Shoot me if I ever let slip I’ve been mucking out with rubber gloves and a dustpan and brush.
As God is my witness, I have just left a stable yard where the clientele were all ‘non-riders’ — women whose only joy in horse-owning was to make the mucking out last as long as possible. This is because horse-owning is changing, I fear.
Stable yards where people once came to ride their horses are becoming petting zoos where women who have never grown up, possibly because daddy didn’t love them, store a horse they call My Minty, who they believe will fulfil their emotional needs by allowing them to overfeed it.
These women can’t ride. And because they can’t ride they tell themselves riding is cruel, so as to navigate the awkward problem of their horse not getting any exercise. When they see another woman, like me, riding their horse, they puff themselves up in self-righteous indignation: ‘There she goes again, getting on that poor pony!’
These women are committed vegetarians. ‘I would never put a leather saddle on My Minty!’ declared one of them, after I offered to sell her a spare saddle of mine, seeing as she only had a cheap synthetic one.
She told me she had ‘rescued’ her Irish hunter from hunting.
‘You do know, don’t you, that hunting doesn’t mean you hunt the horse?’ I asked her. But it’s no use because they think it’s cruel to trot down the road, never mind leap over a hedge with a seven-foot drop the other side.
As stable yards are full of these women, their bullying capacity is immense. They all get together over cups of tea, and sometimes Baileys, which they keep in the yard fridge, and slag off the girl who rides her horses.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in