Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

Epona, the Celtic Goddess of the Horse, bursts onto the scene in the fourth book of the Jinny seies, The Night of the Red Horse (1978). Epona takes the form of the terrifying Red Horse that stalks Jinny’s dreams and communicates with Jinny via the equally terrifying man, The Watcher. The story starts with with archaeologists visiting Finmory to look at the mural of the Red Horse on Jinny’s bedroom wall.  A statuette of Epona was found many years ago and given to a small collection in Inverburgh: the Wilton Collection. The archaeologists want that statuette, and if they can’t have it, are keen to take whatever else they can find, particularly as they are convinced there is another statuette still buried. Once they have visited, Jinny starts to see the Red Horse; staring, alive, from her mural, from the fire, and in her dreams.  Jinny’s utter terror of the Red Horse is contrasted with the safe, comfortable world of most pony stories. Night of the Red Hors...

Joan Houston rode her first pony at the age of two: she fell off. That didn't deter her, however, and she went on to compete in the National Horse Show finals in New York at the age of nine. Joan Houston wrote three horse stories: none of which, sadly, are particularly easy to find. Just one was published in the UK: Jump Shy, today's choice. It was published by Heinemann in the UK in 1959, with a lovely cover by Sheila Rose. The original edition is illustrated by Paul Brown, which means that if you want this, you're probably going to have to dig deep.  Thomas Y Crowell first edition, 1956 Jump-Shy's  location has been changed in the Heinemann edition to the UK, but not much else in the book has been changed, which does make it read a little oddly at times, but the story's well worth persevering with. It's a story of rivalries between different training methods and conflicting loyalties, as heroine Tamara tries to get showjumper Merlin, who after a horri...

Today's PBOTD is the first of Josephine Pullein-Thompson's Woodbury Pony Club series. Helpfully, I have done these in an unhelpful order, as Pony Club Trek fitted in with the summer, whereas Pony Club Cup fits in with Burghley Horse Trials, on now. But there you go. The Woodbury Pony Club are pretty hopeless, so in classic Josephine Pullein-Thompson fashion, they must be improved. They are the worst Pony Club in the district, so aren’t too hopeful when told their new instructor is an ex-jockey. They're wrong about that, as they're wrong about so much else, as David Lumley soon takes them in hand, and they and their dreadful ponies start to improve, ready to show the neighbouring Cranford Vale team what’s what. Josephine Pullein-Thompson had plenty of Pony Club experience herself. She was District Commissioner of the Woodland Hunt Pony Club. The Woodbury Pony Club Series Pony Club Cup Pony Club Challenge Pony Club Trek ~  0  ~ More on Josephine Pull...

H M Peel's Gay Darius is one of those pony stories that's immensely difficult to find. I did read them in the 1970s, because our local library had them all. They were, somewhat confusingly, shelved with the non fiction. I imagine this was because they were much more technical than the usual run of pony story. Once I'd tracked them down, I read them several times, but never managed to find one myself. Most of the Leysham Stud series only had one publication, which means they are even harder to track down. I had forgotten the books even existed until I went to a secondhand bookshop in Oundle one day, and there sitting in the children's section were four beautiful first editions: Jago, Gay Darius, Dido and Rogue, and Untamed. I made a huge tactical error here: I bought the books, but thought I'd sell them as surely others would crop up soon. How wrong I was. It took years before more turned up, and by then I'd gone into bookselling full time, and I ...

Bargain Horses (1992)   is the last pony book Gillian Baxter wrote. It was published as part of J A Allen's Junior Equestrian fiction series, and is an excellent read (and when I checked, secondhand copies are available in the UK fairly readily, and for a reasonable price). The parents, or at least responsible adults, in Gillian Baxter's stories don't always get a good press. Perhaps worse of them is Bobby's hideous aunt, Helen, who buys Bobby's mare Shelta, and mistreats her, but she's given a run for her money by the mother in Bargain Horses, Mary Conway. It's not horses Mary mistreats: it's her daughter. In Bargain Horses  we see what happens when an adult's ambitions are more important to them than their family. Mary thinks she's a brilliant trainer, but the rest of the world doesn't agree. Mary has no money, and so the horses she finds to train are all bargains. They're bargains for a reason, because no sane person would rid...

The course of riding success is never smooth. Poor Henry Thornton was doing well with his horse Echo in Pony Club Team, but it's all gone horribly wrong. When One Day Event (1954) opens, Noel is watching Henry as he does a dressage test which is more excruciating to watch with every stride.  “As he rode the test, Noel’s depression increased. Everything seemed to be wrong and she had so hoped he would do well.  She didn’t want to watch Echo’s unbalanced strong trot; his unwilling transitions into the canter, his sorry attempts at turns on the forehand, his dawdling walk or his crooked halts.” Noel's not having a much better time of it. On the strength of her performance in earlier events, she has been given two Anglo Arabs, Truant and Tranquil, to school, but Noel thinks, drearily, that they're both going backwards, not forwards. Who can help? Major Holbrooke, of course. He takes the Pony Club under his wing, yet again, and Echo, Truant and Tranquil, ...

There's not much in the way of ponies in Primrose Cumming's Owls Castle Farm (1943). This is possibly because it reflects Primrose Cumming’s own war work. She worked for a year on a farm: one day a bomber crashed in the same field as the sheep she was looking after, but she survived, and her experience on the farm led directly to Owl’s Castle Farm. It's not ponies that are being got round: it's a farm. Brother and sister Brian and Sheelah are evacuated to their grandparents’ house, near which is the neglected Owls Castle Farm. Sheelah gets a temporary job sorting potatoes at 7d an hour. The farm’s owner, Stephen Tabrett, is put under notice to improve the farm within the next few months, or it will be taken over by the Government. Sheelah, and later Brian, set too, and after considerable hard work, start to get the farm round. The war is there as a constant presence; Brian tries and fails to get into the RAF (he is underage). Sheelah lies in bed and listens t...