Where have you been? I been to see the sea – this Saturday morning saw the culmination of about four years of ‘reminding’ by She Who Never Nags about getting Jasper, our first born to the beach. A simple thing, you think, strap the wee bugger into the back seat and away you go. Nope. This has involved spending £5,000 on a second-hand Jeep Cherokee and another £1,200 on a trailer, because Jasper Conan MacBride is a 15.1 hand high thoroughbred-cross-cob we adopted from Ireland. He’s a bit rowdy, so while Little Miss is allowed to sleep on the bed and fed titbits of cheese, Jasper has been sent off to borstal. Or possibly boarding school, depending on how much of a wee turd he’s being at the time.
Most of Saturday was actually not too bad. OK, the early rise to catch the morning tide on Balmedie Beach stung more than a bit, but we got the trailer hitched up, the horse in the back and away we went. Never towed a horse before, but I managed to get him there in one piece. At the beach, Aberdeenshire Council had done us proud on the facilities – Saturday morning, mid June, think anyone would have thought to open the toilets? Naaaaah! Every last bit of the surrounding countryside was jam packed with urinating holidaymakers (one upside of this was finding a puffball mushroom when I went to get rid of some tea – very nice it was in Sunday’s chicken casserole too). But off went Fiona and Jasper to play in the sand while I stayed in the jeep to do some of the third edit. Sounds a bit biblical when you say it like that, doesn’t it? The Third Edit!
A couple of hours later She Who Has Had Fun comes back and we have our family picnic: egg sandwiches, cheese and chilli crisps, edam, cherries, and a thermos of tea for us, big bag of hay and a bucket of water for the horse. Things only started going to Armitage Shanks when we tried to get Jasper back into the box. Hell no, he wouldn’t go. An hour and a half of trying to haul his stroppy, hairy arse into the trailer he waltzed happily into on the way here. That may not sound all that onerous, after all he’s only a horse, how difficult could it be? Jasper is about seven foot tall with all four legs on the ground, weighs in at about half a ton (which is the same as a Mini Cooper) and most of that’s muscle. Much, much, much swearing. An hour and a half of struggling and swearing. In the end he got fed up and sauntered in on his own. Bastard.
So that kind of put the spoiler on the day somewhat – quarter to seven in the morning round to half four in the evening, all spent getting the hairy wee poo to the beach and back.
This is why I christened him The Boy Rat way back when we picked him up from the orphanage. And if he keeps this up, he’s going back.