I accidentally bought a racehorse. Would you like to join a syndicate?

This horse-rearing business is not for the faint-hearted. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought an eight-month-old filly out of the racing industry. Well, I wasn’t thinking, was I?

I went to see the Builder Boyfriend’s mother one Sunday for a nice trip out. She owns a small private yard in Sussex and had just picked up a few acquisitions from the sales. The Builder had asked her to get him a driving pony and, as the pair of them looked over the stable door at the speckled blackand-white cob he was going to hook up to a trap, I made the fatal error of looking in the next stable. A little bay foal put her head over the door and said hello. And that was it.

She came home a few weeks later, with me thinking, ‘I’ll work out what I’m doing at some point.’

When I looked at her papers I realised what I had got myself into. Father a famous flat racer, a few removed from Nijinsky. Dam sire a renowned steeplechaser. A friend in the racing industry researched her for me and after looking at her charts — pedigree, not astrological, I assume — told me I should definitely have a go at getting her in training. That was plan A. I approached a trainer nearby and he was up for it.

Then I fed her and petted her for two years and I couldn’t face the thought of letting her go. She might make a nice hack, I thought, as I veered off towards Plan B.