Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
a certain way he could slide under the fence. Is that natural horse behaviour? I was beginning
to suspect that he wasn't a proper horse at all, but two escapologists in a pantomime horse
costume.
Natalie and I were in bed one night and we both heard a noise that seemed to come from
downstairs.
'Did you hear that?' Natalie hissed.
'Yes,' I replied.
'What was it?'
'I don't know,' I said, 'violent intruders?'
'You'd better go and check.'
I ventured nervously downstairs, creeping on tiptoe and offering a meek
'Bonjour'
to anyone
who may have been there. Then I nearly had a heart attack. There, at the large lounge win-
dows, was a ghostly apparition, an image straight from a horror film that frightened the
bloody life out of me. Junior, with the full moon right behind him, was snorting at the win-
dow; the vapour from his nostrils had formed large circles on the window pane, adding to the
eerie, ghoulish nature of the scene.
'Well, what is it?' Natalie whispered from the top of the stairs.
'Ghost Horse,' I replied.
'What?' she said loudly and came down the stairs to witness the horror. 'Ah, bless him. He's
lonely.'
Of course he is.
So over the next year no matter how many times he escaped or demolished fruit trees, no
matter how many new fences needed to be erected and electrified it was all because he was
lonely and not, apparently, because he's just a horse-git.
Technically speaking, Junior is a pony and not a horse; I'm not sure what the difference is
and frankly I don't care - he's big and looks like a horse which makes him, in my opinion, a
horse. He's a Norwegian Fjord by breed, a Viking horse, which would account for some of
his more aggressive behaviour and the fact that he loves bad weather. Hardy doesn't come
into it; if there's a violent thunderstorm he stands out in his field facing the thunder and light-
ning, pawing at the ground and snorting his encouragement for the elements like he's pos-
sessed or something. So when I got back from work one Sunday and was confronted by a
donkey, I didn't fancy the donkey's chances. The donkey, about half the size of Junior, was
called T'Thor, or 'Little Thor' after the Norse god of thunder, which seemed a cruel joke in
the circumstances and he was a nervous character from the off - far too weak to stop Junior
from mounting him in an equine twist on
The Shawshank Redemption
'prison pecking-order'
scenario. It's Norwegian Fjords, you see, raping and pillaging is in their blood.
T'Thor lasted a fortnight before he had to be returned to the rescue sanctuary whence he
came. The lady from the centre came to assess him before taking him back and declared that
