Deep’ish Thoughts

 I needed a chuckle before I stagger out to finish loading the big horse trailer to go commit my acts of irresponsibility this weekend (I’ll be sponsoring Catie aboard Baraq in the 25 with me - shouldn’t be any problem make our time limit! 😳 Instead, I’ll be begging her to slow down…)

IRRESPONSIBLE OLD HORSE RIDERS

Two years ago, my other half, Jan, took a tumble off her 17hh grey Irish draught mare, Cara and broke her left wrist, a rib and a bone in her right hand. Britain’s beleaguered National Health System rose to the challenge magnificently and repaired her after numerous scans, x-rays, a bunch of analgesics, bone manipulation and a two-hour long operation to put a titanium rod into her left wrist. Total cost zero. Actually, £10, for the car parking charge at Pembury Hospital in East Sussex, as we were there for about 30 hours in all.

But despite the wonderful care, kindness and skill involved there was a slight under current of unspoken wonder, surprise, and maybe just the slightest unstated criticism that someone over 60 was still riding and getting up to shenanigans like this. There was a sense that Jan was old enough to know better than to be horse riding at her age. The hospital would be better used looking after the truly sick and dying, not a bunch of old fools doing self inflicted wounds to themselves. The staff in A&E and the bone clinic mentioned that in the past 24 hours there had been three other horse-riding accidents they had attended to.

I can understand this feeling all too well. What the hell do we think we are up to? Are we irresponsible, stupid, crazy? I would have to plead guilty to all those things as I am a decade older than Jan and should be even more aware of my ‘irresponsible’ behaviour.

I hate to think what this accident would have cost us without the free healthcare in the UK. Maybe, I thought, sitting by Jan through that long night the time has come to bid farewell to riding?

But once home again, there was no talk of giving up. A smaller horse, yes, perhaps, but that was the sum of our forward planning.

Our grown-up children also think we are pushing our luck and making nuisances of ourselves with the medical fraternity. Our oft stated concern with our son’s motorbike riding elicits a ream of statistics which show conclusively that many more people are crippled or killed in horse riding accidents than in motorcycle crashes. We hang our heads a bit but carry on regardless, like junkies just out of rehab.

Are we mad? Is there something wrong with us? Yes, to both these charges. The problem is we’ve been mainlining this horse drug for six and seven decades respectively and in some ways, it Is one of our main reasons for living, our single greatest pleasure. We’ve fought off cancer and heart disease, so we are not unaware that this time on earth is a fragile thing, and it is drawing to a close. This makes us even more wedded to this so-called irresponsible behaviour called horse riding.

There seems to be an ever-greater unwillingness in the West to live a bit dangerously. But it is this very thing that adds salt and savour to what otherwise would be a very bland life. We are wedded to the adventure that awaits us in the woods, out in the landscape beyond people, even beyond help in some cases. We are not unaware of the risks and carry tracking devices in our phones. But it would be hard to land a paramedic helicopter where we disappear to in the forests.

It would appear that for better or worse we are indeed irresponsible old codgers. And all the better for being just that. The poem says: “When I am old I shall wear purple.” Stuff that, I hate purple. But riding a long striding horse into the sunset or sunrise for that matter, that is my drug of choice and I’m buggered if I’m giving it up to keep the medics happy. See you in A&E.