Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘Screams of ‘let it go’ could be heard resonating across the school’

Dear diary,

First off, Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all had a great smoochy kissmuss and have done lots of revolutions? I got my revolutions in early this year, in-between Kissmuss and Hog-my-mane, as mum has been up in Scotland for the hogging bit – I am expecting her back with some sort of mohawk any day now…

Anyways, in the weeks up to Kissmuss, Mother Nature had been treating us to a real-life enactment of Frozen (the extended director’s cut), and so none of us had really been doing a lot due to the ground being harder than my mother’s heart and more slippery than an Hollywood-based tax accountant.

The lack of planned exercise and/or uncontrolled zoomies, plus longer than usual periods in the barn, did mean that the word “fresh” was being bandied about with much frequency, often accompanied by some more basic (but fluent) Anglo-Saxon adjectives. Thus, in between Kissmuss and New Year, as the ground turned from ice rink to mud bath, mother decided that while I’m not really supposed to be lunged (some strongly held belief she has that the centrifugal forces of running about in circles eject my remaining brain cell out of my right ear), it was unfortunately a necessary evil.

To be fair, Barbie Boy started the problems as he went first. Now, normally the pint-sized Palomino pain in the posterior is about as enthusiastic on the lunge as mother at a Zumba class. And without literal chasing with a lunge whip about as likely to get beyond a poncy trot as mother is to shift the three stone she’s been trying to lose since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. So thus, when mini-mother had asked if she could lunge the small orange one, mother had clearly seen no issues. Alas, the small Welsh wonder decided that he would re-enact the wall of death and thus screams of “let it go” could be heard resonating across the school. And no, we weren’t back to the Frozen thing…

Once mini-mother had been dusted off, the ginger ninja recaptured and then subjected to mother’s considerably more steely determination and much greater ballast, a 20 minute re-establishment of “who is in charge here” commenced. Having been on the end of such sessions, I could have told him the answer – it’s the one with the whip – but to be fair, watching him eyeball mother while she wafted a whip about like a lion tamer with a nervous twitch was highly amusing.

It was thus fair to say that perhaps when it came to my turn, I should have considered the relative intelligence of doing my New Year’s revolutions early, but I did momentarily at least think mother might be pleased to see me so organised and spritely. And yes, I did briefly forget that this is mother and the only thing that pleases her is Happy Hour – mea culpa…

Anyways, I did manage about two circuits in a reasonable proximation of a walk (if walking involves slow time jogging with the odd heel kick thrown in for good measure) before the excitement got the better of me and I turned mother into a human high speed weather vane.

I would like to point out after pretty much rebuilding me over the past few years, the extent of my ability to leave the ground at high speed shouldn’t come as the surprise that it clearly does, but then mother at times makes Dory look like the queen of total recall…

Fair to say mother wasn’t impressed with either of us and was last seen leaving the yard, liberally peppered with school debris and mud, muttering loudly about New Year’s resolutions to take up a new hobby. I’m sure she doesn’t mean it?

I hope that you all fared a little better than I did and that you haven’t started the New Year in Casa del Pero. I understand that statistics show I turned up in a fair number of stockings over Christmas (I would like to point out here I mean my merchandise – I haven’t got the legs for the other…), so I hope you enjoyed it if you received it.

Laters,

Hovis

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