More Horses

[jacey]

I'm still rummaging through my photographs . heleninwales set me thinking about horses last week and mevennen continued the theme this week with her farrier post.

After posting a photo pf Prince, the first pony I rode back in 1956 I came across a photo of the other Prince, winning the Mountain & Moorland Championship at Weatherby Show in (around) 1973). This was taken with his owner, Margaret Harvey, pretty much an unforgettable character in her own right.

Margaret had been a debutante in her youth but when I knew her was a typical tweedy horsewoman with a booming voice, two golden retrievers and a stack of bills she tried to ignore.

She had a lot of equines, a few of them really good ones, including Prince, a Fell Pony gelding, and a really nice Dales pony mare called Bussy. (That's me and Bussy - right - at the Great Yorkshire Show in about 1973) Margaret bred two or three foals a year, mostly from her thoroughbred/appaloosa stallion Kestrel. I think the riding school was just an excuse to let her keep all her horses. She loved them all.

We discovered her riding school in Menston when I joined the college riding club. I ended up on the rota more often than most because having passed my driving test at age 17, I was one of the few people at college who could drive the minibus legally. (Note I didn't say safely as I never could reverse the damn thing on wing mirrors.)

Even after leaving college and getting married i continued to drive up to Menston to ride at Margaret's because i still had friends there. This is me and Eileen Gomersall (Now Eileen Jack.)

Damn me but after saying I never forgot a horse's name, I can't remember the name of the brown hunter I'm riding. He was 16.2 and a very decent ride. Eileen is on Kestrel, the stud stallion. He could be a bit evil on the ground, but was a fantastic ride if you weren't scared of him.

This was the summer of 1975 and I remember the day so clearly because we'd just come back from taking a party of kids (Best Beloved's school) to Belgium and the night we got back I was given the news that my grandma had got terminal cancer. This was the first time I'd been threatened with losing a loved one to a long slow illness and life was suddenly about to get very weird.

So this was the calm before the storm.

A couple of days after getting the news I went to Menston for - probably - the last time. I'd got my arms sunburned on the ferry home and it was another scorching day, so Eileen is wearing my T Shirt and I'm wearing her long sleeved shirt to keep the sun off.

Annie Bennett. 1900 - 1975.
My maternal grandmother.
When this photo was taken she was the same age as I am now.
That's scary!