Mrs Oakley hopes it will be a lesson to me after all the abandoned umbrellas, mislaid mobiles and washbags left in hotel-room bathrooms over the years. When changing planes at Mumbai Airport at one o’clock in the morning en route for Hong Kong, I failed to pick up my laptop after the security check. Retrieving it from Britain took seven weeks. The airline didn’t want to know and airport authorities would hand it only to a personal representative. It only ever came back thanks to old friends at CNN: thank God, I still work occasionally for an international organisation.
‘Never mind the £150 in airport fees and freight charges,’ I thought as I popped into CNN’s London office to collect it. ‘Things can only improve now.’ Only to find a parking warden outside fixing a £65 ticket to my windscreen. I had called in with my phone parking fee. But it was, it seemed, for the space the other side of the line between public and residents’ parking. That made my trip to Goodwood on Saturday a retrieval mission. I was determined to make the old enemy contribute to my costs.
That day’s Racing Post had carried headlines about a new corruption scandal: several jockeys have been charged with violating information and non-trier rules, among them the progressive Greg Fairley. Reckoning Fairley had a fair chance in the first and would be out to show his critics I had a small dip, win only. He was beaten just three quarters of a length — at 28–1. Normally, I back outsiders each way, but this was to be a day for boldness.
In the next I had my biggest bet of the season so far.
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