It wasn’t that her parents wouldn’t attend

because the wedding clashed with Remembrance Day

and poppies exerted a powerful hold;

nor that my Best Man was newly diagnosed

as a schizophrenic cum manic depressive –

though we were both in two minds about that.

Neither that my brother-in-law turned up

in a T-shirt bearing the legend

                    Bullshit

overdid the bevies and insulted my mother,

obliging me to step in and suffer

the customary glass smashed over the forehead,

a visit to Casualty and several stitches.

And in retrospect I can see it was funny

to be trapped in a lift for 2 or more hours

with a freshly bought packet of fags and no matches.

No, the worst of all was when Path of Peace,

a horse I’d followed with more faith

than reason, triumphed at 25-1

in the last big race of the Flat season.

What with one thing and another

I never got to put the bet on.  

After 32 years of Steeplechasing

I can bring myself to talk about it.