Pony ride

Hard to believe there still are pony rides! Putting a child on the back of an animal that might do anything! My word… However do they get insurance? Actually, I doubt this particular ride is properly insured as this was at the gypsy fair I went to summer past. I’m pretty sure insurance is not a gypsy sort of thing, though this lot were hardly as rough and tumble as the gypsies I encountered in Italy. They left me feeling rather witless and vulnerable.

But back to the pony ride – the child seems so passive and the pony so benign. Rather a shame few kids will have this simple little pleasure.

Of course… what I am NOT talking about is the first time I rode a pony when I was ten. And my brother’s friend decided to spook him as soon as I got on. Things did not go well as he tore down the dirt road, me holding on as long as I could before I fell onto the road, scratching, scraping and cutting my legs and arms. I cried and cried. And then, the adults (what utter idiots they were!) tried to make me get back on the pony. He was as terrified as I was. It did not go well.

My next time getting on a horse was three years later – and the person putting the saddle on did not do it properly and when I put my foot in the stirrup to mount, the whole arrangement slipped and slid, and I ended up under the horse. Yeah, that was actually scarier than the falling off the pony.

I pretty much swore off equines after that (though there is a photo of me on horseback at 14 somewhere…). I liked them well enough, but riding – nah, not for me. Until I met my friend Leanne when I was 21. She was mad for horses and insisted I go riding with her on Saturday mornings when she had her English riding class. It was pure love… more fun than I ever thought possible. Went whenever I could for several years, after Leanne had moved away and we lost touch. But then the children came, and the mortgage, and the work and the time and the never enough money… And now… it seems to late… and I’m much too big for a pony ride.

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