Scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago, have identified an anomaly which points towards a fifth force of nature and could answer the question as to why it can be so tricky to back winners of the Grand National.

On awaking this Good Friday morning, I lit a candle and spent an hour or so meditating on the meaning of Easter. I thought about the crucifixion (obviously), but also point-to-points, chocolate Easter eggs and Desert Orchid’s 1990 success in the Irish Grand National.

The days when you could collect £10 for winning second prize in a beauty contest are almost done. Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly, is ditching such delights in favour of a new set of sixteen saccharine sweet Community Chest cards designed to satisfy the sensitive younger generation.

Heck. £100,000! Is that what I agreed to?

There’s a sprinkle of stardust scattered across the Cotswolds and I’m not talking about the Winchcombe Meteorite.

It’s the same celestial glow that appears every year at about this time: the shimmering sparks of hope and expectation that spread in anticipation of next week’s Cheltenham Festival.

Horse: a large plant-eating domesticated mammal with solid hooves and a flowing mane and tail.

The Inuit, apparently, have fifty different words for snow. Which is about the same as we have for the ground on a racetrack….

Spring may not have sprung, but it’s definitely springing: the bulbs that we planted around the parade ring in the Autumn are poking their necks through the soil, the oyster catchers (which we christened Brian & Gillian) have returned to the roof of the old stand and the weights have been published for the Grand National.

Like many men, I have one of those finely calibrated brains which uses only 50% of the output from the optic nerves, thereby devoting maximum wattage to important things – like trying to remember the name of the horse that split Celtic Shot and Celtic Chief in the Champion Hurdle…

The Tweed and its network of tributaries are so full of water at the moment that they are backing up towards the racecourse at Kelso. A puddle, large enough to lose your car in, has developed at the road junction just below the stables which threatens to engulf the whole site.

Beneath the dark clouds that smother the tops of the surrounding hills, a whiff of apocalypse hangs in the air – first there was the Covid plague (the teeth of which have been blunted by our anti-social distancing), now it’s time for the flood…