Playing The Name Game

‘One point was scored if you knew somebody well enough to say ‘hello’, two points were gained if you had had some sort of meal with them and three were netted if you had snogged them’

- Adam Edwards

I am indifferent to horses. That statement, of course, does not sit well in the Cotswolds. Horses are as important to our hills as Chihuahuas are to celebrities. It is not just that the local quadruped activity is myriad, but it is also worth at least £60 million a year to our economy. And so my apathetic attitude to the beasts is best kept buttoned up.

On the other hand I am keen on the jumps – not so much the nags as the Runyonesque characters on the drinking side of the rails. And for that reason I have, over the decades, attended the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival as regularly as any bookie’s runner. And this year was no different except that I was – non-swanks – invited by a prominent figure in the dressage world to join an urbane flat race trainer and his enchanting wife in the Turf Club tent. Since the racecourse has been re-vamped the tent, I was told by my dressage hostess, is the new ‘Toffs’ Corner’.