Racing folk sometimes wince as the whiskered commentator John McCririck, a professional chauvinist, refers to his wife Jenny as ‘The Booby’. He was at it again in the racecards for this year’s Cheltenham Festival, but I will worry on her behalf no more. Two days after the Gold Cup, I was lecturing on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 as we steamed through the South China Sea en route from Hong Kong to Vietnam.
Those on board were treated to an unmissable aeronautical display alongside the liner as a hundred big birds soared, dived, skimmed within an inch of the waves, wheeled, glided and co-ordinated flight tracks with the precision of the Red Arrows.They were, the commodore confirmed, Red-footed Boobies. Quite how such a resourceful, graceful bird acquired such an insulting name I will never understand.
Recollecting this year’s Festival highlights in High Seas tranquillity has been hampered somewhat, like my lecture programme, because when a jet-lagged Mrs Oakley and I arrived in Hong Kong the laptop with my Cheltenham notes was still languishing somewhere in an Indian airport, having failed to make it back into my carry-on baggage after the security check when we changed planes at 1 a.m.
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