GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK

TREES

A rider whose horse took a diversion to avoid a wet bit of ground ended up pretty much in a tree, then on the ground thanks to a rather large branch. Could she have made a trunk call for help, one wonders? Or just taken a bough…

LABELS

A rider wearing a new pair of oh-so-soft trousers found when she got home that a label had proved its stickiness by still being stuck to them. Luckily, said label had got stuck to the inside rather than the outside of the trews as it declared: “Touch me”. Eek.

GROWTH

Scammer of the week award goes to he who is selling a donkey that’s apparently 29in tall at the moment but is expected, says he, to grow to between 79in and 160in when it’s fully grown. That’s going to be one big donkey if it’s nearly 13ft tall…

PREPAREDNESS

Overheard at a show, a trainer asking a colleague if her rider could go in first, as “we’re not quite there yet”. “That’s fine,” the other rider said accommodatingly. “I won’t be ready then either so I might as well go now.”

CLEANLINESS

Also overheard at a show, a Muggle father observing: “Horse shows are the only places where you can be up to your backside in mud and also have dust blown in your face.” At least the mud might keep said backside a bit warmer in these chilly times?

DELIVERY

Feel for our British riders in Tokyo; a shipping container of equipment used at the Games turned up at team HQ last week, a mere six months later. At least it wasn’t the horses’ or riders’ journeys that were so long, and at least it’s not us who has to clean all that equipment…