It is the weather men rather than the steaks most of us want to grill slowly over hot embers this non-barbecue summer. But there are consolation days and nowhere better to appreciate them than Newmarket’s July course. The staff are friendly. Nobody looks askance at those who choose not to wear a tie and the fillies in silky pastels are as beguilingly undercovered as those in a risqué Edwardian pencil sketch.
Flowers abound beside the parade ring and unsaddling enclosure, and I have never agreed with my late mother, who used to complain of others’ gardens, ‘Marigolds, dear…so common.’
The July course has been pleasantly re-developed. But at my age not all changes are welcome. I can no longer find the board where a man used to chalk up the results from other courses and I was disturbed to find that the old Tote Credit Club building where riff-raff like me consorted had become ‘The Pink Bar’.
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