Bed-mates with a Nightmare

Travelling salesman to Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor, 1851, describing sleeping arrangements at The Castle beer shop in Braintree: I was a muck-snipe when I was there – why, a muck-snipe, sir, is a man regularly done up, coopered, and humped altogether – and it was a busyish time, and when …

Christmas Confessions of the Ponymad but Ponyless

Hurrah to these four, who spared the time in the run up to holiday madness to take the tardis back to childhood and remember pony mania. I wish you horses under your Christmas tree and subscriptions to Horse and Hound all round. You endured not only ponylessness but even broken bones, parental bafflement and life-limiting …

Whole Heap of Little Horse Links

I was away! Things happened! But first – a round up of curious happenings in the horse world! Looks like I got rid of the virtual racing stable I ran in the early 1990s far too early. An unraced imaginary horse from the Digiturf game has just been sold for $5,225. Yes, not only is …

Whole Heap of Little Horse Links

Carol sent me a blogpost about a herd of Arizona horses who have been reclassified from “wild” to “feral” and now face a round up, which some suspect will result in their eventual slaughter. The leader of the band, Champ, was an internet hit last year when he was pictured rescuing a filly from the …

If Wishes Were Horses: The Horse That Only I Could Ride

Well, this was a rum chapter. I really wasn’t anticipating that imaginary horses would end up linked to human ponies, but it turned out that they are, you could say, the same thing. The links for anything concerning ponyplay (the practice of dressing up in PVC horse outfits) are obviously for those over the age …

May the Horse Live in Me

One of the less than lovely things about writing a book is acknowledging that your favourite lines of enquiry sometimes just don’t fit into the finished product. They are the wildest, most fascinating goose chases, but they just will not bend and be shaped into that book thing you’ve built. They won’t be twined into …