Betting blow

It was one of those moments when a clunking great pile-driver comes up and thuds straight into your duodenum. I can weave through the form for a 24-runner handicap at the sputtering fag end of the season. I can summon the maths to cope with a series of cross doubles at, say, 13–8, 11–4 and, please the Lord, 33–1. But faced with columns of car specifications and model numbers on the internet when buying from a garage three hours’ drive away, I am rather less use than the village idiot. Hence the moment last week when the replacement for our 13-year-old BMW arrived and I had to telephone the saintly Mrs Oakley, who had saved for it over six years, with the uncomfortable words, ‘Darling, I have, uh, bought the wrong car.’ What was supposed to be an estate-type vehicle to accommodate Mrs Oakley’s Labrador-to-be turned up as a saloon.