IT was quite a strange February week. Something felt a bit out of kilter. In the run-in to Cheltenham, where often we looking anxiously at the weather, we enjoyed glorious sunshine followed by damp fog by night.

When the mood should be revving up to the most anticipated week of the year across in the Cotswolds, somehow it felt more like Michael Harding’s description of us. Dips in spirits that can hit at anytime, a melancholy that he attributed to living in a damp climate, one that can dip down into the edges of depression if we let it.