Difficult customers

It didn’t start well at Lingfield on Saturday. I discovered too late that on my walk across the field from the station I had been dribbling £1 coins, carefully saved for Mrs Oakley’s car-parking fund, through a hole in my pocket. And if the nice Chinese lady who mends my pockets smiles sweetly and says ‘too much money’ the next time I take one in for attention, I swear I’ll wring her neck. She clearly hasn’t got a pension fund with Standard Life.

Fortunately, this early in the real jumping season I chose to keep most of my money in my wallet for the rest of the afternoon. And when the bookies were generous enough to let Noel Chance’s Dan’s Pride start at 2–1 against a scrappy field in the last, a Flat race for jumpers on the all-weather track, the small but steady losses were recouped. The Lambourn trainer knows what he is doing in these contests, and he doesn’t let his decent bumpers go larking about schooling over hurdles until they’ve brought home their bumper money.