Would my godson survive an afternoon with me?

My friend Emily, who once got an owl stuck to her hand, was bringing her son for a day with the ponies.

Like all manic souls, Emily can produce both magic and chaos, and you never know in what proportions.

Emily may appear eccentric but like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory she always turns out to be right. It’s recalcitrant friends like her who have sustained me over the years when everyone else is spouting ‘the line’.

That said, you have to fasten your seatbelt to be around her. It must be ten years ago we were walking down a lane in Surrey together when she noticed an injured owl. I tried to warn her but she insisted on picking it up. As she did so, the owl dug its talons into her hand, pulled itself up and used her as a perch.

I had to pull its claws out of her bleeding flesh as she screamed: ‘Get it out of me!’ It was like a horror movie.

Afterwards, I asked her: ‘How were we just walking down a road and then I was pulling an owl out of your hand?’

She said it was just the sort of thing that happened to her when she went for a walk, and I believed her.

In recent years, Emily has had a baby, and she made me the godmother. What with one thing and another, and then lockdown, the last time I saw her son he was a toddler on my knee.

This little boy is now eight and we decided we really must start to do a few things together. So we set a date to take Ernest for a riding lesson.

Having not had children myself, I’m always fascinated to see how my friends have reproduced themselves, and when it came to Emily, the mind boggled.