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Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘My IQ is not rivalled by the mounting block’


  • Dear diary,

    As the world continues to watch in horror at the events happening in Ukraine, I equally continue to be amazed at the complex creatures you humans are. For all the evil that we are seeing, there are so many examples of incredible kindness too – our Hovite Army have already raised more then £2,000 on my Facebook page, ShiteEventers have stopped falling off for long enough to equally raise a mountain of money, proving there’s something they’re all actually not sh*te at, and across the country donations have been flying in for humans and animals alike.

    My stand-in Cool New Shoes Man (usually deployed when I’ve managed to throw a shoe at a highly inconvenient time) is part of a large aid convoy heading over to the Polish border this week with horse lorries full of supplies and a desire to also use them as a literal vehicle to transport people to safety. Which is pretty damn cool.

    Mother did seriously debate whether she should offer to go with him to help but thankfully (for his sake) she doesn’t have an HGV license and so thus, in the grand scheme of things, would have been about as useful as socks on a fish. I did think about suggesting that she would be best deployed in diplomatic negotiations with Russia, but then realised that while I am the master stretching the literary elastic band then using the words “diplomatic” and “mother” in the same sentence would be beyond even my skill set…

    Meanwhile, while I ponder setting her on Putin, the mothership continues to focus her and Aunty Em’s energies on bringing me back into work. This seems to be involving far too much walking about for my liking, but I’m trying to balance protesting this with the thought of being stuck on the horse hamster wheel like Barbie Boy instead. Or even worse, at the same time as Barbie Boy. Walking in circles in a giant steel contraption staring at his arse is like Dante’s description of the seventh circle of hell. So thus, I have managed to keep my lack of enthusiasm at the right level to ensure that all around me know that I consider this walking about like an overgrown dog to be demeaning but haven’t quite over-stepped the mark enough to be renamed Hovis the Hamster. Yet.

    That said, I wasn’t amused to see that Aunty Em had posted a video of me on Facebook the other day which appeared to suggest that I was either auditioning to be a truffle hunting pig or had a penchant for shoving substances up my nose with the enthusiasm of a Happy Monday. Or in my case, a cheerful Tuesday. Can we be clear here, I am like a highly trained ninja, with skills that you mere mortals can only begin to imagine and thus (clearly), I was conducting a thorough security sweep of the manège surface. Now, before you get all dismissive and suggest I am now trying to find an explanation for being more than a tad special, I will point out that when long-eared shaggy types do this at airports, they get showered with praise and given balls and whatnot. I do it in our school and it’s suggested my IQ is rivalled by the mounting block. The fact that I reportedly then spooked at my own snorting coming out of the phone when Aunty Em played the video back is a scandalous lie, propagated by anti-featherist factions of the German Dressage team.

    Honest.

    Anyways, I’m off to wave off stand-in Cool New Shoes Man, watch Barbie be a hamster and try and avoid mother getting her leg over.

    Laters,

    Hovis

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