'We were slated for getting rid of them but it was the best thing we ever did'

It's 7am and already warm and muggy in this corner of North Yorkshire, but the trainer has dressed for the weather. He's the lean, wiry one at the top of the yard wearing a baggy purple polo shirt, baggy blue football shorts, a pair of dog-eared trainers and a blue baseball cap that was once presumably navy but has seen better days. At the moment, he's hosing the yard to keep the dust down, but in a minute he'll be on his tractor, harrowing, smoking, pondering.

"He loves his tractor," says Wendy Midgley, wife of Paul (for it is he). "He's got cigarettes, coffee and music up there and that keeps him happy."

"Greatest Hits Radio," clarifies the driver as he hops down from the cab. He's done his regulation two laps of the all-weather circle and the morning is moving along as seamlessly as can be expected in a yard that is perpetually beset by all of racing's usual tribulations.