Horses

Always the National Trust sticker. It feels like every time a car parks across the gateway to my horses’ field there is a National Trust sticker in the windscreen. Sometimes there are several stickers in varied colours, the permits of different years, one above the other, like a star rating system for lefties. A few weeks ago, a shiny black car with five National Trust stickers parked sideways on, blocking not only the gateway but the stile beside it so people couldn’t access the footpath. When I caught up with the two men who got out of the car, asking them to please go back and move, they were, in

The whole of Surrey and south-west London seem to have gone abroad on holiday so I’ve got my sanity back. All the people who were working from home because they couldn’t risk Covid-19 but who had to go out walking and cycling in the countryside all day long have simply vanished. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the Covid-phobics have got on planes and enthusiastically breathed as much re–circulated air as it takes to get them to a villa by the sea. The cyclists and the runners and the ramblers with backpacks with cooking pots sticking out of the top have all evidently decided they didn’t need to bother me

‘Can my dog meet your horse?’ asked the woman, as her German shepherd lunged at me, making my thoroughbred jump up and down in panic. We had been riding through the woods, a friend and I, when we came across one of those dog-walking clubs. Up to a dozen of what looked like former guard dogs and their owners came round a bend on the track towards us. ‘He just wants to say hello!’ the woman persisted. How many times have we all heard that from a dog-owner in the park before said beast pounces and humps us half to death? So I told her very firmly: ‘Absolutely not. Do