Goodwood's great but it's not a night in a ditch at the Galway festival

There are certain words in the English language that are guaranteed to bring on anxiety whenever I hear them. Trigger words, I believe they're called; words like 'family funday', 'easy-assembly flat-pack shelving unit' and 'Boris has just been made Prime Minister'. The last one actually happened, quite recently, in case you thought I was joking.

One of my earlier ones was 'giant water slide'. It haunted me for years after a holiday trauma, when I discovered that if you go down a GWS head first (assuming you're lucky enough not to topple over the side and plunge to an untimely death) you lose your swim shorts, and if you go down feet first, you slow down using your testicles as brakes and end up wearing them as earrings. I'm all right now, though.

The one that still induces night sweats is 'Galway festival'. I only went to the track at Ballybrit for two days but it left its mark. Maybe if I'd gone for the whole week, it would have served as some kind of immersion therapy and I'd have come out the other side a more resilient and equilibrious person. As it was, I went to the brink, stared into the abyss and dreamt I was drowning in a large glass of Guinness.