Madness!

So much for the worry about rain yesterday - it had stopped before we left home, and we encountered none at all on our trip to Newmarket via Ipswich. It wasn't all good news - it took us as long to get through Newmarket and into the race course as it did to get from Colchester to Newmarket via Ipswich town centre. Next time I'll go with my instinct and drive around Newmarket on the A14 before approaching it from the south west. It would have helped if I'd not made the same mistake going back - it took us about an hour to escape Newmarket! As a result, we didn't get home until 1.15am.

Still, the evening out was worth it, spent in the company of Joe, his mate John, Emma and Paul. I lost £1 on one race - didn't feel up to betting (although I did pick the winner in the fifth, for all the good it did me!). Madness were excellent as ever, but their sax player is clearly going through some kind of mid-life crisis. Whether he was as drunk as the other band members suggested, he didn't exactly endear himself to the stewards or security folk by scaling the rigging twice. How he didn't injure himself - or worse - is beyond me, but if he was driven on by alcohol-fuelled bravado I'd humbly suggest he look at sorting himself out before a tragedy occurs (easier said than done, the poor bloke's 20-odd year marriage ended last year).

All this detracts from another virtuoso performance from Toni's favourite band, one of the most unfairly overlooked in British pop history. They have enough hits to cover two greatest hits albums, and left out classics like Drive My Car, Cardiac Arrest and Michael Caine in a packed set lasting around 90 minutes.

And despite Suggs' best protestations when introducing The Sun and The Rain, there wasn't a drop to be found.