Dear Diary
It’s getting to that time of year again, that dreaded time of year when IT comes out. The ghastly, reputation-ruining, manhood-shaming, emotionally-scarring, leave-one-in-need-of-therapy stuff that mother insists on at this time of year. Yes you’ve guessed it… Tinsel. Plus the most evil invention of them all — antlers…
Can we not cancel kissmuss this year? I’ll forgo snogging Foxy under that green stuff if I don’t have to wear the antlers in public. Or the tinsel. Or the Santa hat. Or the elf hat. Or the Christmas scarf… Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE my mother at times?
Mind you she’s not the only female bane of my life at the moment. Oh no. I thought I was doing well lately: Evil Army Man has given up teaching and I am only subjected to him visiting in his capacity as my dentist once a year thus avoiding both the pain of him making me work my feathers off and the embarrassment of him man-canoodling with me in public. The Boss lady has equally hung up her instructor reins and thus saved me from being beasted around the school by the small blonde one who taught Evil Army Man all he’s ever known and a fair bit besides. All in all life has been OK. Mum and aunty Becky may attempt to turn me into a dressage fairy, but at least there’s not been some psychotic instructor screaming orders and encouragement in equal measure at some ungodly hour of the day and actually making me work as opposed to pretend to…
Alas I fear this has just come to a crashing end. Now admittedly with hindsight I may have inadvertently brought some of this on myself, but I didn’t truly understand the error of my ways. Do you remember I told you a few weeks ago that I’d upset aunty Becky to the extent she’d had to go outside and breathe fire out of her nose to calm down? That I may have leant on her hands, refused to carry my own head, ignored most instructions she tried to give and generally pretended I’d barely been broken let alone backed? Wwwweeeeellllll I might kind of, possibly, maybe, sort of, done it again the other night.
Which led to Aunty Becky getting a little frustrated.
Which was probably a mistake when we were sharing the school with the scary ginger mare and her mother, who happens to be an instructor.
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An instructor of a similar no nonsense vein to EAM and Boss Lady.
An instructor who took it upon herself to give Aunty Becky some pointers.
Which helped Aunty Becky to foil at least half of my cunning evasions.
Which in turn made Aunty Becky very happy and smiley and ask about more lessons.
I fear I am doomed…
I did try to persuade her we didn’t need a scary lady yelling at us by cuddling her and doing my adorable melting eyes “how-could-you-do-this-to-me-look-how-cute-I-am” trick, but it didn’t appear to work. I think I’m losing my touch. I had hoped mum might in some way veto the plan, but alas witchy McTinsel Toes thought it was great idea. She would.
Between dressing me up like some sort of equine elf, making me run around in circles, washing my legs in cold water and making me hack across stubble fields at WALK (because I might have got a tad carried away the other day channelling my inner Tea Biscuit), my mother is on a one-woman mission to ruin the remaining days of this year. She did mention possibly doing some jumping next week when she finishes work for Christmas, but to be honest I’m sulking so badly even the thought of unleashing my inner Milton with leg warmers is not appealing.
The only highlight in my sea of misery has been Foxy still liking playing tonsil tennis and one of my fans sending me a Christmas card. It didn’t contain any carrots, but I can’t decide if they’d fallen out or if Billy might be responsible. He looked a tad shifty the other day, but I can’t decide if that was due to his flatulence, which he was trying to blame on the yard cat. Never trust a horse the colour of a cow, a thoroughbred or a rabbit. Shifty, the lot of them…
Anyway I’m off to try to hide from Aunty Becky, her potential instructor and my menace of a mother.
Laters,
Ho-Ho-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.
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