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.