The turf: Loyalty can pay

Some alien force keeps attacking my laptop. Every few seconds my anti-virus security system pings me with an audible warning of attempted forced entry, a process which paralyses all thought and makes working in a library impossible. It clearly isn’t a hacker from the News of the World, so who could it be? My wildest surmise, rapidly dismissed by a sceptical Mrs Oakley, was that after the success of last winter’s Twelve to Follow some crazed punter is trying to get at my sources of information. With what I lost at Royal Ascot this year, good luck to him, although it has to be said that the Flat Twelve aren’t doing too badly. Both David Simcock’s Shamardal Phantom and Mark Johnston’s Halifax have won at 4–1, and the victory which pleased me especially was that of William Haggas’s Green Destiny, who took the John Smith’s Cup at York at 6–1, and was available at 8–1 that morning.