'I rode him in work last week and he blew me away - he's improved all year'

Despite the best sabotage efforts of my uncle George, we got through last week with all horses and jockeys in one piece.

Last Monday he decided to tarmac a small car park on one side of the pathway to the gallop, the yellow mini-digger scraping the gravel triggering most of our string’s fight-or-flight reactions. Tuesday brought a stray flock of sheep wandering on to the gallop, with intent. Wednesday had three fresh horses from his transport business in the paddock on the other side of the path from the car park, galloping up and back beside our horses. We met him on Thursday driving against us, up the lane beside the gallop in his tractor with a bright green bale of silage, plastic flapping in the wind. Friday brought an incident where a loose horse galloped backwards down the gallops, narrowly missing several Cheltenham favourites galloping in the other direction. George’s whereabouts were unknown at this time. It’s safe to say there won’t be much this week that will unsettle our horses.

There’s been lots of mention of weeks and decades and Lenin recently, and last week seemed to take a century to complete. We were at the Curragh most days galloping Cheltenham horses, and every day brought calls and texts and conversations wondering about what to back this week.