How my new pony swept me off my feet – literally

‘This is the one I was thinking of for you,’ said the lady I might feasibly call my mother-in-law, in spirit at least.

We were standing in her stable yard in a dingley dell corner of the south of England which is frozen in time. After driving down a winding track between well-tended paddocks, we found her as we always do, dressed in western-style clothing, tending to her animals in her own little world, far from the madding crowd.