James, my friend - may you rest in peace

There's good news and there's bad news.  Both arrive on a daily basis, to a greater or lesser extent.  However, one doesn't want to receive bad news on a par with yesterday's bad news very often: the death of James Banks, formerly of this parish.  That is a tragedy.  Just so very, very sad.  I haven't seen much of James in recent years, but we used to see plenty of him when he lived here and, while he found life a struggle in his teens and early 20s, he had done such a good job of getting his life in order that it's very hard to swallow that this has now happened.

James' parents split up when he was quite young and as he was a natural horseman besotted with racing, it made sense for him to live with his father Martin as he was up here, working as head lad for Paul Howling at Moulton Paddocks, living in the cottage on the property (which I presume no longer exists). James finished his schooling in Newmarket, but long before then it was clear that he was more horseman than academic.  He was riding out for Paul from well before he began work full-time for him on leaving school, and that was his vocation.

James became something of a lost soul during the latter stages of his teens and his early 20s, meaning that the career as a jockey which had seemed to be his for the taking wasn't happening.  He spent too much time between jobs and at such times he'd often come in to ride out here, particularly when Yarmy was keeping a few of his problem-children (ie horses sent to him for remedial training for bad manners, usually at the starting stalls) here.  James would often be helping Yarmy, which was ideal: there was no horse so badly behaved that James couldn't manage him.  He was a natural, and fearless too; and he loved it.  That's what kept him going: even when he was struggling with life in general, the horses gave him focus and kept the smile on his face.

Amazingly, James, showing tremendous strength of character, managed to turn his life around once he was in his mid 20s.  Getting out of bad habits is much harder than getting into them, but James managed it.  I think it was Alan King he went off to work for (I may be wrong on that) but he knuckled down and the race-riding began to happen.  It was difficult because he was only just starting to get going once he was too old to ride as a conditional, so he was a senior jockey, ineligible to ride in conditional jockeys' races, that nobody had heard of.  But slowly but surely it happened.  Becoming a good jockey was the easy part - he was that right from the start; getting established was the difficult bit - but he managed it.  It was a joy to watch his career develop, and a double joy to bump into him at the races, salute him on his success and see the smile on his face.  And I was particularly pleased when he started to get some good rides from my old boss Andy Turnell.

It's just so sad that the story has had to end the way it did.  I suppose it was always going to be hard for him to maintain his focus once he had finished race-riding, but initially he seemed very happy in his assistant trainer's job with Clive Cox.  You'd see him at the races - the most smartly dressed man on the whole racecourse, and laughing and joking as per usual - and all seemed to be going well.  The last time I saw him was at Windsor not last summer but the previous one, and I was happy that the next chapter of his life was going to go as well as the previous one had ultimately gone.  But one never knows what is going on inside a man's head, nor the struggles someone is facing internally.

I'll treasure this photograph which I took in the winter twilight at Newbury a few years ago.  It was just as James' race-riding career was starting to go well.  I must have had a runner there and James had a ride in the last race (for his family's old Marlborough connection Godfrey Maundrell, who was a big help to him when he was getting going) so I stayed to watch him.  It was a very happy occasion.  Both his parents had come to watch him and it was lovely to see the pride in their faces.  I can only imagine the anguish that they are feeling now, and I can only offer them, and his brother, my deepest sympathy.  He was a lovely man who brought so much joy to those around him.  It's only so very sad that, as tragically we now know, it seems that he couldn't bring the same amount of joy to himself.