As I decided last week to stop counting the number of days since the human strangles epidemic began, I have no idea how much further into it we are, but I do still distantly remember a time when the only occasion coughing got this much press was when some bloke won Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I’m not sure what that is to be honest, but as a posed question I’m pretty sure the answer is my vet. And who I am to stand in his way?
Fret not peoples, I haz not needed Herman’s services at the new pad yet, but I have discovered he is the horse doctor to a few of the others here so clearly his world-famous (but frankly questionable) claims of saving me from the large pasture in the sky/the glue factory* (delete depending on your sensitivities) have reached many ears.
I have spent the last week disavowing those here of the view that he is semi-competent and pointed out that my still being here is more down to the fact I am the Hoverine, than the fact that Herman might not have actually discovered his veterinary degree in a cornflakes packet. To be fair, since they are all hanging off every word like mother clinging to her last rolo, I could have some fun but I feel it is my moral duty to stick to the truth – simply I possess superpowers having been injected with mutant blood in the past, I have a bionic eye and I did have a cape, but mother wanted her curtains back…
Talking of the peoples here, I have to say they’re very friendly and in the case of the ginger mare in the field next to me, VERY VERY friendly. It’s fair to say I’m not used to the level of adoration nor the amount of snogging that I am being the very willing victim of and am still waiting for her to rip my face off like a very attractive orange venus fly trap. So far, however, she just stands with me staring into my eyes with the fixation of mother watching the scales not move despite squirming as much as Jimmy Carr’s account during a tax audit. It’s all a bit disconcerting.
(Image credit: creditUnknown)
The only thing that tells me that there hasn’t been a tear in the matrix is the abuse Aunty Em and mother are heaping upon me.
Now in my defence, I am 19 years old, blind in one eye, have been uprooted from my home of 11 years and my entire routine changed. I think that grants me a certain level of understanding that I might be a tad “fresh”.
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I am also surrounded by ladies who genuinely seem to want to line up to give me lurving so I feel that too grants me a pass to pretending to be the stallion I could have been if it wasn’t for the misconducts against my manhood all those years ago. Put those two factors in front of a judge and there’s not one in the land who wouldn’t find me not guilty of the crime of behaving like a 20hh tosspot, which was one of the nicer things that have been screamed at me this week.
Admittedly, you may be able to deduce from the fact that Aunty Em didn’t even get on me that I may have taken the Micheal Flatley impression to a rather extreme end of the spectrum or indeed that Aunty Em doesn’t have decent life insurance. According to mother she is thinking of changing my name to Will – because the way I am at the minute, you need one before you consider getting onboard.
She can’t even blame it on me being freshly clipped as right now I resemble mother’s legs two months into winter when shaving becomes “optional” as a counter to not turning on the central heating. I tell you there are ducks’ bottoms out there that hold mother up as a level of tightness they can only aspire to. I am booked in for a haircut before Your Horse is Alive so I look my usual seal pup self for the photos, but until then I look like the lovechild of Harry and Hagrid.
Apparently, operation “one of them has to get on board and I’m legally hers and she’s worth a lot dead so its down to mother” is being launched on Saturday morning: Aunty Em was last seen heading in the direction of B&Q to buy gorilla glue, bubble wrap and a bible…
So, in summary, I’m loved up and more than a tad frisky, and my mother who can’t ride one side of a rocking horse on a good day is going to get on me. In an unrelated note, I shall have a job advert out for a new translator shortly – I understand it’s hard to type in a full body cast so someone had best volunteer. You know as a back-up plan…
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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.
