A Horse Called Satan

I went horse riding once. Could such an apparently trivial fact carry enough weight to make the tale worth telling, you might ask. It certainly could to me. It was a big day. The riding of a horse is imbued with an aura of mystique. Riding is Romantic. It speaks of cowboys and the Wild West, of the gallant knights of Old England, and of the cavalry charge at Balaclava. It was something I’d never done, a gap in my life that had to be plugged sooner or later. And so it was, one dull, June day in nineteen eighty-something-or-other.

I was on holiday in the English Lake District with my then partner. She was an old hand at the horsy stuff. English girls are. They join pony clubs as soon as their heads come level with the stirrup iron on a Shetland pony. Boys don’t, at least not in the sort of place where I grew up. My only experience of horses had been the feeding of crusts to the farmer’s dray that used to hang around the edge of a field close to where I lived as a kid. My partner wanted to go riding, she said; so I agreed to go with her and become a dashing hussar for an hour or so.

I wasn’t unduly worried at that stage. I’d been a keen rugby player for over twenty years and had full confidence in my mettle. What terrors could horse riding hold for somebody who’d been used to having his ears chewed, his teeth chipped and his nose flattened in the middle of a scrum?

The arrangement was made and off we went. On the way to the riding establishment my partner giggled and suggested they would probably give me a psychotic stallion called Satan. I smiled indulgently and joined in with the joke. I knew they wouldn’t, of course, but I began to feel a little nervous. I was heading into unknown territory and a few nerves are perfectly acceptable in that situation.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was how exceptionally pretty the young woman instructor was. I was still young enough to be possessed of an incurable need to impress attractive young women. Seeing her only served to double the challenge. I became a little more nervous.

The first thing she did was give me a piece of headgear that made me look like a hobbit. I felt silly. I looked silly. I have the photograph to prove it. Being the superstitious sort, I dislike inauspicious beginnings. The day was not boding well.

Then she introduced me to the horse. She said it was their policy to put men on male horses. He was a very handsome fellow, a pure palomino of around 15.2/15.3. The instructor’s voice carried no hint of either humour or mischief as she announced “This is Satan.”

Oh, right. Bloody great! My partner was suitably amused. Doubled up, actually. I spoke to the horse nicely.

“I’ve never done this before, Satan. Just go steady now, OK?”

He showed no signs of psychosis. He turned his head towards me and sighed; I swear it. He gave me a look that spoke volumes. It told me that he really didn’t want to be bothered with this. His actions – or rather, lack of them – confirmed my intuition. When I climbed into the saddle he refused to move. He was eventually persuaded to - but only, I suspect, because he knew that the sooner he got it over with the sooner he could get this idiot off his back and return to the fresh grass and some peace and quiet in the meadow.

I remember the feeling of being disconnected as he walked sedately across the rough moorland with me concentrating hard on finding the surest way to hang on. I was convinced that Satan would only have to make a sudden movement with one ear and I would be flung from my dizzy perch and break several bones on making contact with the unremitting ground.

We walked for about a mile, and then the instructor - who looked even more beautiful in her headgear - decided we should try a trot. I really didn’t want to, but I didn’t say so. Honest! I didn’t let the side down. So trot we did. I clung on tight with hands, knees and anything else that was capable of clinging. Fortunately, the instructor was riding slightly ahead of me and I was able to take some small comfort from the fact that she wasn’t watching me make an idiot of myself. I shudder to think what my face must have looked like as we bounced up and down and I kept landing in different places.

Eventually we arrived back at the stables. To my amazement I had survived the ordeal. I climbed down, thanked the instructor and walked back to the car. I did my very best to hide the fact that my legs were in an advanced state of disarray. Any reference to jelly would be an understatement, but I held my chest out. That was the one part of me that remained singularly unaffected by the experience. Everything else was living in a world of its own.

Frankly, I have to admit that I hadn’t enjoyed it very much. Satan probably had. I’ve suspected ever since that horses laugh silently.

Once the ordeal was over I came to the conclusion that sitting on a slippery piece of leather strapped to a moving animal is an extremely silly way to carry on. There really is nothing romantic about it, any more than there is anything romantic about being shot by a six gun, having your limbs hacked off by a thug in armour, or being scattered to the four winds by a cannonball. I learned an important lesson that day. I am a true wimp of the modern world. I never went horse riding again.