The sad death of the pony ride

Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you up into the saddle, and the patient pony would trudge up and down while you clung to its mane, before it was the turn of the next child in the queue. No one ever plonked a hard hat on your head. There were certainly none of those restrictive body protectors that children are encased in now, bundled up like scarab beetles.

These days, I am that horsey mother. When we moved to the country from London after the lockdowns, ponies were top of my shopping list – above a replacement for the wheezy boiler and a fancy range cooker. We now have a miniature Shetland pony called Ollie and a donkey called Mouse.

Buying a house near the church came with certain responsibilities, we discovered. Could you, the vicar asked, bring the donkey to the village Nativity? Of course. Mouse has now starred in a few events at the church, including the Palm Sunday procession – where he delighted younger members of the congregation by leaving his own tribute to Our Lord in the porch.

So providing pony rides for the church fête seemed at first like just another formality we were very happy to fulfil. My sons were excited about leading Ollie and Mouse around. They made signs and squabbled about how much to charge (more than a pound, but less than a fiver, they decided).

Then the rumblings started. ‘We need to do a risk assessment,’ the churchwarden emailed. ‘Can you check with your insurers that you are covered?’ I quietly suggested that we leave insurers out of it. As a sop, I could bring a selection of crash hats for the children to wear.