Hovis’ Friday diary: I’m cooked on-the-hoof

Dear Diary

Enough already. Seriously! I know we moan about the cold and the wet (well mother does), but being slow-roasted to death isn’t much fun either. Is this the way everyone’s getting around the horse meat in burgers thing? Cook the meat on the horse first?! We’re all slowly dying; I’m fed up of wearing a hessian sack on my head to protect my nose; the grass now resembles straw; all the ladies are grumpy and sweaty (not a good look); and for the first time in my life I’m scared to accept an apple from anyone in case it leads to me being served with a bread bun and apple sauce.

In summary, please can someone turn the thermostat down?

The ground is too hard to canter or do anything exciting and there are so many large snakes outside spitting on the crops, we can’t get down some of the tracks. The only plus side to this is I thought it might get me some time off. Sadly not. Mum made me do a load of fancy stuff at the weekend, but did redeem herself by giving me a very very long cold shower afterwards, even if she did get under the hose herself, which was a bit wrong. Watching your mother’s T-shirt turn see-through and her airbags bounce about whilst she washes your undercarriage with a hose pipe is a little unsavoury. I’m sure the tractor in the next field driving into a ditch was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence…

Then to top it all off, some magazine (not the lovely Horse & Hound) have printed some stupid article about a Clydesdale that does posh level dressage. Whoopdidoo. Sadly whilst I was unimpressed, my sharers are obviously more easily swayed. They have suddenly realised that you don’t have to be some high stepping pansy with bloodlines stretching back to the Ark to be able to prance about like you’ve got a brush stuck somewhere unfortunate.

I don’t know whether to be horrified or flattered that they are “amazed at my agility considering I’m not a competition horse”. Not a competition horse? Ha! I have said it before and I’ll say it again, think of me as Milton in legwarmers, as a supersized Seabiscuit or simply as Boglands Quaver. Anything these poofy warmbloods can do, I can do to – in a style once seen, never forgotten. Not a day goes by that I don’t wait patiently for the postman to deliver the news that the British showjumping team have finally realised what they’ve been missing all these years…

So needless to say I have been doing more poncing than a poncing thing. I am NOT happy. However, Mum has promised that Aunty T is going to jump me when the weather gets a bit cooler, which I am eagerly awaiting. Aunty T’s mum has also asked if they can book some eventer lessons so I’m thinking William Fox-in-a-hole might be popping round to see me? If he apologises for his lack of attention to date I might let him take me to Burghley. But only if he asks nicely… and brings me a carrot.

I’m thinking that the reason news of my brilliance is not reaching the ears of these eventer-types is because they don’t know about my facebook pages. My fans set up a group a while ago and mum has said if we get to a 1,000 members, she’ll post some videos of me doing my thing on poo-tube. I’m assuming this is a good thing?

Anyways I’m off to sweat some more. I leave you with this conundrum. As I’m Hovis, am I slow roasting or slow toasting?

Yours “melting of Lincolnshire”

Hovis xx

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