Desperate horsewives

One of the highlights of the horsey year for me and my equine girlfriends is our expedition to Windsor Great Park for the annual sponsored cross-country ride. And so with no sleep since the election I hauled myself bleary-eyed to the stable yard at 7 a.m. to start scrubbing grass stains. Why on earth did I buy a horse with white bits? I muttered, as I sloshed around Gracie’s back legs with a bucket of warm water frothing with Johnson’s baby shampoo.

No sooner had I settled into a satisfying rhythm of scrubbing and moaning than my peace was rudely disturbed.

‘Hello, smiler!’ said a fellow horse-owner, who seems to live for the joy she obtains from taunting me about lacking the requisite broad grin she thinks I ought to be displaying at all times. I really detest the practice of ordering people to smile. If someone genuinely wanted you to smile at seven in the morning, they would hand you a steaming mug of freshly ground coffee and a cheese toastie. Not scream at you to turn the corners of your mouth up.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ I said from my upside-down position as I scrubbed the horse’s undercarriage.

‘Smile!’ she insisted.

‘Bugger off!’ I said. We get away with taunting each other like this because it is seen as yard banter. It is not banter, of course; it is a deadly-serious feud in which one of us will have to be crushed at some stage.

Naturally, the rain came down before I could get Gracie on to the lorry and her legs started to foam where I had failed to get all the soap suds out. I feared my nemesis would make a smart comment prompting us to fight each other to the death with lead ropes and stirrup irons but thankfully she had gone inside the tearoom for a swearing match with someone else.