PBOTD 29th November: Susan Chitty - My Life with Horses

-
Susan Chitty's My Life & Horses is the story of Crony. Crony doesn't have much in the way of qualifications, but she knows what she wants out of life. She wants to work with horses. My Life & Horses is not the sort of novel that sees our heroine using her life as a groom as a springboard to greater equestrian achievements. Gillian, a user of my forum, describes the book as like Monica Dicken's One Pair of Hands, only with horses.


Getting chased around the feed bins by an amorous employer certainly isn't part of the girl groom's life as depicted in the pony novel, though it is hinted at in Dorian Williams' Wendy books. This rather more honest look is probably due to the fact this book was written for adults, rather than children. Having said that, the first chapter appeared in the PONY Magazine Annual for 1965, with these immortal lines:
"My friends... call me Crony for short because it rhymes with pony and I'm mad about them. I've always been mad about them. At the age of four (they tell me) I got up on a chair at Christmas and delivered a lecture entitled "Constipation in the horse. Its Cause and Cure", and I haven't looked back."


I love this little sketch of family life, with its all too believable portrait of the horse-obsessed child lecturing her family, but with that little sting in the tale. Does Crony really believe that's what she did? Because the only evidence she has is what her family tell her. Or is it something that's entered the realm of family myth, having been inflated in the telling from a simple childish description of ponies?  It's all delicious stuff. 




~  0  ~

More on Susan Chitty

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more