Duckers & Diving: Straight from the horse’s mouth!

OUR rurally-challenged writer this week regales readers with a tale straight from the horse’s mouth.

I’ve never been much good with animals.

On my route round the back lanes to get to Temple Grafton, near Stratford, where I earn a meagre crust from PR firm ASAP Mondays to Wednesdays, I come across several different types.

There are your picture postcard woolly blobs in the fields, which I believe are called sheep. Then there are their bigger cousins, cows, which munch grass, look lazily at you, and produce milk.

So, it doesn’t just come out of a supermarket container; apparently it comes out of a cow – as you can see, I’m well up with this agricultural thing. They should call me Noah.

Anyway, en-route there is an egg farm; I like eggs. It still works on the honesty box basis. Yes, and even I know that means there must be hens.

Then there are horses and riders.

And all this produces some challenges for the car driver – lambs jumping out of fields in the spring, pheasants and rabbits with a death wish, massive tractors taking up virtually all the road.

But it was a new one for me the other day.

Edging slowly around one of the many blind bends I was confronted with a runaway horse charging towards me Wild West style.

Thankfully the car was on the left and the horse stayed on the right and we managed to avoid each other.

Somewhat unnerved, I proceeded with all sorts of possibilities running through my head…was I going to find the rider flat out in the road?

Now I last did a first aid course 35 years ago, so I viewed the prospect with trepidation.

Next came quite an attractive looking gal all togged up in her riding gear, running down the road in full dainty girlie mode after her steed and apparently, none the worse for the experience.

Informed she had no hope of catching it like that, as it was showing all the signs of being a rival to Frankel, she hailed a conveniently passing van going in the right direction and presumably uttered the immortal words – ‘follow that horse’.

The bloke took one look at her, clearly thought all his dreams had arrived at once, and they sped off.

Sadly there is no punch line to this as I have no idea what happened next because diligent hack that I am, I needed to get to work on time.

But, as the panto season is upon us, I’d like to think she caught up with the horse, fell into the arms of her van driving Prince Charming, and the pair lived happily ever after.