Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘Braving the latest round of Mother Nature’s tizz-woz’
(Image credit: Karen Thompson)
Dear diary,
I’m not sure this year can get any worse – which bearing in mind it’s only February and my mother is well, you know, my mother, is saying something.
So far, I have been the subject of illegal prawn photos distributed by my mother and Crazy Self-employed Lady, been scalped within 10mm of my life, nearly lost an ear due to mother sneezing while trimming my fluff and been buffeted by every type of weather due to someone upsetting that mercurial mad woman, Mother Nature. AND that’s without mentioning being made to hack around the village with the pint-sized pain inn the posterior in tow in daylight, and it’s fair to say 2024 isn’t exactly covering itself in glory just yet.
The Mother Nature thing is definitely a concern. For the love of whichever deity you believe in, will one of you just go and give her a cuddle/buy her some chocolate/slip her some ketamine? I’ve said it before, and I will say it again – if she needs a sacrifice, then I know a small ginger offering we could make. Granted mini-mother might be a bit miffed, but in the name of saving the rest of us, clearly it is an option. An option with legs. Four floofty ginger ones to be precise.
Let’s be honest, we are all sick to death of being waterboarded on a daily basis, snowed on or blown so hard then the only thing standing upright is our tails. If it wasn’t for the fact that CSEL has taken to giving me a showjumper’s mane, which she ruthlessly attacks with scissors if a hair even thinks about growing, then I would have spent the past six weeks unable to see as my hair pranced about my face like the River Dance cast at a rave. As it is, it merely blows upright to its full one inch, ensuring I resemble the some sort of slightly startled hedgehog upon realising that they are chatting up a bog brush in error.
The only time my mane is not standing on end is when it’s wet through, which to be fair, has been 90% of the time since July last year: I have a semi-permanent water feature in my left ear and South Africa have bought my feathers for the abstraction rights.
The last time I actually saw grass in my field feels so long ago that I’m fairly sure there were dinosaurs and mother was only in double digit dress sizes…
It’s fair to say I’m not a fan of this winter…
I’m also not a fan of running around in circles, but that didn’t stop mother last weekend, braving the gap in the weather and making me prance about like the overgrown love child of a hamster and weather vane. Now, as you all know, I have a billion pound bionic left eye, but because mother is tighter than a duck’s arse (and worried about the anaesthetic yadda, yadda, yadda), she wont have the right one done and so I am now almost blind on that side. Unless you open a treat bag – then I can see that just fine…
As a result, we often have a conflict of opinion when it comes to lungeing on my right rein. I admit I like to turn so I can see the mothership – not as she thinks, which is because I need her comfort, but more because she’s waving the lunge whip around like a conductor swatting a wasp and is in danger of taking either her own or my good eye out at any given moment. The broken blonde brainless one thus has decided that she has “trained” me to stay out to the track by shouting “track” and when to turn by shouting “turn”. Bless her. The reality is her standing there wafting a whip and her bingo wings while shouting random words at me is so mortifyingly embarrassing that I just figure I will get it over and done with as fast as horsely possible. The fact that this makes her believe she is Monty Roberts in a mega meal format is semi-irrelevant – she still harbours under the belief she can ride one side of me and we all know the truth in that one…
Anyways, I’m off to brave the latest round of Mother Nature’s tizz-woz – stay safe peoples.
Laters,
Hovis
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