Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘I don’t like summer’

Dear Diary

Summer sucks I have decided. I love spring: all those little clouds on legs leaping about, good grass coming through and all the ladies in the mood for living. Then summer comes along and with it mother’s desire to make me look like a cross between some medieval knight’s horse and an equine member of the KKK. What’s worse is not only does she dress me up in a manner reminiscent of an accident at a net curtain factory but THEN she posts pictures of it all over my Facebook page.

The only saving grace is everyone else is wearing similar ensembles so anyone approaching our fields at the moment might be forgiven for thinking they’ve stumbled across a bunch of equine bee keepers or as my mother put it the other day “a bunch of 4 legged tea bags”. My mother, it has to be said, is not funny.

Added to the indignity of being trussed up in the world’s largest pair of tights with a mask over my face (and yes that sounds a LOT worse when I write it like that….) the mares are all grumpy and the ground is so rock hard that going for a canter has currently been outlawed by Aunty “killjoy” C and her dastardly sidekick mother. Billy and I went out for a lovely hack on Sunday morning (we were both amazed to realise Aunty C knows there is two eight o’clocks in the day) before it got too hot and we were both in fine form.

We power-house trotted our way around the route, avoided flattening two dogs who were foolish enough not to give us wide berth and endured much cooing over our high levels of manliness from the many walkers. We got to the first of our usual “C” spots (and can I just point out Billy and I know what “C” stands for mum — he may look like a cow but I have explained it to him in words that even he can understand…) and I waited with poised muscles for mum to so much as sneeze to give me an excuse to launch forward into the canter I so dearly wanted. Alas nothing. Same at the second potential spot and the third.

By this stage I was debating claiming she’d asked me for one and facing her wrath afterwards but Billy was being an equine bottom kisser and refused to come with me. In fairness, it was a nice bumble about in the country but was sadly lacking in the “yeehhaaaaaa!” elements I so enjoy. I made up for it by fly-bucking down the field when mum turned me out thus apparently resembling a teabag doing karate. As previously stated my mother is NOT funny.

The hot weather also doesn’t seem to agree with Cool New Shoes man. After he and mum got their diaries muddled up he turned up on Monday to give me new shoes. As always I endured his slightly worry tendency to cuddle me and returned his affections by leaning on him adoringly. I don’t know why after all this time he gets so embarrassed by this display of affection but good lord he does go red. He also panted and wheezed rather a lot so maybe he’s got hay fever? Luckily mother and the small one were there because as much as I like the man, I draw the line at giving him mouth-to-mouth if he suddenly expires due to the emotion of such a man as myself leaning on him.

Talking of the small one, she’s in the dog house at the moment with my yard mates. After an incident last week, in which mother has realised that calling me rude names in front of her is not a good idea, as the small one copies her and yells it down the yard at the top of her little lungs — and let me tell you her volume is in no way proportional to her size. She then offended Billy by pointing at him in an adoringly innocent manner and yelling “moomoo cow”, before topping it off by insisting the smallest pony on the yard was in fact a dog. Rocky and Billy were non too amused. I did point out that at least she hadn’t called them a “t*t”.

The only saving grace is whilst she does manage to poke me in the eye more times than actually effectively groom me, she does giggle at me a lot and makes the best carrot filled dinners of anyone at the yard. I’m still not entirely sure about the way mother insists I’m going to take her to pony club games when she’s older but then I remembered pony club = small female ponies and I’m so with the programme now.

Anyway, I’m off to try and figure out a way to transfer my hessian sacking outfit onto the neighbouring hawthorn hedge before the boss lady comes back. Making her play “find the face mask” is fun but getting this net twitching all-in-one number off would be far better. Houdini got out of a straight jacket I’m sure I can figure this…

Laters

Hovis

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