Diary – 20 June 2009

Los Angeles


I have just spent a hippocentric few days on a horse ranch in Santa Barbara County, California. I was the guest of my friend Monty Roberts, the inventor of horse whispering. Monty first developed ‘Join-Up’ to stop the cycle of violence typically accepted in traditional horse-breaking. His methods still infuriate traditionalists who believe that cruelty is the only way to domesticate horses.

I have never been in the least horsey, having taken a flyer as a boy when a nag that was supposed to be almost comatose took off and launched me over a fence. I was so grateful to find myself intact after this misadventure that I decided, then and there, never to risk my skeleton again in hazardous athletic practices. I always thought that equestrianism was rather unnatural anyway, and it was not until I was married to a keen horsewoman that I grudgingly, and expensively, came around to it.