This has nothing at all to do with betting on horses (or asses, the main thing I know about them, is you should'nt covet your neighbours, which is easy because they're all big and ugly) as I don’t know the first thing about it and never indulge. Actually, this is not strictly true, because once a year I am coerced by my daughter into laying out some boodle on The Melbourne Cup.
This takes place every November and is known as the ‘Race that stops a Nation’. Work-places throughout Australia run sweeps and if you don’t participate, you’re considered to be the worst kind of wowser. Melbourne has a holiday and most places stop what they are doing and watch it on the TV.
It is supposedly a world famous race, in the same vein as The Derby and Grand National in the UK, the Kentucky Derby, The Arc de Triomph and some race in Hong Kong whose name escapes me. Horses come from all over the world to compete, well at least a few from England, Ireland and Japan. I’ll be in England in November this year, so I’ll check to see if it rates a mention in the racing pages of The Daily Mirror. Damn! I forgot to do that when I was over there.
Having got rid of the betting aspect, I’ll get down to actually personally riding the beasts. Just about every kid in the North West of England worthy of the name, has ridden one of their close cousins (the horse's cousins, not their own cousins, we're not talking incest here), the world famous donkeys on Blackpool Beach. There’s nowt like trotting up the sand for 50/60 yards and back, astride one of those noble creatures. Even if it was being dragged along on a rope pulled by some ruffian.
Apart from that, I have ridden a 'real' horse twice in my life. The first time was in Afghanistan in the Bamiyan Valley, this was in 1976 and the country must have been between wars. I know why I was in the Valley, it was to see the two statues of Buddha that had been carved into the side of a cliff thousands of years ago.
Somebody had defaced them literally, centuries ago by carving off their faces, but they were so big that they couldn’t destroy them completely. This little task was left to the Islamic Taliban in the 1990’s (they didn't like idols, American or otherwise) . They tried blowing them up using explosives, but it didn’t work. So they came up with the idea of using Surface to Air Missiles (SAM’s), this did work and left big holes in the cliff. The Taliban were happy with this and went off satisfied with a good day’s work well done, to persecute a few more unfortunates.
What has this got to do with horses? You might well ask, but this is a ramble and you never know where you’re going to end up. I just thought you might be interested. To get back to the horses, for some unknown reason me and my two travelling companions were asked if we wanted to hire some horses to go for a bit of a ride.
Having nothing better to do, we agreed and paid a seedy looking Afghani an exorbitant amount of money and he produced three nags which we mounted. As another aside here, the national sport in Afghanistan is called Bushkhazi, this is played on horseback and involves two teams galloping around wildly and trying to fling the headless carcass of a calf between two ‘goal posts’, a bit like Polo without mallets really.
If these steeds, upon which we were mounted, had ever been used for that purpose, they were now a little past their prime and could barely manage a slow walk, let alone a gallop. All three of them were suffering from terrible equine haemorrhoids, so after about thirty minutes we left them to recover with their owner and a quiet graze.
My second riding experience took place in Montana in 1978. I was visiting an Aussie mate and his new American wife, who were staying with her godfather on a fairly substantial ranch. I was introduced to the rancher and his family, which included two young girls.
The girls asked me if I would like to go for a horse ride with them. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so they saddled up a horse for me. It was a large horse and we looked at each other rather dubiously, but the girls assured me that it was a very gentle steed.
The two girls jumped onto a couple of smaller horses, without saddles, if my memory serves me correctly and galloped off. The noble steed and me set off at a more sedate pace, with said steed stopping at regular intervals to graze on the pasture.
I decided that it was about time to assert my authority over this equine hulk and pulled sharply on the reins to interrupt it’s lunch and dug my heels sharply into it’s flanks. This surprised it somewhat and we started moving along at a reasonable pace. We came to a gulch (luckily dry, are there any others?) and the steed wanted to go the easy way to the left, but I was determined to maintain my authority and forced it to the right.
This was an error of judgment on my part and we ended up at the bottom with a very steep ascent in front of us. My noble, equine friend turned and gave me a withering look and then bolted up the bank, I held on for dear life and we both got to the top in one piece. After that we came to a compromise i.e. it would do as it liked and I would sit there quietly.
A few minutes later the girls came galloping back and reined in to check on us and then set off back to the ranch house. Upon sensing that it was on the way back to the stability of it’s stable, my loyal companion, also started galloping wildly home. Try as I might, I could not get my arse to go in the same direction as the saddle and at that precise moment, vowed never to sit astride a horse ever again. A vow that I’ve upheld to this day, thirty years on.
Cheers for now
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
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