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Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘everything went more south than a penguin on the pull’


  • Dear diary,

    What a week this has been – a landmark in history, a first for all concerned and something everyone will always remember. No, no I don’t mean that CLOP26 thing – I mean this week was a first for me in the medical terms, as for the first time in 19 years, I decided to give colic a try.

    Let’s be honest, lameness is so last year and I don’t really have insurable legs left, so I might be dicing a bit close to the dude in black with the rather dodgy taste in implements.

    So, instead I thought I’d give something new a try. Got to be honest – wasn’t all that it might have been cracked up to be.

    With hindsight (or in the case of my right eye, any sight), it might not have been a good idea to pull my little experiment on the day that the vet was coming to exsanguinate Barbie Boy to see if he still has PMT or whatever it is that the blonde bimbette claims to suffer from. This little lapse of judgement meant that not only was the vet (not Herman but his more glamorous and Queen’s English speaking side kick) there, but so was the mothership, who, for all her natural hair colour traits, does know me rather well. One look at the fact I was laying down in the day and the vet was in my bed faster than a Play Boy Bunny during hunting season.

    Despite the vet looking at mother like she was one sugar puff short of a cereal packet, she did check all my vital signs very thoroughly. And lord do I mean thoroughly. I have no idea in an age when they have invented thermometers for ears that there is ANY need to shove it up THERE. Despite all my vitals being within normal range (and frankly I have never been so insulted in my life – I am many things, but normal isn’t one of them), the mothership’s spidey sense was tingling like incey wincey on an electric fence and so bloods were requested.

    It was at this point everything went more south than a penguin on the pull.

    Despite the vet claiming that, unlike Herman, she did actually qualify in a proper school where they spoke English and everything, she couldn’t get blood out of me. Like at all. Stones were more likely to give blood than I was, but peoples, who can blame me? For those of you who have followed me for years know that some years ago mother donated a kidney and possibly some sexy times to the bank manager to pay for a million-pound injection of some fancy stem cells and a lot of IRAP (which was my own blood but mutated). Thus, my blood is valuable. And I like it to stay where it belongs – mainly in my veins.

    Still the pocket rocket pony paediatrician was determined and so instructed mother to push her finger into my vein which then led to blood spurting all over mother’s hand, arm and jumper, which went down as well as a trump in a space suit. And I don’t mean Donald. Although to be fair, watching an orange blimp in space could be one of life’s great highlights. Still, I digress.

    By this time, the vet had stopped suggesting that the mothership was more paranoid than Wesley Snipes’ accountant at an IRS dinner and was looking mildly concerned. Apparently, my gums were paler than mother’s face and the lack of blood pressure was “concerning”. Two injections were swiftly given and then mother asked what else we could do. Oh good lord.

    Suddenly looking serious, the previously pleasant posh pocket rocket then suggested that she could sedate me and then penetrate my posterior. I have never swung round so fast in my life – the horror on my face so obvious Stevie Wonder would have got the message. Luckily the vet is more perceptive than mother (not hard – there are bricks more perceptive than mother) and suggested that might not be needed just yet. I agreed. Only substitute the word “yet” for “ever”.

    The long and short of it was I was then deprived of food ALL night, woken up constantly, made to walk up and down in the dark and sobbed all over by mother. By morning, I had decided that lameness is much more fun than this colic lark and had thus miraculously recovered. I wasn’t amused by the lack of breakfast or indeed the restrictions imposed the next day, but frankly, if it held off someone breaching my back passage wearing a long glove and a smile, then I would happily take it. The restriction that is, not the hand…

    Anyway, I’m all fine now, mum looks like a racoon – fat, feral, black eyed and possibly rabid – and Herman is once again redecorating.

    This weekend I am due a shower and a shave with a nice lady who is coming to turn me from feral to fab-u-lous ahead of Your Horse is Alive next weekend. So, I shall go and get ready, recount tales of YHLs past to my adoring ladies and ponder my next little “experiment”.

    Laters,

    Hovis

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