How my new pony swept me off my feet – literally

‘This is the one I was thinking of for you,’ said the lady I might feasibly call my mother-in-law, in spirit at least.

We were standing in her stable yard in a dingley dell corner of the south of England which is frozen in time. After driving down a winding track between well-tended paddocks, we found her as we always do, dressed in western-style clothing, tending to her animals in her own little world, far from the madding crowd.

The builder boyfriend’s long-lost mother is a consummate horsewoman. I say long-lost because she ran away when he was a boy, leaving him with his father who brought him up alone. He always says he doesn’t mind because he was too young to remember her. Later they were reunited. He can appreciate her for how she is, a free spirit. Also, he knows he is a chip off the old block, unable to be quite tied down.