We live in a cynical world. One cannot simply advertise something for sale and expect people to believe what one is saying.
The first person to turn up to view the horse lorry did not even want to test-drive it on the basis that it was clearly a death trap.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I’m just a bit concerned about that roof.’
I looked at the roof, baffled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the roof.’ Genuinely, it’s the last bit of the lorry I have ever worried about.
I tend to worry more about the floor, given that that is the bit the horse is standing on. I had the floor fully checked. But the roof? Not so much. What trouble the roof of a horsebox could possibly be, I could not imagine. Was she planning to suspend her horse from the ceiling, rather than tie it to the wall?
I said I could vouch for the fact that the roof had never given me any problems that I was aware of.
The lady huffed. ‘What’s that bit of plastic on the ground then?’
I looked down. Propped up against the lorry was a mouldy old sheet of Perspex that had obviously been blowing around the farm yard until someone picked it up and leaned it there, probably to stop it frightening the horses.
‘I don’t know what that is,’ I said, kicking the thing to one side.
The lady looked at me pointedly and raised her eyebrows. ‘I think you’ll find that’s from your roof.’
‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘I will tell you there are downsides to this lorry. It can’t take a horse over 16 hands. It doesn’t start first time on cold mornings, it starts second time. And it absolutely needs a paint job.
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