The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife. Daisy Waugh

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       October 10th

      Bit of a culture shock at the weekend. Maybe it doesn’t signify anything, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The Mothers had told me about a stables which they all swore was the single riding school in the area worth using. So. The children have been desperate to take up riding. I rang the place up. And a woman at the other end advised me, with a certain amount of relish, that beginners’ lessons were 100 per cent booked up, now and for the entire foreseeable future. She said that, for £10 per name, children could be put on to a waiting list. I complained, but it didn’t move her much.

      She softened a little, though, once I’d given my credit card details, and suggested it might be worthwhile just turning up one weekend and waiting around, on the off chance of a late cancellation. So—Finley was away. That’s what we did on Saturday.

      Horrible! It felt like we were walking into a Barbie Doll theme park. The yard was so tidy it ought to have had a pink plastic logo swinging over the front gate. Also it was teeming with lady-clones, all of them sporting the same tasteful blonde highlights and clean, green, calf-flattering Wellington boots. There must have been fifteen fourwheel drives in the car park and fifteen super-mummies milling around, fixating on the buckles of their children’s safety hats. I recognised a handful of the women from school, of course. The question is, though, Where did all the others come from? I had no idea there were so many in the area. And I’m not sure whether to be depressed or very depressed by the discovery. What the hell’s going on?

      In any case, the children and I hung around for about an hour, patting ponies and being pretty much ignored, until finally a lovely, rosy-cheeked teenager came over to talk to us. There had been no last-minute cancellations, she said, but she offered, out of kindness, to put the children on top of an old donkey and lead them round the yard a couple of times.

      Ripley and Dora were having the time of their lives, squeezed together on top of the old donkey, giggling blissfully as it slowly plodded along. They’ve never ridden before. They were thrilled. Rosy Cheeks was giving them a little impromptu lesson, and the love was flowing between all of us, Rosy Cheeks, Ripley and Dora, the donkey, even me.

      But then suddenly, careering out of nowhere, there came a very thin, very angry woman. She was screaming at us because Ripley and Dora, approximately 3 feet off the ground, travelling at significantly less than 1 mile per hour, and with an adult ready to catch them on either side, had not been strapped into safety helmets.

      Rosy Cheeks turned purple and looked like she was about to cry. I tried to point out how entirely undangerous the situation was for all concerned, and that I was positively grateful that my children had been allowed to go bare-headed. ‘It’s nice to feel some wind in the hair occasionally,’ I said. Which was perhaps a little provocative. Or maybe not. In any case, at that point the Pipecleaner turned her great ire solely onto me. This wasn’t about danger, she sneered. Danger had nothing to do with anything. It was about liability. ‘And you…people…always sue.’

      Do we? Do I?

      Anyway Ripley and Dora were forced to dismount, which they did with great stoicism and dignity, I thought. Ripley gave the old bag his most baleful glare, but she didn’t appear to notice. And we left the stable yard under a great cloud of disgrace. We headed back to our car, past all the super-mummies standing white-knuckled with fear while their precious offspring, in full body armour, plodded clockwise round the schooling ring.

      They stared at us as we scuttled by—at my hatless children in pity, I think, and at Rosy Cheeks and me as if we were murderers.

      Dora giggled. ‘I don’t think she liked us at all,’ she said.

      I opened up the sun roof as we drove away. I think I must have been doing it to bait, because I knew the children would immediately poke their heads out of the top. I ordered them to sit down. But I didn’t really mean it, and the children could tell. They rolled back their hatless heads and roared with laughter.

      Ripley and Dora now say they want to go riding again, which is good in a way, I suppose, but also slightly depressing. Unless, of course, I can ferret out an alternative riding school, where the super-mummies and their fun-sucking safety obsessions haven’t yet cast a pall.