We need serious words peoples, serious words. Last week when I said for one of you to go and have words with the mercurial one (again no, not my mother but the Mother of all nature), I meant nice words. Soothing words. Words to make her stop cooking us and drop the temperature to a pleasant autumnal sunshine level rather boiling us alive in our own juices.
What I didn’t mean was pee her off such that she decided to switch the means of torture to water boarding instead. For the love of whichever God you believe in, please none of you apply for a job as a UN peace keeper. What on earth did you do? One minute I’m sweating harder than Mickey Mouse at the opening night of cats, the next minute I’m so wet my left butt cheek has been scouted as a site for the Parisian Olympic slalom course. I have more water in my ears than South Africa has in its reservoirs, there is enough water flowing down my back legs that I’ve had to anchor my Hovis Sausage to my inner thigh with bailing twine and my eye lashes are being used as an aquapark by the local midge population.
In short I am wet. Very, very wet.
Furthermore, whatever one of you said to her meant she didn’t stop there. Oh no. Not content with soaking me to the extent I could apply for abstraction rights out of my feathers, turning my field into an instant quagmire and making grazing an exercise in duck diving, she also decided that a spot of potential electrocution would be jolly good fun too. Last time I saw such dangerous flashing was when mother bathed me stripped to her bra and caused the local tractor driver to crash into the barn. I understand the poor man is still in therapy…
Whilst extremely pretty to watch (even with one eye) from a distance, the experience much closer is a lot less fun, especially accompanied by a thundering even louder than that from mother’s derriere after a night at the local curry house. I was about as keen on all of it as a Kardashian on an unfiltered selfie and made my view perfectly clear through the medium of interpretive dance. As this (to the uneducated) did look like me losing my poop and thus cutting up my very delicate paddock with a speed and ferocity only matched by my mother let loose at an all you can eat buffet, Crazy Self Employe Lady did decide that I ought to come in for a few nights to try and save the grass from my very large feet and me from drowning so I was mildly appeased. Her subtle message of “I was pleased to come in” was not lost on mother who thus was last seen ordering a new control headcollar and upping my public liability insurance…
Just to prove she can change her mind faster than my mother can empty the dictionary of swear words, it’s now back to muggy and hot again so the mind boggles what comes next. Snow by Sunday probably.
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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.
