Epic struggle

It was lunchtime at a Church school and there was a large dish of rosy apples. A nun placed a note on the fruit: ‘Take only one: God is watching.’ Further down the line was a dish of biscuits. ‘Take all you like,’ one child was heard telling another, ‘God is watching the apples.’ That child surely grew up to be a bookie, and at this stage of the Flat season they are cramming the cookies while we punters flounder, trying to discover which yards have got it together despite the cold spring and which three-year-olds have trained on through the winter. At Kempton on Saturday, the only time I got the form right was on the station platform afterwards when most huddled behind the four-car stop to shelter from the rain and we few bold spirits marched to the platform end and got a seat when a longer train came in.