Advent Calendar 4 - Joanna Cannan: A Pony for Jean

-
Joanna Cannan's A Pony for Jean (1936) has what I think is probably the earliest pony book Christmas scene in it. Thank you to June Stagg for suggesting it.


Jean's father  has lost his money (pepper has been doing very badly) and they have moved to a small cottage in the country. Jean's cousins have given her one of their cast-off ponies, whom she calls Cavalier. Here's what happens on Christmas Day:
"...I went into the kitchen and lit the primus and put on the kettle. It was just boiling when Mummy appeared in a fur coat and pyjamas.
We wished each other a merry Christmas and then we made the tea and took it up to Daddy.
He sat up in bed, and said that he was sorry he hadn't got us any presents. We said it was all right, we hadn't expected any. Then he groped beside the bed and produced two huge parcels.
Mummy's was a chicken coop and mine a pair of jodhpurs.
I was awfully pleased. Your legs get rubbed if you ride for long in shorts, and besides that, you look silly. I cast off my shorts at once and put on my jodhpurs and Mummy cut off the ticket, which said five-and-elevenpence."

Ah, the days before central heating, when you had to venture into the kitchen in your fur coat.

The lunge to retrieve a present you have just given to someone and remove the price is a tradition in our household, so I have every sympathy with Jean's father. I can't help but wonder, though, how the jodphurs managed to be a huge parcel. Maybe they were in a large cardboard box from a London tailor, like this one:





Comments

Bailey said…
I wonder how he got a chicken coop in a bedroom and was able to hide it beside a bed.
5 December 2015 at 05:04
Jane Badger said…
Yes - it was either a very, very small chicken coop, or one that collapsed!
8 December 2015 at 08:38
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