THIS week we should have been at Punchestown where we would have held a sale on Thursday. I remember when Thursday was the last of a three-day festival. No teenage rampage on the Friday in those days nor a family day on the Saturday – just three days of afternoon racing and one hell of party in Naas every evening.

It was on the Thursday of the 1998 meeting that I made my only racecourse appearance, riding in James Nolan’s charity race, the concluding event of the festival. I had made a bet that I would do it but it cost me many multiples of the wager to find a fitness trainer to get me ready to ride the mechanical horse in RACE let alone the real one in Mrs Harrington’s.

It was a horrendously wet year in 1998 – the last race was abandoned on the Wednesday – and to give some context, Native Upmanship won his bumper just before the charity race for Arthur Moore and Philip Fenton.

I remember being terrified when Jessie told me that the mare I was riding might rear when the tapes went up and I was exhausted by the time we got to the start. Whatever about the horse getting the trip, the jockey never stood a chance and I have been reluctant to criticise any jockey since.

With no trips to Doncaster and Punchestown, I have now spent more time at home than at any other point in the last 40 years. My mother always says there comes a stage in life when people choose golf, gardening or God, and as two of the three are closed for business at the moment, I have spent some glorious hours in the garden. It is looking splendid – what a pity that Body & Soul is cancelled and nobody will actually see it.

I have even attempted some farming, assisting Gordon Doherty who looks after such matters at Ballinlough. I suspect that I am more of a hindrance than a help, never more so when it was time to ring some bulls this week.

After growing the beard, I have been giving plenty of thought to what else I might try, but this particular exercise certainly put play to any thoughts of challenging Henry Beeby to a body piercing, either above or below the neck line.