Pulse(69)

Not that I’d mentioned it yet to Grant. He was angry enough already that I was going back at all.

Cheltenham races at the April meeting was nothing like that for the Festival. It was a much more low-key affair with an expected daily attendance of only ten thousand, a mere seventh of the crowd that had witnessed the Gold Cup the previous month.

Much of the tented village of shops and restaurants had been removed and the site where, in March, thousands of Irish visitors had sung along with live bands and poured copious pints of Guinness down their throats was now simply a flat empty space.

The temporary grandstands and glass-fronted restaurants that had stretched down the finishing straight well past the second-last fence were nothing more than a distant memory and the grass on which they had been erected was already recovering in the spring sunshine.

But, after the hurly-burly of the racecourse at the Festival, when getting from one place to another involved pushing through a crowd at every corner, there was something rather nice about the open spaces and the gentler pace of the April meeting.

Jump racing was winding down towards the end of the season and, even though some jumping continued throughout the summer months at the smaller courses, Cheltenham definitely had an ‘end of term’ feel about it. Not that the racing would be any less competitive, with plenty of horses going to post for the seven races on each of the two days.

I was early, very early, such had been my eagerness for the day to begin.

The first race was not until almost two o’clock but I was in the medical room well before a quarter to twelve. I had tried to stay at home for most of the morning but I’d done nothing but continually look at my watch, urging the hands to hurry up and move round to my chosen leaving time. At eleven o’clock, I’d given up waiting and had driven to the racecourse a good half an hour before I’d intended, parking my Mini in the doctors’ reserved spaces adjacent to the jockeys’ car park.

With so many fewer spectators, I had no concerns about exit queues at the end of the day, so there had been no need on this occasion to park in Tom and Julie’s farmyard.

I was busily checking through the medical kits when Jack Otley came sweeping in.

‘Morning, Chris,’ he said. ‘You’re here early.’

‘Hi, Jack,’ I replied. ‘So are you.’

‘I’m going for a spot of lunch with some friends who have a box,’ he said. ‘Just dropping off my coat. Will you tell Adrian I’ll be back in an hour and ask him to hold off his briefing till I get back? I’d appreciate it.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘will do.’

Jack hung up his coat on a hook outside the medical room door and departed at a trot for his lunch.

Lunch? I hadn’t really thought about lunch.

I wondered if I should get some now before we got busy.

But, in truth, lunch had been a problem for some considerable time. I simply had to eat some breakfast as Grant and the boys were watching and they would get very agitated if I didn’t eat something with them each morning at the kitchen table. And the same was true for dinner. However, at lunchtime I was nearly always on my own, at least during the week, so the ‘food police’ were unaware of whether I ate anything or not.

Mostly not.

Two meals a day were about as many as I could stomach.

One would have been better.

Eating, or rather the lack of it, was the one thing still holding back my recovery. I still saw myself as too fat in spite of what the bathroom scales might say to the contrary. Grant had threatened to remove all the mirrors in the house so that I couldn’t see my reflection but I’d told him not to be so silly. But it wasn’t really silly. I looked at myself in those mirrors all the time, and I didn’t much like the view.

I decided that, on balance, I could do without lunch. Again.

Instead, I walked out onto the terrace in front of the weighing room and soaked up some of the rays.

As was often the case in the United Kingdom in recent years, this April had so far been one of the best months for sunshine with warm days and cool evenings, and today was no exception.

I stood facing the sun with my eyes closed, allowing its heat to soak deep into my soul.

‘You look happy, doc,’ said a voice in front of me.

I opened my eyes. It was Dave Leigh, he of the broken collarbone.

‘Oh, hi, Dave,’ I said. ‘How are things? Are you working for the TV people again?’

‘No,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I’m back riding.’

‘So soon?’ I said with surprise. It had only been a month since he’d broken it. ‘You must heal very quickly.’

‘Had my first ride back on Monday at Huntingdon. It was a winner too.’

‘Well done,’ I said.

‘I’ve got three more here today so I arrived good and early. Didn’t want to miss out due to a breakdown or a traffic jam.’

‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

‘Lambourn,’ he said. ‘Centre of the universe.’

Lambourn was a large village nestling among the rolling Berkshire Downs between Newbury and Swindon. It was a major training centre for racehorses, especially jumpers, with over thirty active trainers having yards in and around the village. And it was only about an hour’s drive from Cheltenham.

Dave Leigh was clearly almost as eager as I for the day’s racing to begin.