Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

(With more than a nod to Horse and Hound, who have done similar things for the 80s and 90s.) Elephant-ear jodphurs were still a thing The Jacatex page in PONY Magazine was something you poured over for hours at a time, trying to work out if there was some way you could magic together the enormous amount of shillings necessary to get the ‘Pat’ riding mac. Or the ‘Pat’ hacking jacket. Or the ‘Pat’ jodphurs. Anything, really, that wasn’t the elephant ear jodphurs that were about third-hand when you got them. Reading PONY Magazine cover-to-cover, even Pat and Pickles, which somehow you never really took to. Knowing Jill’s Gymkhana off by heart. And Jackie Won a Pony . And I Had Two Ponies . And No Mistaking Corker . And any other pony book you could get your hands on. Riding ponies up from the field in just a headcollar. You had a hat as a small nod to health and safety. Your riding teacher thinking that standing on the pony’s quarters as it was going...

This advertisement, and variations of it, appeared regularly in Riding  magazine in the 1940s and 1950s.  I had a quick check through this week's Horse and Hound  to see if anything similar appeared, but either the modern man has no such need, or we have gone all coy.

Apparently leggings are  bad for us, making our muscles lazy.  Well, not mine, because I never wear leggings, but I do wonder if a dependence on the fitted jodphur when young explains the less attractive aspects of my figure now. Will parents despairing at their daughters' horse mad state now hiss at them "all this jodphur-wearing will simply MAKE YOU A FLABBY DISASTER WHEN YOU ARE OLDER."  Would make a change from rude remarks about eau-de-cheval and the unsocial qualities of a one subject discourse I suppose. (You can tell, from this sudden flurry of blogging, that it is the financial year end and that I should be doing my accounts, can't you?)

Wartime readers of Riding  were told, in the July-September number of 1943, that it was never too late to mend anything - not even your corsets.  I cannot imagine that anyone wore a corset while riding (though thinking about it, those tiny waists on dashing sidesaddle ladies of the previous century had to be created somehow - but during the War?)

I always thought when Ann won the Best Dressed Child Rider in Ruby Ferguson's A Stable for Jill that there had been another competitor there with flowing ringlets. Alas, there was not. Flowing green velvet with ostrich feathers yes; Susan Pyke in black and silver hanging on her horse's neck yes, but ringlets no. Never mind. Here's some flowing ringlets: This child was a regular fixture in the advertisements in Riding. Here she is in 1942, and she was still going in 1952. Those ringlets are so very much the antithesis of all that good sense and sensible dressing one was recommended in pony books. I wonder if the child rode, and if she did, how long those ringlets stayed in. I was so delighted by this photograph I had high hopes for the White oeuvre as it developed over the decades, but alas, these more restrained examples are typical of its later output.

I don't know what it is about jeans these days - well, actually I think I do and I blame Alexander McQueen, him and his bumster trousers. Do not see why you cannot get a pair of jeans that are slim on the leg but will actually stay up. Have spent incredibly frustrating day hauling up jeans despite belt. I lost weight since I bought them and I thought that would help as there would be more for the belt to bite on, so to speak, but it's a complete and utter waste of time. Anyway, I have been looking at a 1939 Riding Magazine, and I know it might seem that I am completely obsessed with riding clothes from decades ago , but oh, the elegance of these and the bliss of someone making something for you that fits . This ad makes even the elephant ears look good. I want to be her, and have her horse. That hat, the hair, the boots... Not quite so keen on being this one : that jacket is scary, and the moment I entered their establishment they would KNOW that my clothes didn't even...

In the days before my scanner breathes its last (its yellow stripes are apparently terminal) I've scanned a few more images in from Pony and Riding magazines. Riding wear stayed very much the same for quite a long period in the 20th century, helped by the Pony Club's insistence on what was the correct riding attire. There were stirrings, though. One which interested me in particular was the move from the elephant ear jodphur to the fitted type we have today. (In passing, does anyone have any idea WHY the elephant ear jodphur had the elephant ear bit? Did it serve any actual purpose?) My very first jodhs were the elephant ear type, and my next were the riding trouser, a transitional trouser in between the elephant ears and the modern fitted type. In these ads, the riding trouser doesn't look too bad at all: more fitted; it's lost the elephant ears and as it has an elastic strap is less likely to disappear up your leg leaving your skinny ankles exposed to the evi...

As you have probably realised by now, as a child, I was pony-obsessed. My favourite monthly reading was Pony Magazine, which I read cover to cover: every advert; every word. I recently bought a set of Pony Magazines from the 1960s. I actually took Pony in the 1970s, but there wasn’t a lot of difference between the decades in the style and contents of the magazine. One advert which took me instantly back to that state of childhood wanting; longing for things I couldn’t have, and trying to work out what I could do to afford them, was for Jacatex riding clothes. How I loved that ad. The Pat hacking jacket; the Pat riding mac and the Pat jodhpurs. Who was Pat? Was there a Pat? Or were the clothes just something that was off pat? It was never explained. Jacatex adverts didn’t change much over the years. The 1969 ad below is the same one that I remember from the 1970s, a cheerful pony girl in immaculate clothes. I don’t know whether Jacatex ever did haul themselves into the modern age a...