#1 It is a truth universally acknowledged that every little girl must be in want of a horse

#1    It is a truth universally acknowledged that every little girl must be in want of a horse.

I wanted a horse so badly when I was small, that I spent an unhealthy portion of my childhood pretending to ride around on one.

Until the day a friend – who had recently been bought her very own – peeped over our fence while I was happily playing at ponies, and said, “You don’t still do THAT, do you?” 

Well I’m not going to any more, am I, Jane? Notanyf*ckingmore.

From that moment on, at the age of eleven, pretend pony games ceased.

To be fair, she probably saved me a few secondary school beatings, because thinking about it, eleven does sound a bit old to be brushing the garden shed with a dandy brush. You see, Jane was a realist. She told me my horse wasn’t real, and she told me Santa wasn’t real either.

But while these pony games were still in full flow, they didn’t stop at shed-brushing. Our garage was my stable, our back garden my turnout pen. The grassy area at the end of our street was my big field. Every single morning before school, I’d be out there. Mucking out the garage (with a real fork and wheelbarrow, obviously); mixing a make-believe bran mash (in a real bucket, of course) and fastening the straps of a non-existent fly sheet onto...? You guessed it. Absolutely f*ck all. 

What the neighbours must have thought as I led my air-horse to his field every day at 8am, including an authentic performance of being dragged for grass, I daren’t think.

‘Ah bless her. What do you think’s wrong with her?’ 
She’s an only child. I think it’s normal for them.’
‘There goes that bizarre kid from number 10 again’.

I was – and still am – an only child, and I’d amuse myself like this for hours. But very often, I’d play horsey games with other horsey-loving friends. (Yes, I did have friends). We'd play liveries. Riding schools. Racing yards. One unfortunate friend used to be subjected to being lunged most days using a skipping rope and a garden cane with some string attached. It made a very realistic cracking sound that really got her cantering. It would probably be viewed as a form of bullying these days, but she was my bridesmaid the year before last, so she can’t have resented it that much.

This goes some way to showing the strong bonds that can be formed through a love of all things horsey. For instance, despite the fact I secretly hold Jane responsible for shattering the last vestiges of my childhood imagination, we are still friends to this very day.

This love of horses began at a very early age when my grandparents would take me to ‘feed the horses’. Apples, Polos and vertically-sliced carrots, all in an empty bread bag and, bizarrely, administered using a massive gardening glove from Grandad’s greenhouse. I still remember those horses’ names now. Lucy and Penny, Beauty and Vixen, Aura and Gemma, Topaz and Blitzen. Not really Blitzen. Treasure. The last one’s name was Treasure

And on the way to visit them, I’d be riding my ‘own’ horse. Off we’d go, cantering up ahead, every now and again darting to one side as we shied at plastic bags, the park swings and people’s dogs, the owners of whom mostly bearing a look of, ‘Erm, nutter’.

After the age of six, these kinds of things began to happen to me for real, because this was when I started learning to ride at a local riding school. But otherwise, there I was on my imaginary horse. My fantasy Thoroughbred. My noble fresh-air steed.

Nutter or not, I didn't care - I was having a whale of a time. 


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