Reasons to be cheerful? How about a tenner to get into Cheltenham for starters?

Reasons to be cheerful? We all need them, certainly every January and especially this one, with the price of a racecourse pint making an affordability check necessary every time you get a round in.

Reasons to be cheerful, part one: Rescheduling big races. There are legitimate questions about why Clarence House Chase entries have not been reopened and whether Lingfield's Winter Million card should be rescheduled, but there was a time, and not that long ago, when every weather-beaten race was simply excised.

Now we can again look forward to the clash between Energumene and Edwardstone as it moves from Ascot to Cheltenham. Not only a change of venue but of racecourse ownership and from a right-handed track of steadily changing gradients to the left-handed roller-coaster of Prestbury Park. Mind you, the 1989 winner Desert Orchid would not have approved.