Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘I wouldn’t look out of place on Hunstanton sea front under the pseudonym Hillary’
(Image credit: Karen Thompson)
Dear diary,
We are now further into the human strangles epidemic than mother has ever got on one of her many many diets, but the blonde-barnetted herd leader Boris has now reset the date for freedom as the 19 July.
When I heard this, I hadn’t been so excited since I self-loaded myself onto someone else’s lorry at a showjumping competition and found myself alone with two mares and their haylage nets. Finally! Freedom sounded so fantastic at first: I had visions of roaming freely across the fields, joyfully cavorting with hippy Hanoverians, bohemian buckskins , free spirited Fresians and hard partying p***y t**ts. Munching on wonderful food and freshly picked berries without a grazing muzzle in sight (and that’s just the humans). An end to the curtailment on the human right to roam and thus a burning hope that means they will bugger off back from whence they came and stop treating us all like ¾ tonne stress balls or some sort of hairdresser’s manikin for the visually impaired. Oh, and an immediate shut down of all on-line coaching sites which extol the virtues of 23 transitions in a one hour lesson or are entitled “pole club” – I am still considering suing that one for PTSD….
Alas, it seems that this wondrous view of the post-19 July world was as fake as my mother’s hair colour (“naturally palomino”, my substantial arse), and at best all we can hope for is that they get on a bargain Flymaybe flight to somewhere warmer than here and get stranded for at least a month in some quarantine hotel with Karen from Kent.
In the meantime, I am seriously thinking of filing a claim under the Animal Welfare Act of 2006 which states that persons who keep donkeys (or large asses – which is what I feel like) for the purposes pf being let out on hire to any Uncle Tom Cobbly and all (they use more legal terms, but that’s what they mean) must be licensed. Well, with the amount of people I have had on my back recently I wouldn’t look out of place on Hunstanton sea front under the pseudonym Hillary. Honestly, is that what my life has come to? At one time viewed as the greatest unused weapon the British Eventing Team has ever had at its disposal (and don’t even get me STARTED on my lack of consideration for Tokyo), riding around Belton with my mate Mary King in a way she’d never gone around before (or indeed since), sashaying (exuberantly admittedly) in the showjumping arena with Geoff and hobnobbing with HRHs in the Queen’s back garden, to walking about the school carrying a bunch of has-been broken old people who still think they can get their leg over something more powerful than a mobility scooter? And before anyone starts, I get that less than six months ago I was facing down the very reality of my final chapter being a bit shorter than I had intended and that indeed mother’s single-minded determination, a faint ability to hire a semi-competent team of vets and farriers and a knack for wringing more money out of her bank manager than a body building bell ringer is at least a small part of the reason I’m still here (the rest is because simply I am the Hoverine), but I don’t see why my debt needs to include giving donkey rides to the deluded?
Continued below…
Like this? You may also enjoy reading these articles…
Subscribe to Horse & Hound magazine today – and enjoy unlimited website access all year round
