Real life | 25 October 2008

With alarming synchronicity, the horse lost a shoe and my computer screen blew up within minutes of each other at the start of my week off.

So, for a gruelling 72 hours, I couldn’t ride and I couldn’t write. I could have dealt with either of these two mishaps singly. But together they formed an axis of enforced inactivity that can only be described as evil. Suffice to say I ended up having a contact-lens check and shopping for fabric coat-hangers on the third day of my deprivation.

On the first day I phoned the farrier and humbly begged him to honour my horse with his presence as soon as was convenient. You have to speak to the farrier that way. He is very grand and important and easily the most sought after individual I have ever come across. His arrival at a stable yard in the little corner of Surrey where I keep my horse prompts a response not unlike that which greets George Clooney as he steps on to the red carpet at Leicester Square. The sight of his little red van driving down a lane can bring desperate women running out into the road after him, waving and screaming. I know, I’ve done it.

The farrier listened patiently to my pleading and said he would be along to see me as soon as he had a minute. Which doesn’t mean much because he probably has about five film premières to attend before he gets round to me.

So with a due sense of dread, I set about solving the computer-screen problem in the meantime. The thing about replacing technology is you know you are not going to get what you want. This is because everything will have got ‘better’ since the last time you shopped for a gadget, even if that was last week.