Hovis’ Friday diary: being a mare-magnet

Dear Diary

I write this from a pool of sweat, slowly roasting in this ridiculous heat — reduced to a soaked shadow of my former self. Even my feathers have drooped. I like sunshine, I really do, it makes everything look pretty, puts mother in a good mood and is generally pleasant to potter about in.

But this isn’t sunshine, this is a furnace from hell, designed to turn those of us of celtic blood and delicate skin the colour of a post box. I have to be very careful about my nose getting red — we have a lot of aircraft around these parts, including the Red Arrows, and I don’t want to be responsible for them thinking my snoozle is a landing light.

In deference to this Sahara-style heat, the whole yard has switched routine and is coming in during the day and going out at night. Which, whilst cooler, is BORING. The little ginger dude and his pony friend like to have the radio on and if their taste in music got any cheesier I could christen them both Stilton and Brie. Or maybe Red Leicester in the case of the orange dude?

I like banging beats and naughty lyrics (which I secretly hope will brainwash Ginger Fly-trap and Dolly into shaking their bottoms at me) whilst those two seem to like Wrong Direction and Little Pasture Mix. It’s making my ears bleed. I have tried throwing my bucket at the radio in the vain hope of causing sufficient damage to make the racket cease but either my throw is getting worse than a girl’s or they don’t make buckets like they used to…

Mind you, I am back to eating out of my girlie pink buckets of shame after my manly black ones finally went to the bucket shop in the sky. It’s not my fault — they were black and at night that made them hard to see. How is it my fault if I laid on them? A lot. It did get to the point that mum’s foot was going to bend them back into shape. Even I had to concede that trying to force my head through the 2cm gap between the sides of the now pancake-shaped buckets was becoming a challenge. The black buckets left and I am back looking like a large pink and orange lampshade whenever I eat my dinner. It’s times like this I struggle to remember why I love my mother…

On the plus side, this horrific heat has meant the exercise plan has dialled back a touch as it’s too hot and the school too dusty to do much. We’re also surrounded by massive irrigators pumping water in the air all over and most of the yard is terrified to hack past them (note: I am not terrified, I merely exhibit intelligent equine caution), so we’re a tad limited. This has been most pleasant as mother was showing worrying signs of suffering from that confidence stuff again. Before long she’d have decided that doing something really stupid, like hacking alone, was a good idea.

Talking of taking one’s life in one’s own hooves, I have been dicing with death on another front recently. Ginger Fly-trap and I have been getting friendly, if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge). Normally I avoid her in the stables, as she lures me in then tries to conduct facial reconstructive surgery — using her teeth. So imagine my surprise when I walked a little too close to her door the other morning and was pounced upon. Mentally kissing my moustache goodbye, I braced myself for the assault — only to be assaulted in a totally different fashion. Boy did I approve of this fashion!

The girl pretty much did a dressage test on my face with her tongue. Now, whether this new found passion is due to the sad events of late at the yard, a dawning recognition that Irish beefcake doesn’t come in much finer forms than I — or she’s just trying to make the little spotty dude jealous, I know not. Quite frankly, I don’t really care because I have long since learnt to grab these things whilst you can. Dolly looked positively furious too so I am praying for an evening of mare versus mare dust wrestling over me sometime soon.

So I am off to try and shut my ears to some spotty adolescent singing about lost love and to daydream of Dolly and Ginger Fly-trap doing some saucy leg yielding to “I like big butts and I cannot lie”. Man that would be nice…

Laters

Hovis

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