DEATH WISH

A FARMER needs a horse, so he goes to a stable where one is being sold. The stable owner shows him the horse and tells him it needs special instructions.

“To make the horse go, you say: ‘Thank God,’” he tells the farmer, “and to make it stop you say: ‘Amen.’”

The farmer is fine with this, so he pays the stable owner and takes the horse away.

The next day, the farmer is riding his new horse around his farm, but, feeling drowsy in the afternoon sun, he dozes off while still riding.

Half an hour or so later, the farmer wakes up with a start, still on the horse, to find the horse is racing them both towards the edge of a cliff.

With no time to lose, the farmer shouts: “Amen!” and just in time the horse stops, mere centimetres from the cliff’s edge.

Amazed at his close call, the farmer breathes a sigh of relief and says: “Thank God!”

Trayne Dequine, email