will i return to the tote 10-to-follow this jumps season?

​What follows is an old man addressing one of his greatest fears and worst failings in life.
I used to enter the 10-to-Follow competition every flat and National Hunt season. As someone who doesn’t usually bet or have a betting account, the 10-to-Follow has represented the greatest majority of my ‘gambling’ experience through the greater part of my adult life. Surprisingly, I was more addicted to betting as a school-going teenager than ever I have been as an adult, using my small amount of pocket money each weekend to go ‘illegally’ into the nearest betting shop to my home in Bristol to hone my ‘skill’ trying to win the I.T.V. 7. Which never happened; didn’t get close. I dare say if I had won, the betting shop owner/manager would have noticed my age and refused to pay out anyway. 
When I was more of a going racing man, I would have bets that might be better described as flutters and would win as often as I lost. In the next six-months I am determined to go racing again as I am 70 next spring and intend to sell my car when the current insurance policy expires and become a full-time pedestrian again, which, given all the restrictions on personal car ownership instore for the population, the war on petrol-cars, 15-minute cities, ULEZ schemes and the coming restriction of having to acquire a permit to go travel outside your home town or city – I could go on and doubtless at some time will, will be one of my more sensible decisions.
I used to enjoy participating in the 10-to-Follow competition. I didn’t take it seriously; it was fun, an added interest to what is my central interest in life; the source of my mental well-being. It took me several years to realise that to stand a chance of winning the big prizes, the scattergun approach was a near useless way of going about it. Not that I altered my approach. Doing things professionally and properly has never quite fitted my personality.
I started out with the thought that winning the monthly prize was more achievable than being in contention come March and April. I did, if I remember correctly, feature on the score-board early in the competition one-year. Briefly, I was a contender, though I wouldn’t say it was my greatest achievement in life, it did though tickle my fancy for a time and allowed me to dare to dream.
I am both old and old-fashioned. Back then, I was just old-fashioned in my approach to life and liked the adventure of filling out the form, writing out the cheque and posting off my selections. The process was a ritual I was comfortable with. In my way of thinking the act of posting a letter is a building block to the continuation of civilised history, whereas the e-mail, tweet and text-message is a chip in the downfall of civilisation. 
When the competition was discontinued, no doubt due to the lengthy process of collating all the entry forms and the long walk to the bank to deposit all those cheques, the sun was personally less sunny for many months. The announcement of its return by the Racing Post put a spring in my step. Yet.
When I went on the Tote’s website to register and enter my selections, a dark cloud descended over the enterprise. I accepted, with no good grace, that postal entries were now a thing of the past and I would have to navigate a passage through, for me, the choppy, unfriendly waters of all those videos and the list of horses available to be used in the competition. It was sensory overload for a poor sap like myself. I am not computer-savvy; still, after many years of providing content to my own website, big tech and computers hold me hostage. I have never gained mastery over them or my laptop and I view Google, Microsoft and all the others in a similar way old ladies riding in horse-drawn carriages viewed the threat of highwaymen. When it comes to the world of computers, I am orphan Annie lost in a jungle of snake, coyote and skinwalkers. 
And then my bank, computer-generated voice, of course, rang to inform me that someone was using my computer to access a gambling website! Yes, I was accessing a gambling website, not that I could tell my bank to calm down and go save another soul from corruption.
I ran from the whole sorry mess, considered it a sign, a bad sign and have not entered the 10-to-Follow since. I am tempted to give it another go, though. I’ll abandon the scatter-gun policy and just choose 12-15 horses and arrange them in 5 or 6 groups. That’s what I’ll do if a) my bank doesn’t this time try to save me from myself and b) I can negotiate a mentally-safe passage through the Tote’s website. But can I?
Obviously, Constitution Hill will feature on every entry. Galopin Du Champ, also. Bravemansgame is a given. Ahoy Senor and Corach Rambler, perhaps. And I’ll need an outlier, a horse few will dare to have on their lists. But that’s all for later in the process. First, I have to gourd my loins, arm myself with a figurative machete and venture into the computer jungle.