TED HUGHES’S lines perfectly describe the Cheltenham obsessive. The dream will have to wait another 51 weeks. The dreams of trainers, jockeys, bookies and punters; all of those who make up the world, good and bad, that descends on this Gloucestershire spa town, are done for another year.

A few drunken dreams have been realised but for the majority of us all that is left are a few memories powerful enough to live on through the numbing haze of beery bonhomie. The world is an infinitely duller place when the Festival’s race has been run. Though, right now, I am unsure whether the sleepless anticipation of the days leading up to the meeting are a match for the misery of the moment when the wrong horse from the Pipe yard has crossed the line first in the County Hurdle, the meeting’s final race.

Sitting high in the grandstand overlooking the course, having backed the wrong one of the Pipe lightweights, the horses glisten, their bodies smoking beneath the springtime sun that arrived on cue for Gold Cup day. The light was almost perfect as torn shreds of betting slips littered the concourse like confetti. It was over. Things this good are never meant to last; that, alas, is life. Still, too many peaks in our passage through life and we would not survive the sheer emotion of it all.

There is only so much ecstasy a man can take, only so many foiled plots.

And this year we had four extra races over which to scheme. Cheltenham went into uncharted waters this time around with a four-day Festival. Instinctive conservatives that we British tend to be, the initial reaction was one of despair; a dilution of the magic was feared. So how was it, putting the body on the line the extra day? Well, there is no point pretending it did not take a toll. The quality of card was the professional concern. Another night carousing most worried those of us who make this Bacchanalian pilgrimage.

Based in the splendours of Laurie Lee country, a half hour from the town, I woke with the dawn on Tuesday morning. Champion Hurdle day and the bloody Racing Post had not been delivered to my door by 6am, hell. Back to bed; 6.30, 7.00, 7.30 — come on! At 7.55, I looked again and Frewen and Westerman, my stalwart Festival colleagues, had their papers nestling nicely outside room 16. I nimbly danced a few feet and liberated one of their papers. They had nobody but themselves to blame: where was their sense of anticipation? The hangover was not that bad on day one. By Gold Cup morning, it is a moment of trauma to emerge from the slumbers at 7.40. The spirit had remained willing but, by then, we were beyond believing in miracles. We were on day four, somewhere we had never been. Like Inglis Drever on Thursday in the Stayers’ Hurdle we were going a distance we had never been before and none of us was sure what would be found off the bridle. Unlike Howard Johnson’s superb young staying champion, the signs for our middle-aged party were not so good. Maybe a niggling worry for the four-day concept, too.

Thursday, until this year racing’s Holy Day, lacked the Gold Cup. The new 2 Å mile race was excellent and the Drever was superb but there is no denying that Cheltenham itself hit a flat spot. People moan about the squeeze at the Festival but the lack of it hurt Thursday more. The names on the card did not lure you into the madness. Except that of Baracouda, the twice champion staying hurdler. Moscow Flyer had triumphed 24 hours earlier for the old brigade and my money had been seduced by the confidence of Francois Doumen.

When Inglis Drever swept imperiously past the beaten champion I pondered on the insignificance of money. That is another good thing about Cheltenham: it gives a sense of perspective. As I anticipated the meeting with the bank manager that awaited me, I concurred briefly with Donald Rumsfeld — damned French horse, nothing but a cheese-eating surrender monkey. Where was its fight? And yet it did, of course, scrap as it always has. It was beaten by the unconquerable passage of time, as we all are. Baracouda beaten and the profit of Wonderful Wednesday, when three winners were backed and I could say “I was there — and on it” when the Flyer stormed to glory, consigned to memory. This was the flat spot with a day to go. Cheltenham needs to readjust Thursday.

By Friday the tank was running on empty, the jockey’s whip was out. But somehow, like most of those wonderful beasts that thunder up the hill to enchant us, I made it along with the rapidly tiring Frewen and Westerman. None of us had the strength to accelerate over the last but we finished. Penzance delivered in the Triumph Hurdle and while there wasn’t much tangible in the way of profit, the memories are stored away to get us through the long summer months. Such as chatting to Martin Pipe after Well Chief and Comply Or Die had both been brave runners-up on Wednesday.

“The horses are running well, Martin.”

He looked puzzled: “Second is no good though, is it?” The greatest winner of them all in National Hunt racing was distraught in defeat. Then he smiled and added, “Mind you, that Moscow Flyer is a great champion, isn’t he?” This sport reveres its greats, not itself.

The master of Pond House will be back next year and so will we, the punters. Call us mugs if you will but there is nothing dull about celebrating life now and then. The broad days after have come and my body is stiff but deep inside something is already ticking away. How long to go?