we constantly see on the racecourse, timing is everything.

It was perfect timing last Saturday when that true gent of a jockey Jimmy Fortune announced his retirement after cleverly riding his old boss John Gosden’s Nathra into a valuable third place in the Group One Sun Chariot Stakes, significantly increasing her value.