Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘never has the term liar, liar pants on fire seemed so real…’

Dear diary,

Well, like Cyrus the virus, I’m still here, but unlike that amateur who can only get to three tiers I have managed many, many tears — most of them mother’s.

After last week’s new cunning plan, which involved removing all evidence of previous cunning plans and reverting back to the age old “do nothing and see what happens”, AND despite the view that in doing this I would probably go downhill faster than Eddie the Eagle riding a greased weasel, I am fractionally better. Because why should I follow the boring books on how to treat traumatic anything, let alone the L word — I am, afterall, the Hoverine, and following any form of norm, let alone medical norms is so not my style. The favourite sentence of 2020 (after “you’re on mute”) will be “well this IS Hovis we’re talking about” — unique, that’s me.

So the removal of all support, be that on the heel or hoof wall, the removal of all packing, shoes or cushioning has led to me now happily weight bearing on said damaged foot, much to the total bafflement of the multitude of medical misfits who have perused the back catalogue of my X-ray collection.

By mid-week I had stopped hopping like a hobbled frog and was seen locomoting in a fashion more akin to a walk when I was tied up outside my stable to allow the thorough mucking out and disinfection that really does have to occur when you have a hole in your foot the size of a small planet.

Now the word “walk” comes with a severe warning that I’m still more lame than a book full of Dad jokes, and if this is as good as it gets, then I’m still headed for the big pasture in the sky. But compared to a week ago, things are looking a tiny weeny bit more positive.

Some of that might be due to the nice lady who came to see me on Tuesday and who said she was going to give me a nice massage — oh, and treats if I behaved. I was more on board with this plan than a stag party on a flymaybe jet to Magaloof until the point at which she put what can only be described as a warm Easter bonnet on my head. I looked like I had a pair of mother’s pants round my ears, and quite frankly, with the heat coming from it, that thought was somewhat horrifying — never has the term liar, liar pants on fire seemed so real…

Then to add insult to a fairly large injury, she proceeded to play with my posterior in a way that really should have demanded dinner first. I get that that I am LL Hot H, but I feel that taking advantage of me because I can’t exactly run away right now is more morally bankrupt than an alley cat convention. And don’t get me started on her hand heading into my inner thigh area — there’s wandering hands and then there’s lost appendages; right tighty and lefty loosey was about right I can tell you. I haven’t been so outraged since they tried to passport me as a ginger…

To be fair, I did quite like the vibrating wand thing that was wafted about my personage — MyShoulder I shall have you know, you bunch of perverts — and to be fair, she did have magic fingers on my back and withers. By the time she’d finished, my bottom lip wasn’t the only thing out and wobbling I can tell you, which had mother looking more embarrassed than Trump’s toupee maker in a tornado.

As usual, mother should be reminded about those in glass houses not throwing stones, as I would equally like to point out I might have enjoyed the machines but, at least I didn’t have a vibrating wands down my pants when Martin Clunes came to talk to us at Windsor the other year. Between

mother frantically fishing a foot-long vibrating sausage out of the back of her jeans and Aunty Em fangirling like a hysterical teenager over Wrong Direction, it’s a wonder the poor man didn’t about face and hot foot it back to Cornwall like Doc Aston Martin. It’s so hard to get decent staff these days.

Talking of staff, I do at least hold out hope for mini-mother, who, thanks to my tireless work, is going to make a lovely serving wench when she grows up. I have currently got her fetching me a bucket of grass and other greenery every day and then holding the bucket for me, because if I’m too broken to have an actual rider then I’d better start working on my other rider — next for the list is mares with no morals, a stable with precisely 256,879 sawdust flakes and a dandelions with the stems cut to precisely six inches… Madonna, babes, I could do with some tips?

Continued below…

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So, I’m hanging in there. The clock is still ticking on me showing enough improvement for peoples to feel I can have a meaningful life (well, as meaningful as you can have when you belong to my mother) without taking more white powder than the Happy Mondays in their hay day, but in terms of small not-quite-so-hoppy steps, we’re taking it one at a time.

Laters,

Not quite so Hoppy Hovis

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