You don't need to have a ticket to be thrilled racecourses are open again

They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone, and isn't that the truth. In ordinary times, you couldn't get much more low key than midweek jumps meetings at Ludlow and Haydock, never mind Wednesday fixtures on the all-weather at Lingfield and Kempton, yet today the prospect of attending these meetings appears like a morsel of meat does to a starving man: a feast, a treat, a cause for joy and wild abandon.

Okay, so most of us will not be going racing on Wednesday, or even necessarily any time soon. Racecourses in Tier 2 areas, like all four hosting action today, are limited to a maximum of 2,000 spectators and while tracks in Tier 1 regions can theoretically welcome 4,000, the cause of crowds is not assisted by the fact there are no racecourses situated in Cornwall, the Isle of Wight or, disappointingly, even the Scilly Isles.

Yet there is no jealousy on the part of us who have been off-track for eight months and counting. If, like me, your last day on a racecourse was amid the hurly-burly of the Cheltenham Festival (scenes that now appear as redolent of a lost past as a group of top-hatted men pedalling penny farthings down the road) then you will look at these lucky few as pioneers, treading where we will in good time follow.