The sun will still rise tomorrow

The fall of Young Josh in the Topham yesterday was an awful sight, and pray God we have a casualty-free National.  But without doubt the most shocking and the saddest news of racing's week is the death of a very nice man, Derek Larkin.  We use the word 'tragedy' far too freely, but Derek's death truly is a tragedy - and doubly so for its shocking unnecessariness.

I used to say that I couldn't see the point in Twitter, but Emma signed me up to it early last year (as @JohnWathenBerry).  As I have so far, I note, posted 1,944 tweets in the intervening 14 or so months, one might recall the truism
that none preaches with the fervour of the recent convert.  It is one of my favourite toys, something from which I get a huge amount of pleasure.  And I get pleasure in both roles on it: by posting tweets and finding that others enjoy them, and in enjoying other people's tweets.  And few have given me more pleasure than the mythical Lord John Warren.

There are many parody accounts.  I've enjoyed two of them: Prince Charles and Lord John Warren.  Both are/were harmless and witty, giving plenty of pleasure but no offence, compiled with humour but completely devoid of nastiness.  Over the past year or so, there was plenty of speculation as to the identity of Lord John Warren, but I always said that I had no wish to know who he was: he was doing such a good job of bringing smiles to our faces from his disembodied and surreal position that I had no wish to bring the myth down to earth by putting a face to him.  It's the same as in 'The Day of The Jackal' - although Edward Fox made a great job of playing The Jackal in the movie, the great thing about the book was that there was no description of The Jackal, and even come the final sentence one still knew nothing about him.  It would have spoiled it to put a name or a face to the character.  And so it was with Lord John.

Anyway, as I am sure that you know, it seems that someone unveiled Lord John a few days ago; or, as he probably saw it, exposed him.  And it seems as if Derek was the man who had been bringing us all so much amusement.  Of course, the obvious reaction is, "Good on 'im".  I already liked Derek, and the knowledge that he had had the wit to keep this going, thus bringing a dose of harmless humour to our lives, was an obvious reason to respect him even more.

Tragically, it seems as if he himself did not realise that this is how he would be seen.  It seems as if he was led to believe that his unveiling would be accompanied by disapproval, rather than approval.  I can only presume that he felt that he had brought dishonour on his family, and he duly elected to fall on his sword - which is tragic enough, with the tragedy being redoubled by the agonising fact that there was no need to feel like that. He had done nothing to be ashamed of - and I am sure that, had he waited a
day, he would have realised that.  But, sadly, with suicide there is no chance of turning back the clock and revising one's conclusion.

It can be all too easy to forget that nothing is actually the end of the world.  As Humphrey Bogart put it so well, nothing really amounts to "a hill of beans" in the greater scheme of things, however all-important things can seem when you're caught up in the middle of them.  In 'Singing My Him Song', Malachy McCourt tells how he was once "heading off the deep end" and was saved only by the timely words of his friend Fionnula Flanagan, to whom he poured out his heart and who assured him that "no matter what some people do to you, you are still loved by God and by those who know you, and all you have to do is let it into your heart.  The business ... will murder you if you allow it to, if you look at it the wrong way ... so it's essential to love yourself and start from there, and you won't go wrong, no matter what is done or omitted."  Thankfully, disaster, thanks to her intervention, was narrowly averted - and McCourt was able to look back and say that, "In retrospect, it was much ado about fuck-all".

Gary Moore put it best when he was disqualified for several years by the stewards in Hong Kong.  For a world-class jockey, a son of a world-class jockey, whose whole life has revolved around the sport, to be told that you're an outcast who can have no contact for several years with the game and its players, would be as close to finding one's world falling down in pieces around you as one could get. "... Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools".  Anyway, Gary Moore, I'm told, left the enquiry to face a press inquisition, with presumably all the thousand questions designed to elicit the response that he was devastated.  And his reply?  All he said was, "The sun will still rise tomorrow".

Sadly, of course, at times it is easy to forget that the sun will still rise tomorrow.  And tragically Derek clearly lost sight of that.  Only for a short while, of course, because when tomorrow came he'd have found that the sun had indeed risen again, that life was still going on, and that, really, it had all been just much ado about nothing.  But, of course, he didn't get to see tomorrow.  Which is just terribly, terribly sad; and the unnecessary tragedy, which means that Laura's life has been torn apart and that Niamh will go through life with only the very vaguest memory of her fine father, is just dreadful.

In the unlikely event of Laura reading this blog, I hope that she will appreciate the extent to which Derek was liked and respected by the bloodstock community, and that that respect has only been increased by the discovery that it was he who had
the wit and humour to bring so many smiles to so many faces in such a harmless way.  I hope that she will be able to remember that the sun will still rise tomorrow - even if, tragically, it will  now rise on a world which contains one fewer good man than ought to be the case.