Bring on the Flat - still the best way to see in the spring even if some things aren't quite how they used to be

I'm always exhausted by the end of Cheltenham week. Exhausted by the four days and 28 races; by the furious, unavailing quest to break even; and by the post-meeting grumbles about beer prices (chill, chaps, I paid £7.85 for a pint in a pub in Fulham the other night) and false starts (if you ever find a 100 per cent happy group of owners, trainers and jockeys, you should have them stuffed).

What I need is to lie down in a sensory deprivation tank in a darkened room for a fortnight to restore my equilibrium and avoid the chat about whether or not Willie Mullins should be allowed to win the Grand National again, and then my colleague Daniel Hill reminds me that the Lincoln is less than a week away and we're up and running again.

In his Another View column this week, Daniel also pointed out the bizarrely slow start to the Flat season. I'm sure it wasn't always quite this bad, so I looked back to the 1995 calendar, to when Roving Minstrel won the Lincoln for Kevin Darley and Bryan McMahon. We had three days of Donny, starting with an apprentice handicap on the Thursday, immediately followed by World Premier winning the Brocklesby for Mark Rimmer and Clive Brittain, concluding with Fata taking a 6f maiden for W Carson and P Walwyn in the colours of Hamdan Al Maktoum.