Hovis’ Friday diary: mother looked like someone had stolen her credit cards and gone on a bender at the Apple shop

Dear diary,

So things are stepping up a notch both in terms of the “get fit” campaign and in terms of mother’s headlong dash towards a full nervous breakdown.

So last week Frenchie took me out hacking. On my own. Without a wingman. ALONE. I honestly despair about the women in my life — they are all BONKERS. We got down the back track of doom with a few fancy spins and pirouettes and an ongoing argument about going home.

I will give Frenchie her due — she was not one for surrendering. We got to the end of the track and turned onto the road and all was ok — well ok-ish, I wasn’t happy — until we met a tractor. And there in one innocuous sentence is the true essence of why we should never hack ALONE. It bore down on us and I had no wingman, no sacrificial offering to throw under its massive tires, no one to put between my famous and thus delicate bottom and its bumper, I was alone and vulnerable with my only companion being a French bird with the survival instincts of a lemming. So what was a boy to do?

I took matters into my own hooves and trotted swiftly past, and carried on, and on and on. I may have at some point noticed the rather insistent tugging of the reins and a French voice telling me to slow down in several languages plus some basic Anglo Saxon that you didn’t need to be a linguist to understand. Eventually I may have decided that I’d put enough distance between myself and said terrifying tractor to concede to walking again but I will be honest it was some time…

So mother wasn’t too thrilled with me. She was even less thrilled when she fetched me in from the field the following day and decided that I wasn’t putting my right hoof down properly. Much angst ensued while she cleaned my hoof of mud and poked and prodded me in various places which might have made those of you who don’t know her vaguely think she knew what she was doing. A trot-up was then decided upon and Aunty R patiently stood at the bottom of the drive while mother urged me to channel my inner Seabiscuit and run up the drive.

Continued below…

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Now I’m not being funny, my nice warm bed, hay and food were in the barn was I was understandably a tad reluctant to run away from them. Not so on the return journey when I can almost smell the molasses — I dragged mum down the drive so quickly she ended up surfing and my parentage was questioned for possibly the 4000th time in my life. Aunty R agreed with mum that while I wasn’t exactly lame I did seem to be favouring my left foot slightly. Combined with the fact I’d once again chewed the back of my leg, then it’s fair to say mother looked like someone had stolen her credit cards and gone on a bender at the Apple shop. I dream of being allowed to the apple shop but mum says it’s not that kind of apple.

She also tells mini-mother that when the ice cream van plays music, it’s saying it hasn’t got ice-cream.

Mother lies.

Laters,

Hovis

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