Always expect the unexpected
Pat’s eye lit up when she saw me today, and she summoned me to her office with ‘something to show me’. Ohhhh! Undoubtedly the syllabus and entry form for Blade’s Hill! My heart was beating wildly as Pat rummaged through some things on her desk. “It’s time to give you one of these. Sorry it’s taken me so long, I meant to mention it before.” My mind galloped wildly through two clear rounds and a red rosette - on our way to showjumping glory, at last, at last! Pat gazed intimately into my eye as she handed something over with a flourish and a brisk “Best of luck!” I looked down and in my hand was a box marked ‘Worming Syringe.’
I am so glad we are no longer looking for a pony. None of our pony-buying forays ended in anything but disaster, which means we count the not-entirely-obvious blessings of our Clyde daily. I was looking through my notes of the time, and came across Tickie, whom we visited in October.
She sounded promising, ‘half-thoroughbred with three stunning paces who will go far.’ Thoroughbred was a word which always sent a ripple through pony-mum’s shamelessly shallow psyche, so it was quite a surprise to see the pony, who was thickset, had the personality of a teabag, and was much the same colour. Brown as a horse-colour is usually prettied-up as bay, chestnut, sorrel etc, but this pony was unequivocally brown from her ears to her soul.
Tickie’s owner was very proud of Tickie, whom she had bred herself. In fact she referrred to herself throughout as ‘Tickie’s mum’, and produced an album of photographs of Tickie, from birth to 7 years. You might imagine one photograph per birthday, and perhaps one or two for the intervening seasons, but no, the photographs were labelled ‘Tickie at 3 days’, ‘Tickie at one week,’ ‘Tickie and her mother’, ‘Tickie’s first steps,’. You can imagine it took quite some time before we got to ‘Tickie’s first rosette’, and ‘first’ meant what it said. How I wished I had not expended all possible compliments on the first pages and reserved some newer, fresher ones for the last!
Tickie’s mum mounted Tickie to show off her three stunning paces. She was rather too large for the pony, which brought her knees up into a jockey’s position, and her hands beneath her chin. We stood in the centre of a marsh as the wind howled and the rain poured down. The pony clumped lumpenly around the boggy field. Then round again, the other way. Back the other way, clumping slightly faster. We stood and watched and tried to look knowledgeable, with grave, assessing expressions. “What are we looking for?” Reluctant-Pony-Dad muttered, but none of us knew. After several more circuits the intense solemnness got to me and I felt a threatening surge of shaming, uncalled-for hysteria, not helped when J whispered, “How long will she keep going for?”
When it was J’s turn, with a whisk of its tail the pony revved up into an astonishing burst of speed from a standing start and was gone. All became clear as to the meaning of that term: “she will go far.” Her mum clutched my arm in rapt admiration as Tickie galloped on and on, a mere dot on the horizon with my shrieking daughter aboard – “I don’t often get a chance to watch her – but oh! I think she is three-quarters thoroughbred, don’t you?”
Pony-girl did eventually return, possibly saved by the one non-thoroughbred leg slowing down the other three.
I am so glad we are no longer looking for a pony. None of our pony-buying forays ended in anything but disaster, which means we count the not-entirely-obvious blessings of our Clyde daily. I was looking through my notes of the time, and came across Tickie, whom we visited in October.
She sounded promising, ‘half-thoroughbred with three stunning paces who will go far.’ Thoroughbred was a word which always sent a ripple through pony-mum’s shamelessly shallow psyche, so it was quite a surprise to see the pony, who was thickset, had the personality of a teabag, and was much the same colour. Brown as a horse-colour is usually prettied-up as bay, chestnut, sorrel etc, but this pony was unequivocally brown from her ears to her soul.
Tickie’s owner was very proud of Tickie, whom she had bred herself. In fact she referrred to herself throughout as ‘Tickie’s mum’, and produced an album of photographs of Tickie, from birth to 7 years. You might imagine one photograph per birthday, and perhaps one or two for the intervening seasons, but no, the photographs were labelled ‘Tickie at 3 days’, ‘Tickie at one week,’ ‘Tickie and her mother’, ‘Tickie’s first steps,’. You can imagine it took quite some time before we got to ‘Tickie’s first rosette’, and ‘first’ meant what it said. How I wished I had not expended all possible compliments on the first pages and reserved some newer, fresher ones for the last!
Tickie’s mum mounted Tickie to show off her three stunning paces. She was rather too large for the pony, which brought her knees up into a jockey’s position, and her hands beneath her chin. We stood in the centre of a marsh as the wind howled and the rain poured down. The pony clumped lumpenly around the boggy field. Then round again, the other way. Back the other way, clumping slightly faster. We stood and watched and tried to look knowledgeable, with grave, assessing expressions. “What are we looking for?” Reluctant-Pony-Dad muttered, but none of us knew. After several more circuits the intense solemnness got to me and I felt a threatening surge of shaming, uncalled-for hysteria, not helped when J whispered, “How long will she keep going for?”
When it was J’s turn, with a whisk of its tail the pony revved up into an astonishing burst of speed from a standing start and was gone. All became clear as to the meaning of that term: “she will go far.” Her mum clutched my arm in rapt admiration as Tickie galloped on and on, a mere dot on the horizon with my shrieking daughter aboard – “I don’t often get a chance to watch her – but oh! I think she is three-quarters thoroughbred, don’t you?”
Pony-girl did eventually return, possibly saved by the one non-thoroughbred leg slowing down the other three.
1 Comments:
At 12:46 PM, Anonymous said…
That's a hysterical story. Glad she came back eventually!
Heather
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