Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

By special request from Vanessa, because they made her laugh - here are the other Fancy Dress photos from the Ponies of Britain Magazine, 1970. I think she could probably do with a laugh, after all the work at the Fidra Gallery (which now I've seen it I can tell you is fantastic - well, well worth a visit) and having a guest, ie me, over the weekend too. I'm afraid the cream has already been blogged, but here are the rest: Mrs E H Parsons - I'm assuming this is the pony book author E H Parsons - and yes, she did, she really did, sew every button on herself. The pony is Garth Remus, one of her famous pair of New Forest ponies, once lent to the Queen. For this effort (the costume I mean, not the lending) she was Very Highly Commended. This is the Millfields Riding School, Newmarket - "yet another winner .... with a Tyrolean group complete with genuine imported Hafflinger ponies and the whole party in authentic national costume." They won the Winifred Spooner Challe...

Elizabeth Helen Parsons (E H Parsons) was a breeder of New Forest Ponies. Two of her ponies, Garth Remus and Deeracres Sally, were regularly driven by the Queen. On a less exalted note, Mrs Parsons and her family, fortunately for me, who loves this sort of thing, were endlessly inventive contributors to fancy dress classes. They were stalwarts of the Ponies of Britain Shows, and devised some spectacular costumes . Mrs Parsons also wrote pony books: three, all featuring New Forest ponies. Today's PBOTD, following the holiday theme, is her Quest for a Pony. There are four of the Knight children, but they have just the two ponies between them - a situation, it must be said, many pony-less children would have died for - and so they set off in their horse drawn caravan to drive from Haslemere to the New Forest to address the not enough ponies situation, making money as they go.  ~  0  ~ More on E H Parsons

The 1963 Pony Annual decided to give its readers a few ideas to go on for their own fancy dress classes: Lieut Col C E G Hope, the editor, was often asked for ideas, so wrote an article with illustrations from the 1962 Ponies of Britain Show (and you will know from my previous blog post just what comedy gold that was). I looked at this one for some time in bewilderment before it occurred to me to look at the caption and I could think of nothing whatsoever that this could represent, except possibly something to do with flying as the human seems to have flying goggles. Any ideas? And would those ideas have included an Abominable Snowman? For this is what Miss A King and Shadow (who was only two) were. This was described as "a severe test for a young pony." Looking at it, I can see that Shadow was the Abominable Snow Pony but I still can't work out what his owner was. This next is from Horse and Pony Illustrated, 1955, and is proof that the sixties weren't the only decad...