Hovis’ Friday diary: Someone save me, I smell like a girl

Dear diary,

I am this week mainly affronted. After I posted last week that I fancied going hunting again, a couple of people had the temerity to suggest that a) carthorses don’t hunt and b) even if the hunt dropped their standards and let bog trotting commoners go, that I wouldn’t be able to jump over anything.

Well on behalf of the heavier set types across the land, I feel I need to put a few things straight:

1. Firstly my ancestors may have pulled a cart, but if we’re going to play that game you humans aren’t that far from the days of swinging from trees, squealing gibberish and picking bugs out of each other’s hair (and in some cases those days were more recent than others)

2. I can jump. Fact. See the photo top right if you don’t believe me. My feathers actually provide me with the aerodynamic lift of a majestic eagle, my manly posterior provides more upward thrust than an stealth bomber and I have more bounce per ounce in my back legs than Tigger after 10 packets of blue M&Ms. I am in fact akin to Milton with leg warmers on…

3. I may normally have the sartorial elegance of a homeless long-haired alley cat after it has being electrocuted and dragged through a hawthorn bush backwards, but I actually scrub up pretty well. I have on numerous occasions had people pass comment on my turnout on the hunting field (although I have been lucky enough to be allowed to keep my feathers on — with them shorn off I look like a fat ginger man with bandy ankles.)

4. I may be big but it’s all muscle baby and when it comes to stamina, it’s my middle name. Yep I really am called Hovis “Stamina” Thompson… honestly. I may sweat like a pre-pubescent school boy on a playboy nudist beach, but don’t be fooled. My jockey doesn’t need a second string horse, she’s got the Destroyer and there’s more revs in this engine than air born knickers at a Tom Jones concert.

So in other words people don’t judge a book by its cover — unless it’s my books of course because they are as a good as my cover photo is handsome…

In other news we had the first really nice weather of 2013 this weekend. A reason for celebration you might think? Nope, not in our household. Because like some form of pre-programmed OCD migrating bird, my mother heads straight for the shampoo bottle as soon as the sun pokes its nose out from its winter hibernation.

My feathers were scrubbed within an inch of their lives in COLD water, my mane was pulled, my tail trimmed, my ears washed and, oh the shame, my man sausage cleaned. I don’t know what was more embarrassing, my mother playing with my Hovis harmonica in public or the fact I nearly fell over my own feet trying to kick her. Dolly was last heard sniggering something about horsemeat and pepperami, but I didn’t quite hear. Maybe she was saying I’m a bit of an animal? Grrrrr!

Talking of Dolly I’m off to stand downwind of her, ginger grumpy mare and Frilly. Due to my mother’s weekend ministrations every time the wind blows and moves my feathers a very distinctive smell of girlie lavender wafts up from my legs. I swear on a large packet of polos that my mother’s sole mission in life is to make sure the only thing I ever pull is a muscle. Anyone want to adopt me?

Yours in lavender-scented misery,

Hovis

Illustration by Pilar Larcade

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