Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘money-making pursuits’

Dear diary

Does anyone know of any jobs going that would suit a gelding of my abilities? Mum says I have to get one (a job that is) or she’s going to have to start selling off my body parts, and to be honest I’m quite attached to my bits. Pray tell, why is your mother being such an evil whip-wielding wench bag I can hear you ask? Well apparently money doesn’t grow on trees and I have been costing a fair bit of it of late, I shall explain.

As I mentioned last week she is currently lame with a broken hand (not my doing I hasten to add) and so she’s paying for me to be looked after full-time by the boss lady. In turn, the boss lady (who is wiser and much kinder than Mother McNasty) has been feeding me lots of hay — both in my stable and in the field because we keep having surprise attacks of the white stuff. This led to a massive hay delivery last weekend and my mother shakily handing over rather a large chunk of cash — it should be noted that a moth was seen venturing out of mother’s wallet, so rarely does it see daylight…

In the meantime, I may have possibly been enjoying frolicking in the snow with Dolly, charging about ignoring the fact that I’m still technically on a sick note. The white stuff did hide the divots for a while but it did unfortunately melt in time for mother’s return from Scotland revealing the 10-foot long skid marks and enormous holes in all their glory. It did seem highly unlikely that she’d swallow the line that it was the rabbit’s handy work when the boss lady also rang her to tell her I’d lost a shoe in the process…

In fairness the boss lady and I ( I was helping) did circle my field for hours looking for the lost item after mother apparently incredulously asked how on earth something the size of a dinner plate could go missing but alas to no avail. I secretly suspect it may have flung off at high speed or be buried under one of the very impressively deep divots I had created but I wisely refrained from mentioning this. Mother, dad and mini-mother did all also try to find it but also gave up in exasperated disgust. Maybe broken hands affect eyesight? Or perhaps she was still in shock about the hay bill…

Anyway, Cool New Shoes Man duly turned up and after also suggesting that surely a shoe the size of mine could be seen from space, took mother’s glare as a hint to drop the subject and put a new one on me. As I’m seeing him again in less than two weeks, it’s fair to say mother’s mood was getting blacker and her bank balance a great deal redder.

All this combined with boss lady getting a zip stuck on one of my rug’s neck pieces and me having a slight accident with a belly strap on another rug (it’s not my fault I couldn’t understand the command to “get my fat foot off it” — my hearing was impaired by my food bucket) and it’s fair to say mother’s bank balance is looking thinner than a racehorse in a grazing muzzle. That’s before we mention the vet’s bills — although mother was heard thanking the man upstairs for insurances (I wasn’t aware he sold insurance? Does he have a part-time job?).

So I need a job before mother starts raffling bits of me off to pay the bills. Any suggestions? As I don’t make any money from being an author extraordinaire, I need another money-making pursuit. I would have sold my…ahem “services” but some Irish killjoy removed my baby creators when I was only little. I’m a good actor so am still hopefully for a lucrative film role but in the meantime like all jobbing actors I’m prepared to do whatever it takes (other than star in any dodgy prawn films — I’m not that kind of horse). So if any of you have jobs that need doing then let me know — just call me Hovis the Helpful horse…

Laters

Hovis

P.S A few people asked last week about my books — there are now three out: Hovis’ Friday Diary: From the beginning, Hovis’ Friday Diary: The year of the Destroyer and Hovis’ Friday Diary: Fifty tastes of hay. All available from the online shop at www.bransbyhorses.co.uk and all proceeds go to the charity.

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