Legs like gateposts; why I never did ballet, but was horsey instead...

I was a horse-mad child.  Well, actually I was a mad child, but horses were definitely in the mix.  It's probably just as well, because when I was young, for girls it was either horses or ballet, and, let's face it, ballet and I were never meant to be.  I can't do the tights, for a start.  Ballet is all neat hair and tutus, legs and shoes, and I am not noted for any of these things.

I mean, I have legs, of course I do, otherwise my bottom would be even lower than it is, but my legs would never look like this. In fact, in a pair of pale tights, my legs have been mistaken for gateposts more than once, which was fine right up until someone tried to park their Audi Q7 in my driveway, if you pardon the expression.

So, since ballet was out of the equation, given my legs and total lack of poise, grace and tutus, I took to horses.  I've occasionally been asked, by people who've read How I Wonder What You Are (out in paperback from next Thursday) about my riding history, since How I Wonder features the inestimable Stan, a horse for whom the word 'recalcitrant' may have been invented.  Horses in fiction are, I have found, almost inevitably spirited and elegant, all wind-tossed manes and powerfully muscled bodies.

Stan is to these horses as I am to ballet dancing. And my experience with horses is as far removed from stylish, elegant riding as - well, as it is from ballet dancing.  I am what is best described as an 'efficient' rider.  I can ride across country, I can do dressage, I can, and have, ridden racehorses (although not in races, see above re my low-lying bottom). But in none of these activities am I anything other than flailing arms and legs, cries of 'wwwwoooooooooooooaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!; and a triumph of a very low centre of gravity.

Which explains why our family pony, Jack, on whom Stan is not so much modelled as grafted, was a Fell pony with the temperament and build of a large sideboard.

This is Jack, with my sons. Demonstrating his usual level of activity and his wonderful temperament. And, unlike Stan, he very rarely attempted to eat people....