Pony Club Yearnings

The Pony Club, for J and me, is the magic Inner Circle of pony-dom, with its compulsory tweed hacking jackets, Rallies,Tests and Pony Club Camps, a vision we can only gaze upon from outside with our noses pressed to the window. I've never seen an actual pony club, but I’ve read lots of books about girls called Jane Barrington-Smythe and their dashing exploits. I’ve just discovered the Pony-Club’s UK website and it sounds as it it hasn’t changed much from the 1940s with its emphasis on jolly sporting children, sportsmanship, chivalry, citizenship and loyalty. Wow. Though it may not be a suitable environs for J. She shows no signs of any of the qualifications.

The autumn newsletter schedules for Christmas 2004 a Young Entry Ball, which, with its ‘carriages at midnight' sounds a jolly good lark, wouldn’t you say?

Admission to a Pony Club branch is dependent on actually having a pony, which of course we don’t. After the Whisper fiasco, Pat has taken to scurrying past me quickly with her eye trained firmly on something captivating in the distance. She is probably hoping we have gone off the idea, but not us! We are made of sterner stuff than that. We have done this week’s local papers, and scoured the November issue of Horse Deals, and it’s 28 days to wait till the next. There are Dream Ponies in Yorkshire, Ireland, and Tennessee, but none in the Cotswolds. This is why I was scouring the Pony Club website in the first place - for its classified adverts.

I found a 14.2hh dun gelding aged 12 (spot on for height, colour, sex and age!) at a price not too far off – in a county 60 miles away. In a mad moment I emailed the seller to enquire if it’s still there eating her hay when it could be eating ours. Almost certainly RPD will bark that it’s ‘outside our criteria’, which he adheres to to the letter. But imagine how maddening it is to see perfect ponies dancing tantalisingly just out of our reach while cob after piebald cob shows up our doorstep!