The unhorsey father

NEIL can’t put a headcollar on, but by golly, he can reverse a trailer. Within weeks of his 11-year-old daughter Ellie joining the Cloverdown & District branch of the Pony Club, the mothers had sniffed out this most welcome skill. Their husbands get cross with them and shout when they jack-knife the car and trailer (again): “No, turn the wheel the other way, for God’s sake!” But dear, kind

Neil just quietly comes over, sorts it out and parks them neatly in a row — with room to get the ramp down — facing the exit. Heaven.

Neil, who sees reversing trailers as utterly logical and doesn’t really understand why the average Pony Club mother, whose mind is whirring with a million different things, can’t get that. However, he is too much of a gentleman to say so and is happy to discover there is something in this strange new world of ponies he can do well. When the DC discovers he is rather good with a hammer and owns a flat-bed trailer, she is overjoyed. Neil is on the branch committee by Christmas.