Well, what a strange week this has been, and no, I’m not talking about the human strangles epidemic, which seems to be gripping the nation in a frenzy of toilet paper-buying trauma. I am very deliberately not going to talk about the craziness because a) I’m pretty sure you’re all glued to the news channels as it is, b) I like to find humour in every situation and even I can’t find anything funny in supermarkets with less on the shelf than mother has between her ears, and c) I’m a horse, so if I even mention the word “virus” mother will have unmentionables shoved up bodily orifices faster than you can say rectal thermometer. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure mother doesn’t possess a temperature reading device that hasn’t been up my rear end so the accusation made by many, that she is potty-mouthed may soon be true…
So, rapidly moving away from serious matter; it’s fair to say the weekend had something of a Jekyll and Hyde, split personality aspect to it as I went from be*lend to legend faster than Gazza at a World Cup quarter-final. On Saturday she-who-thinks-she-is-a-lion-tamer decided that I needed to “blow off some steam” before the inaugural flight of Hovis Airlines on Sunday. Now, I don’t know about you, but I hear the words “blow off steam” and I think of baked beans and the zoomies (not necessarily in that order); I do not think of a sedate walk around the manége like some octogenarian with piles and a hip replacement. Thus, in my defence, after a few circuits of the aforementioned funeral procession walk, I may have started to get a bit “frisky” (to be clear, “frisky” to me means a little spring in my step, a little “joggy-joggy”, a little “boingy-boingy” — none of which necessitated the language that began to pour forth from the mothership like the verbal aftereffects of a vindaloo).
Now, I get that she’s had to get very creative with the bank manager in order to pay for the west wing of Herman Towers in my name, I get that I might possibly have an affinity for staying at l’hotel de Zippy on a thrice yearly basis and that her bank account can’t remember the last time it wasn’t blushing, but I refute the fact my sire and dam weren’t married and that I have the brain processing power of a mentally disabled amoeba. She should have been thrilled as I worked through my repertoire of dance moves; the cha-cha slide, the can-cans, River Dance and Fame (although at that stage it was pretty clear there was absolutely no way I was going to live forever — the next five minutes weren’t looking good…) but no. She was not. While there was no snow to be seen, I have seen warmer receptions at a naturist convention in Norway in November — frosty wasn’t the word, and there was no way she was letting anything go. Other than the last vestiges of her sanity as she sobbed hysterically into my haynets in the barn. Flavour of the month, I was not…
Sunday arrived and having done some quiet reflection overnight — not least on the idea it’s still a bit cold at night and I don’t quite fancy being tied to a stake at the side of the road — I decided that I would try and contain some of my natural enthusiasm, and thus mother actually managed to mount me in the first time in over 14 months without incident. Well, other than her aged joints cracking so loudly the local rabbit militia thought they were under aerial bombardment…
We walked about for 30 minutes with me becoming more and more convinced that mother shouldn’t be allowed to ride anything more than a fairground carousel, while she beamed from ear to ear like the Andrex Puppies’ pension fund manager (sorry — too soon?!). I confess that mentally I was throwing more moves than an octopus at a rave, but physically I resembled a rocking horse on legs; riding schools the world over would have been rushing to offer me a job, which as you can imagine is a total insult to a world class eventer like myself.
Anyway, the upshot is that the mothership is holding off selling me at least for the moment, but I am concerned on hearing that food is running low in many areas and seeing mother walking about holding a copy of “Braising Saddles — 101 ways to cook your horse”…
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Cool New Shoes Man came to visit me this week to replace the resin in my foot and keep mother up to speed with his informed opinion of my hoof growth. As per usual, she was singly unimpressed both with his social distancing measures (see the video on my Facebook pages) and his lack of wizardry in making my hole of Hovis shrink to the size of a London bedsit in less than two shoeing cycles. He retaliated by posting pictures of their WhatsApp exchange which in turn gave everyone a telling insight into how my support team view the mothership — again, see photos on my pages to see what I mean!
Anyway, I’m off too Google the recipe for pony pie to leave conveniently for she-who-used-to-be-vegetarian to find. Stay safe out there, accept your humans are going to be acting very, very stangely for a while and hang on to your thermometers — God knows where they will stick them.
Laters,
Hovis
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Hovis shared his weekly diary each Friday on the Horse & Hound website between 2008 and February 2025. Initially located on the popular H&H forum, he moved to the main website in February 2013. He published nine books, each to raise funds for his local equine welfare charity Bransby Horses. You can read all his diary entries below. H&H also published a final tribute to our much-loved equine contributor.
