Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘please send blankets, food and mares with loose morals and great imaginations’

Dear diary,

I think it’s fair to say mum isn’t best pleased with me at the moment. In fact I think if any of you had offered her a stick of chewing gum and 50p on Sunday she would have handed me over without a murmur and walked away with nary a backward glance (“nary” – do you like that? I’m such a literary genius). Aunty Emily still loves me which is at least something and reports to mum that I am well behaved, that I listen and that my transitions are superb.

Mum is convinced that actually Emily is coming and riding the wrong horse.

Mum is also prone to being a drama queen.

>>> Hovis’ Friday Diary: ‘like asking Usain Bolt to run the three-legged race at the local school fête’

So admittedly at the weekend I may have been a tad bouncy. A touch exuberant. A tiny bit deaf when it came to downwards transitions. An incy tincy bit forward on the upwards transitions and possibly a whole lot “fresh”. But what can I say? Spring has sprung, the grass is tasty, the air is warm and I’m feelin’ GOOD (you have to sing that last bit — it’s the law). You also have to take into account that mini-boss man was mowing all the lawns near the school, boss lady’s husband was in the fields thwacking fence posts back into the ground and the boss lady was driving the Jeep around the fields near the school. Add in two dastardly flying vermin, a suicidal rabbit and a dive-bombing pheasant and to be frank I think the fact that I was a little frisky is understandable.

Well understandable to you nice normal people anyway.

Mother of course is neither nice nor normal so she was most upset with me. So much so that after 20 minutes of fighting — both to stay on and to make me go any slower than warp speed — she got off, lunged me until I was sweatier than a fat man in a sauna and then got back on and rode me for ANOTHER 20 minutes. It was fair to say by the end I was dripping like a 99p Mr Whippy on a Barbados sea front.

>>> Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘the woman upstairs had some sort of brain fart’

It did then serve her right that she had to wait nearly an hour to be able to put a rug on me and throw me out into the wilderness. Because yes the witch has done it — I TOLD you when she got back she’d veto Aunty H’s view of keeping us in. So at the weekend me, prancy ginger dude and Dolly got thrown out into the night; cold, alone, sans duvet, unloved and unwanted. “Turned out 24/7” — abject cruelty is what it is. What’s now worse is because poo picking a field takes a considerably shorter period of time than mucking out a stable I’m now faced with a mother who’s got more time to beast me senseless in her never ending quest to turn me from the manly magnificent machine I am into a feathered ground work fairy. Life royally sucks.

The only minorly good news is we’ll be moving onto the summer fields shortly, which does at least mean more grass. Or at least it does for everyone else. Mum doesn’t let the boss lady fertilise my summer fields, I have to graze in strips the size of ant landing pads and if I start looking tubby I get slapped in a Hannibal Lector inspired mask faster than you can say “Chianti and fava beans”. Pot meet kettle – I’m black springs to mind. Mother could so do with getting the same treatment but does that happen? Nnoooo. I so need a new mother.

>>> Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘About as trustworthy as a ginger thoroughbred mare’

Anyway I’m off to carry on knitting myself a sleeping bag out of stray tail hair and half masticated hay stalks. If anyone feels the need to take pity on me please send blankets, food and mares with loose morals and great imaginations to me immediately.

Laters,

Hovis

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