Last minute reprieve!

Well, kinda… No trolling round the shops today for me, tra la, la, Fiona has taken to bed (well couch) with a dose of industrial-strength cooties. She’s obviously not been paying enough attention to ‘So You Think You’re Safe?’ and probably did something daft, like breathe. Anyway, this sudden attack of the nasties means that yours truly has been spared the threatened trip into Aberdeen to spend the day trying on dreadful clothes. Hurrah!

Only down side of this is Jasper – our ‘little boy’, a 15.1 hands high big, hairy rat with a southern Irish accent – Fiona has him on DIY livery at the weekends. To anyone bright enough to have never come into contact with this concept it involves simple tasks like getting your horse in from the fields and feeding them. And the less simple tasks of hefting out the three tons of poo they’ve managed to produce during the night, not to mention the four tons of urine-sodden straw. And since She Who Must Be Cosseted is down with the aforementioned cooties, this delightful task falls on… can you guess? That’s right: muggins here.

Now I’m grateful to have been let off with a warning as far as the clothes shopping goes, but to be told I have to shovel a mountain of shit in order to obtain this beneficence is a bitter pill to swallow. OK, I could have let Fiona go do it herself, but I had to play the chivalry card. “No, do not trouble thyself fair, snottery maiden, I shall see to thy noble steed in thy stead!” Fool! Not only do horse-leavings weigh a ton, they also stink to high heaven! A huge box full of peed-on straw, nasty mounds of jobbies lurking everywhere like little stinky landmines… As Sunday afternoon pastimes go, it’s right up there with giving yourself a DIY bikini wax using duct tape and a Black & Decker random orbital sander.

And if you’re thinking this would be some sort of opportunity to ogle pretty women in their jodhpurs you can forget it: they all smell of horse-leavings too. As did I when I finally managed to drag my frozen backside home.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I seem to be getting a bit tufty round the old bikini line…