Once again my apologies for not writing last week but the blubbership was in Mum-bye (sadly more of an au revoir than a final goodbye), and as always was too tight-fisted to pay for me to have a secretary. She says that she won’t let me have another laptop after I trashed a couple – which is grossly unfair; you try typing with big feet (and you know what they say about big feet ladies… yep, big shoes…), so the only way I can get my musings to the masses is if mother types. Mind you, I suppose it proves she has some skills – let’s face it, riding was never one of them…
Her return has meant that she has got to hear of a few minor issues which occurred while she was away, although any hope I’d had of her not hearing was scuppered when it became clear that Crazy Self-Employed Lady is Snitchy McSnitch face and texts mother regardless of where in the world she is. Apparently she views this as providing a professional service to the person who pays her bills. I regard this as snitching on the dude who chooses not to stand on her every morning…
To be fair, at least her getting a full news briefing does mean she got to hear of some of my good behaviour as well as my more questionable antics. The main piece of news being that I spent a night the other week with my stable door wide open and was found still in my stable the following morning having not strayed so much as a nostril hair out into the main barn or indeed the yard. The whole of the human herd on their little witches app thing were all amazed as to my behaviour and showered me with praise and treats for being such a good boy. Any of the other horses they surmised would have trashed the place and taken themselves off for a wander. And on this, for once, I concur. But that is because most of my fellow equines still possess DNA, which puts them one step above a meerkat in terms of their tendency to panic and run, an IQ in single digits and a brain cell which is often extremely lonely. Me on the other hand, I am a highly tuned athlete with the intellect only a step away from sheer genius and a highly adapted sense of danger. I have, after all, been paired with the mothership for 17 years now and one of us has to have a brain…
Anyways, I didn’t move out of my stable for several reasons: it was cold and blowing a gale outside, so why, pray tell, did I want to get cold and wet?
There is no food in the barn, save for the odd treat left lying outside certain stables – stables belonging to the females of the yard. Seventeen years with mother has also taught me that to come between a woman and food is like sticking your tongue into an electric socket – not very smart and bound to lead to your ass being roasted. It so wasn’t worth it.
And finally there is mother. Like the size of her arse, with age her ability to go to new levels of rage is just increasing. And one of these days she might actually carry out her threat to send me to France on a humanitarian mission to feed the poor…
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So net net not worth it, so like a statue I stood and lapped up the praise the next day like mother laps up fizz…
That little bit of news put mother in a good mood, which then offset the news that because we have been in a lot of late due to storms Huffy McPuffy and Windy Mindy, I have been bored and while looking for something to do, I might have chewed the back of my leg again and currently look like I have mange. I would like to point out the reason I look like I have mange is the fact that Crazy Self-Employed Lady attacked me with a set of clippers and gave me what can only be referred to as a runway look down the back of said leg. And I don’t mean catwalk runway.
She claimed it was to be able to see the damage I had caused and get air to it. Either way, the resulting photos of the hair-free horror was enough to have mother weeping in her poppadoms 5000 miles away. CSEL also suggesting that I had tried to bicycle kick her through a brick wall while she attempted to administer first aid didn’t help the situation and so it’s fair to say the twitch has been a feature of my life over the past week; and I don’t mean the nervous one mother has when anyone mentions the words VET and BILL.
Anyways, I’m off to try and find some grass among the mud in what used to be a field in the brief respite before the next storm hits. Which given it’s a K fills me with dread – I have lived with Hurricane Karen for 17 years and trust me, she’s a force five.
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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.
