I am currently under house arrest.   Doctors' orders.   I've had some major surgery, and before leaving hospital Senior Staff Sister McGillicuddy, knowing of my desire to join the land of the living as soon as possible, warned me in the unarguable tones of downtown Kirkcaldy: "You're to go no further than your carpet slippers will take you."

I pointed out that in Wakefield where I live that pretty well covers the whole town, and any occasion short of a formal Masonic dinner, but her goons - or my family as I used to think of them - are acting as jailers, ensuring a quiet Saturday night in.

It's frustrating because this is the first time for a number of years I have had what 1970s popsters Mott The Hoople called a Saturday gig, and it would have been nice to mark it in some way.  

I am unnaturally excited to be appearing here on a Saturday - for those of you not collecting the old columns in the souvenir binder, I was formerly a midweek contributor - which is by some distance the most important day of the week for the gambling community, if such a thing still exists.  

I think it does.   My father-in-law still pops out on a Saturday morning for a loaf of bread and a paper, during which errand he will go into the bookies, spend half an hour or so chatting to his cronies while subjecting these pages to close analysis - not this one, obviously - before selecting a number of animals in the televised races to combine in a series of ludicrous multiple bets for a total financial outlay of something like 14/6d.

It has been his Saturday morning ritual almost since betting shops were first legalised back in 1961.   Neither the introduction of the noisome gambling machines nor the endless computer generated races filling the screens from bogus venues like Steepledowns and Sprintvalley (if the betting shops were to devise more interesting names for their pretend racecourses these might be less irritating.   There's a real place in Virginia called Bumpass, which I offer free of charge) will stay him from his Saturday morning mission.   So dedicated an habitué of the betting shop is my relative I don't think  he's ever written with a pen more than three-and-a-half inches long.  

My late father was similar, except he had a telephone account with Tote Investors, so his Saturday mornings were spent head scratching, studying his limited sources of information before making the call, which he invested with only slightly more gravity than the Khrushchev - Kennedy exchanges during the Cuban missile crisis.   We would then go out to a rugby match and pick up an evening paper to check on the late winners - or, in his case, losers.   The point is Saturday was a special day, and remains so.  

Some Saturdays, of course, are more special than others, and I was fortunate enough to be released from hospital in time for the most momentous of all, Grand National Saturday.   Or Crabbies Grand National Saturday, as I suppose we are now contractually obliged to call it.   That's the Crabbies Grand National, sponsored by Crabbies.  

Hey, I have no complaints.   Such was the relief I shared with all sports lovers that the drinks brand had ridden to the rescue of the great day, whose future has by no means always been secure, that I barely balked at the most obtrusive branding in the history of branding, not even at Clare Balding's announcement of the "167^th running of the Crabbies' Grand National" (what, the Victorians were taking the sponsorship shilling too?)   If it helps secure the great race, I'll be happy to see Clare present the whole thing dressed as a giant ginger beer bottle (an idea for you there for next year, drinks people).

As we have lost other great Saturday occasions, like Cup Final day, which is purely a parochial affair these days - gone is Cup Final breakfast in the teams' hotels, no more Tarby in a Liverpool scarf hosting Cup Final Winner Takes All - so the National takes on more importance.   In fact, it's now the only annual sporting event that has any kind of proper build-up at all.

Even the BBC which surrendered the event to Channel 4 clearly feels some residual responsibility for the great occasion, inviting Nick Luck and Ryan Mania onto The One Show on Grand National eve.

I normally make a date to avoid The One Show, as they are always asking some question I don't want the answer to. The show I watched kicked off with: "Kathleen Turner, did you have a favourite toy as a child?" about which I am roughly as interested in as, "Alan Titchmarsh, how do you like to cook your potatoes?" or "Nick Heyward out of Haircut 100, do you like to pay your road tax six-monthly or do you pay for the whole year?"

By the way, I should make it clear there will be little betting wisdom in this column.   Think of it as a palate cleanser between the hearty helpings of information elsewhere in the paper, like a little shot of lemon sorbet in a posh caff.   But, in case you are interested, I have backed Roberto Martinez to be next Arsenal manager at 16-1, simply because I like the cut of his jib.   He strikes me as an Arsenal kind of guy.  And, er, that's it.   That's more or less what I'll be working with here each Saturday.