Poldark and ponies

A staycation certainly wasn’t on Eve Jones’ agenda in March but it has resulted in mastery of the wetsuit and a new mount for autumn hunting

IT’S been a season of shift. What we planned in March for the months leading to autumn – geographically, economically and practically – has changed somewhat. We had intended to go to Portugal, to the opera in Verona and to France for some maxi cheese and bread consumption. I reflected on this as I sat, sweating and slightly panicky, on the edge of the bath in our last-minute holiday cottage rental in Cornwall, with a wetsuit stuck just below my knees. Top tip for the wetsuit virgin: when dragging yourself into a damp and salty rubber-gimp outfit, decide whether you need the loo first. A quick wee before you jump into the car will not be quick if you have to extract yourself from your gimp suit and then try to wrench yourself back in again. It will be like that episode of Friends in which Ross gets stuck trying to talcum powder and moisturise his way back into his leather trousers. I think the heaving, dragging and sweating before zipping up must be part of the science. Set your temperature to boil going in, zip up and trap in the heat (although I’m informed doing a quick wee inside it has much the same effect with far less effort).

While wetsuits in Cornwall didn’t have quite the glamour of gowns in Verona, it was a welcome substitution, eventually. Once Portugal was off the cards, Mr D’s proposal of a motor home round the UK went down like a sand sandwich. In my most brattish voice I declared it was the worst idea I had ever heard and we must go somewhere else hot. A too-good-to-be true Greek booking was next to go down the pan when they temporarily closed the borders, so we scouted for more static UK holidays. I spent childhood summers in South Wales on the beach rock-pooling, thundering through the waves and picnicking among the dragonflies by inland waterfalls, so I was nostalgically less brattish about this. I only exploded once when Mr D asked if I wanted to go at all, because I had a face like a slapped arse. The last-minute booking had made decent options slim and I retorted politely that I wasn’t going to pay an arm and a leg to go and stay in some sh*thole when we have a really nice house at home. Thankfully Goose Cottage, with its goats in the garden and cows in the valley, tucked away on the north coast of Cornwall, was far from that and the crystal bays were a glorious substitute for the Algarve.

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, one of my best friends combatted the quiet summer by buying a puppy. Some excellent puppy spam flooded the Insta-waves. A terrier, sure? A Border? Nooo. A Jack Russell? Maybe. Norfolk? Perhaps. A mutt. It was a yellowy, hairy, wiry, scrumptious mutt. This terrific beast came with a suitably Corona-inflated price tag, just short of what a smart working cocker might have reached PRE-COVID. Despite the country heading into the worst recession of 300 years, the lockdown pooch business has boomed. Perhaps months of enforced familial conversation prompted previously strictly pet-free households to embrace more mute companionship.

A few days after its arrival I enquired after her expensive rascal. “How’s Hippo?”

“I can’t even wee alone,” was her reply. “Intense! Yesterday was a bad day but she’s getting better.”

Amusing, really, as this friend is repelled by neediness of any sort. Even more amusing, given she is every bit the British traditionalist, is that her vet thinks Hippo is part shih tzu.

I oughtn’t mock. Being an incorrigible window shopper when it comes to animals, I’m eternally daydreaming of the perfect ‘second horse’. I’m spoiled with my naughty ginger hunter, who, despite bouts of bloody ignorance and thuggery, is beautiful, brave and jumps like a stag. He’s a hard act to follow so I lose hours scrolling the classifieds for hunting machines, 16-17hh athletic greys that ping hedges and trot into gates. The classifieds, however, have a lot to answer for.

Enter Delilah. Delilah, like Hippo, has vague parentage. She has large, hairy feet, a bushy mane and an apple-shaped bottom. She is almost 14hh. She is my spirit animal. Delilah lived just off the A303 en route to Cornwall, “so really it would be silly not to go and look”, I explained to Mr D. I am sold by her advert and the pictures Whatsapped to me. Delilah can jump, swim and travels happily – even in a transit van. She has a smarter, prettier sister who I also try, but Delilah is my girl. She may have only been backed eight weeks but I have visions of producing a mega pony that I can hunt and lead from and one day have broken to harness. Mr D thinks I am mad but drives hours to Somerset in school summer holiday hell to collect Delilah for me and her sister for our friend. He messages me saying: “Theirs is much better, ours is tiny,” but I will not hear a bad word about ‘Dilly’, even when a stick puts her three inches smaller than advertised.

So, while in spring I imagined I’d be rolling into autumn with an impressive tan and a leggy, dappled beast to flash across the autumn hunting sky, Fate’s worked her mysterious ways. For one, I’ve left a part of my heart in Poldark country and have vowed to make annual pilgrimages with or without the wetsuit. And Dilly Delilah and I are embracing the early morning starts. We’ve also started a joint weight-loss programme. She’s working on sculpting her bottom whereas I intend to shape-shift into a lean, mean, I-must-not-squash-my13.2hh-hunting-pony machine.

I imagined I’d be rolling into autumn with an impressive tan and a leggy, dappled beast