Dear diary,
If you ever needed proof that women are temperamental, then quite frankly the monumental epi that Mother Nature is throwing at the minute should suffice. What in God’s green little name is the loony lady doing?! As I told you last week, if we’d had any more seasons in a day then Frankie Vali would have been doing us for plagiarism, but it didn’t stop there. After Dennis followed Ciara, then it was definitely a weekend of “Staying Alive”, with it being less a case of “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” (cos yeah, like I can’t see anything else you daft mare) and more “Raindrops Are Falling On My Head” (and my nose, and my ears, and my ass). Honestly, it’s like she’s decided to do “Mother Nature: the Musical”; there’s that much water in the school, I swear I can hear the Jaws theme tune as soon as someone opens the gate…
While we are on free-draining (I assume this is different from fee-draining, which is what mother says I am?) soil so are fairing way, way better than most, there is still so much water lying about that my interpretive modern dance, expressing my desire to return to the dry and warmth of my stable, is started to resemble the opening number of a synchronised swimming competition. Stick a rubber glove on my head and a nose peg and Kate Shortman is going to start stressing about the new kid on the block…
But it’s not just the rain and the endless battle to actually be able to put one’s head down to graze without getting a full on rendition flight experience with free water boarding, but the WIND. I mean it’s bad enough that I have to cope with the Edward Scissor Hands haircut of horrors that she-who-should-not-be-allowed-near-sharp-implements caused, without the remaining Uma Thurman fringe waving about like it’s signalling Airfarce One into land. I mean it was bad enough when Wrong Direction went their separate ways, but there was only five of them; I’ve got every hair on my head falling out with its neighbour, making like bananas and splitting. I look like an after-effect picture following Stevie Wonder rewiring the electrics…
The wind was so fierce on Sunday that the cat hairs on my pert posterior were conducting their own Mexican waves, while my tail writhed around like J-Lo on a pole and my feathers renacted “Wind Beneath My Wings”. That was that much of me spinning round I could have been wired up to the grid and supplied half of Blackpool…
So, you can imagine my utter delight when the nice saddle man rocked up on Sunday with my new saddle, and upon fitting it to my manly muscles, asked if mother wanted a ride to test drive it. Now in fairness, mother knows the importance of “road testing” a new saddle, but I think she shared the view that testing the road with her face was not something she wanted to be doing on Sunday. Needless to say, as the saddle was exactly the same as the old one, which was stolen last year, we decided that mum would ride over the coming weeks and then the saddle man would come back and check it again. While this does appear to signal that after all these years, mother has matured from having the survival instincts of a depressed Lemming, it also ends my rather enjoyable early retirement with Operation Mother-would-actually-like-to-remember-what-the-fun-bit-of-horse-ownership-is-like now royally underway (and yes, she still hasn’t got the idea of naming operations).
I am thus expecting many many hours of transitions in the school in which I maintain I identify as a slightly curvaceous giraffe and mother maintains that self-head carriage was part of the terms and conditions. I have had a slight reprieve this week as mother had a nerve block in her spine on Tuesday, but come the weekend I expect to be stopping and starting more than the Brexit negotiations did and with about as many disagreements.
Continued below…
Hovis’ Friday diary: fearing for my bum hairs
Hovis has had the chop, and also ponders the sanity of mother nature
Subscribe to Horse & Hound magazine today – and enjoy unlimited website access all year round
I will end my diary this week though on a serious matter which affects all of the horses among us; a dreadful and demeaning discrimination which needs to be stamped out. For this morning, Barbie Boy buggered off in MY executive transport, to a party that I was barred from — some sort of masonic secret society thing called PONY CLUB. Now to be fair, I have been to an evening at Pony Club, where I was the celebrity guest and was fawned all over by four-foot-high-floosy-like fillies, so I had, up until this morning, been something of a fan. Until it was explained to me that they are a den of devious discrimination: apparently if you’re not a squeaky, squealy short arse then you’re not allowed to go. How is that fair? Since the we now live in an age where inequality is being called out, I have decided that we horses should remain silent no more, so I invite you to join me in #PCiswee. Let’s make a stand — who’s with me?
Laters,
Hovis
Would you like to read Horse & Hound’s independent journalism without any adverts? Join Horse & Hound Plus today and you can read all articles on HorseandHound.co.uk completely ad-free
