Only when I was unlocking my back door did I wonder if it had been sensible to have walked down the unlit path at the side of the house.

My address was hardly a secret, and if I could drive up and down to Yorkshire in a day, so could my assailants from the Catterick racecourse car park.

I suppose I should have been thankful that Marina and Saskia were not here to be targeted. I was only too well aware, from past experience, how certain lowlifes could apply pressure to me by attacking those I loved.

The thought of meeting the balaclava wearers again made me shiver. I was no longer the ultra-fit, fearless crusader I had once been. My many racing falls, and the subsequent injuries, were beginning to catch up with me, with creeping arthritis in some of my joints, especially my ankles.

And my new hand needed protecting.

‘Try hard not to damage it,’ my surgeon had said to me on the day I’d been discharged from hospital. ‘One of the side effects of the anti-rejection drugs might be that all your body tissues bruise more easily. And bruising is particularly dangerous for the transplant itself. The increased blood that sits in a bruise has been known to trigger rejection problems in some patients.’

So, whereas I had once dived into every encounter with my false left hand to the fore, I now shielded the new one, often putting it behind my back so it couldn’t get damaged accidentally.

So was I being unrealistic in taking on an individual or organisation prepared to send a couple of thugs with baseball bats to beat me up? Was it ever worth it?

But, equally, could I really stand by and allow something as dear to me as British jump racing to be effectively killed off by greed—greed that transcended fair play and tore up the rule book?

Before taking my pills and retiring, I went round the whole house checking that all the doors and windows were firmly shut and bolted, and for good measure I collected the long iron poker from the fireplace in the sitting room and placed it by my bed.

But the night was uneventful other than Rosie barking at a squirrel in the garden at half past six and frightening me rigid.

The rest of Wednesday morning was occupied by me taking the Discovery to the local Land Rover dealership and persuading them to fix the driver’s door window while I waited. They tut-tutted about how such a thing could have possibly happened and I didn’t enlighten them. But fortunately there was a spare glass of the right dimensions in their parts department and, by lunchtime, I was back on the road in sublime warmth and quiet.