You go to a place, year in year out, and you think you know it. Take Aintree for example; Historic British Grand Prix circuit, tick, surrounded by a world famous Grand National steeplechase course, tick. But look a little closer and within the course there’s a nine-hole golf course, a golf driving range, and a foot golf course, dotted with swifts and swallows and the odd hare. Lots of layers; multifaceted.

After my self-imposed exile for 18 months (yes, that’s how long doing a house up takes…) Aintree was a slam dunk for my first event as it’s only 5 miles from where I live. Meeting up again with George Poundofruit, Simon Baines, Chris and Michele Bailey was like putting on an old pair of slippers; warm and welcoming and like coming home.

First practice saw Chris lay down a marker, and practice 2 (or the first scoring round now) saw us all improve. I managed to set what would turn out to be my fastest time of the day, closely followed by Simon, then George and Michele. Michele knocked two seconds off but remained frustrated she hadn’t got into the ‘61’s’, but it was early days. The first ‘official; timed run before lunch saw Chris begin to take a stranglehold on proceedings whilst the rest of us failed to improve our times. Everyone seemed to be behaving and there were few delays in proceedings. Jono Baines joined us for lunch so we played ‘wind up Jono’ which was, as always, great fun. Even better this time as he now has a young daughter who we all agreed spoke more sense than he did!!! George adjusted his clutch…Michele doled out her latest baking creations, and we all got a tan.

The afternoon saw the temperature climb. Chris started to pull away and established what became an unassailable lead, and Simon and I traded times on handicap which were only a few tenths apart. The joy of Aintree is the amount of runs you get – in essence 6 timed runs for us on this occasion. After three timed runs I had overheating problems which Chris, Simon and George tried to solve. I’m always fascinated watching people who know what they’re doing with cars and electric systems, but despite all their ministrations in the end they established that the fan was buggered so I had to retire. I sat the next two runs out, wanting people to improve their times, but not too much that they beat me!!!

So in the end Chris maintained first place, I pipped Simon to take second, George (nursing his clutch) took fourth, and Michele fifth but happy in the knowledge that she broke her best time at Aintree and dipped into the 61’s with a 61.56.

Happy days, and a reminder that, like Aintree itself, the people I compete against and call friends all show a range of skills and abilities you don’t always notice at first. As I said – lots of layers; multifaceted.