Hovis' Friday diary: major spook = mother on floor

Dear diary,

So guess who’s back, back again? And yes that it a pop reference there — what can I say? I is down with the homies *mike drop* (who the heck Mike is I have no idea but if it’s good enough for Obama it’s good enough for me).

So for those of you who don’t regularly read my blog — and yes, apparently there are a few poor humourless souls out there who don’t — then you might not know that last Friday heralded a major day for me. It was RTWD — return to work day — after a long long period off due to massive damage to my surprisingly delicate leg. Which to be fair could be the subject of a totally different more scientific blog — working title “which designer ever thought sticking 750kg of muscle on top of four surprisingly twig like legs was ever going to work?” or perhaps even one even deeper “failure in bodily design — proof God is female?”.

Any how I digress.

So I’m not allowed to be lunged and mum worried that any sedative would interrupt the often slightly tenuous link between my pea-like brain (her words not mine — I am frankly Hovis Hawkins) and my feet. This meant it was pretty much “put a saddle on and go”, which quite frankly seemed to be a very very BAD idea in anyone’s mind but mother’s.

The looks of horror among the humans of the yard as mum dragged me and my barely used but still “second-hand” *cough* saddle into the barn could only have been bettered if mother had announced she was riding naked.

They did try to point out that it was quite windy, I had the look of a very fresh fiend in my guileless brown eyes and that they were harvesting very close by. All of which mother digested before getting that set to her jaw that indicates she’s hell bent on something. Or she’s constipated — sometimes it’s hard to tell.

So on went the saddle and mother proved that she’s not quite as dumb as she looks and can actually remember how to tack me up. Off to the mounting block we strode. It’s a new mounting block. It’s blue. I fail to see that me turning round to look at it is anything other than a normal reaction. Mother disagreed.

Aunty H suggested that it might be better if she came in the school and walked around with us on the ground first.

Mother disagreed

Do you see a pattern forming here? I should be sainted for what I put up with. And that’s before she launched into a frankly painful rendition of “ten green bottles sitting on a wall”. When are you humans going to realise that us equines “settling down” if you sing to us is less to do with the soothing qualities of your caterwauling and more due to a desire to make you stop before our ears start bleeding. Forget the X-Factor — the only cross anywhere near mum when she’s singing should be the cross hairs of the gun used to put her out of my misery…

So we rode — well walked. And walked. And walked and walked some more. Good God it’s boring. I perked up for one brief moment when mum shortened her reins but that was more due to her getting her pants in a twist about a pheasant than me being asked to do anything.

As the boss lady was also watching, and I live in fear of her small but iron like legs, then I did drop into something vaguely resembling an outline in the hope it might prevent her leaping aboard herself. It was still boring.

Saturday we did it again. It was even more boring. Although the wind had raised to gale-like conditions, we were totally alone at the yard and they were literally harvesting the field next to us. I might have had a few little spooks which mother blew out of all proportion on my Facebook pages, but she remained on board so they can’t have been that bad. Trust me — mother is no Mary King, so a major spook = mother on floor, no question about it. It was still BORING.

Continued below…