Added expectation does Cue Card no favours and doesn't help us

It's all our fault, of course. You, me, them, everybody. Everybody needs somebody to love, but it doesn't make things easy when everybody finds the same somebody. How does that even happen?

Pop quiz. Name your favourite horse. Frankel. No, not him. Kauto Star. No, not him either. You can't have Arkle, Red Rum, Denman, Sprinter Sacre, Mecca's Angel, Annie Power, Sire De Grugy, Desert Orchid, Brigadier Gerard or any of the other ones I don't have room to type out. Pick your own one, your own true one, the one that stands out from the racecard like a face across a crowded room. This is where it becomes interesting (the concept, not the column).

Very many of us have a great affection for a horse no-one else would look twice at, an adoration renewable every decade or so depending on career length, pique, a wandering eye, you name it. I know a Bronze Angel man, a Jakkalberry man, a Relkeel woman; I was an Ashley Brook man, although I don't get around much any more. These are the horses who make an excitement of midweek, make delicious a random rendezvous at some out-of-the-way location, the previous five days an ecstasy of anticipation leading to a brief and blissful encounter whatever the result. Ahem. But of course you love Frankel too, and Kauto Star, and Sprinter Sacre – ay, there's the rub.