Sea mist and a continual downpour: even the week-old lambs in the fields looked fed up. We were scheduled to meet outside the church at two o’clock. At two minutes to, I was the only person there waiting and I wondered whether the guided tour of the village, led by a local archaeologist, had been cancelled.
I tried the handle of the church door, hoping it would be unlocked and I could wait out of the rain. It was. I went in and stood on the flagstones in the porch and stared balefully out through the open door at the dripping tombs.
To a passer-by, I must have looked like a new gargoyle that had just been delivered. I was in a bad mood and knew it. My eyeballs felt hard, which is a sure sign. I knew why I was in a bad mood, too. Post-Cheltenham Festival blues — that was the matter with me. The day before, and the day before that, I’d been at the festival as a guest, once again, of the racing tipster Colonel Pinstripe. Which means I’d been on it, solidly, for two days and three nights. Every morning at 10.30 we had them lined up in rows in the Guinness bar. And every night, some 16 or 17 hours later, I was among the last of the burblers to rise unsteadily from an armchair and head up to bed.
I was jaded. But over and above the run-of-the-mill hangover, there was bitterness and shame. Bitterness towards the gods for upsetting the favourites and thereby casting me into penury. Shame at my emotional and intellectual disarray towards the end of the last day. And shame at being ill, just before I left, behind a hedge — far and away the nicest bit of topiary I’ve ever been sick behind — in the grounds of the beautiful house at which we stayed.
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