We worked hard, we grafted, but along with that was the humour, the fun we had

Here come the old men, walking across the car park in twos and threes, clutching black-and-white photographs of their young selves. Age has not wearied them but widened them, which makes for a moment of local difficulty when first they meet, but it's soon overcome.

Many are balder than before, hardly any would make the weight, most have the story of their lives written in wrinkles from brow to chin, yet after the first tentative forays into recognition the answers come swiftly. It's me, it's you, just look at you, how have you been, so nice to see you here. The photographs are brandished, horses long forgotten are retrieved from the safety-deposit boxes of the memory, the collective memory. This is the gathering of the clan, the family reunion. Where are the boys of the old brigade? Here they are.

They're here to remember the man who helped make them men, one of the finest trainers of his era, the irreducible Captain Ryan Price. All worked at Price's famous yard in Findon, all remember it well. Lord, how would they forget it? John 'Jinks' James helped bring them together near the 30th anniversary of the great man's death at 74, brought them back to a pub they'd all been thrown out of many times, long, long ago.