Letter to Erp - Timmy the Pony

Dear Erp:

It is still raining here, but warm and still. The garden is like a tropical forest. I would dearly have loved to see the comet in the southern skies this week, but the clouds have prevented this. Never mind, let me go back in time and see if I can amuse you with more prosaic and earthly things, like the story of Timmy the Pony.

In 1951, when I was six years of age, my parents finally stopped their peripatetic wanderings and settled in a villa in Invercargill, a town of about 40,000 souls. My two sisters had been born by then, and the family was complete.

Somewhere along the line a Shetland pony named Timmy arrived in town with us. I think he may have been my pony whilst my father worked on a farm but cannot remember. All I can remember is that Tim lived in a paddock about five minutes bike ride from our house, and it was my job to visit him every day after school to check on him, give him water, and have a ride - if I could ever get the bridle and pony pad on him. He was a pony with all the vices a Shetland (a notoriously cunning equine breed) could possibly have. He bucked, bit, threw his head up hoping to connect with mine if I was leaning forward trying to urge the lazy little sod into a trot,(or down, if there was a chance I was standing underneath him trying to haul his hoof off my foot) and kicked. Tim was one of those ponies which come with a warning - DO NOT WALK BEHIND ME! My father must have got him for free because I can't imagine anyone paying good money for such a shaggy little menace. He wasn't even good company, as some horses are, coming up to rest their head on one's shoulder and blowing sweet air out of their nostrils, nickering with pleasure to see their little owner arrive to give some company - not Tim! He looked at me with Scottish disdain and went back to eating. I got my exercise in vain attempts to get near enough to him with the bridle. Taking a piece of carrot or apple was pointless. Tim would eat it then present his hind quarters to me, a warning that I should skip smartly out of kicking range. Around the paddock we went several times, Tim keeping about one yard away from me at all times. If I did catch him and bridle him, it was only because he was bored with the paddock and wanted to get out to cause somebody grief.

He must have let me catch him at least once. I remember riding him home and letting one little girl about my age from down the street hop up on his back. Tim, of course, bucked, she wasn't ready, came off, and went home crying with a broken arm. Her mother came down and had a talk with my mother, who had a talk with my father, and Tim quickly and mysteriously disappeared after that. I made a couple of enquiries about him next day and was told he had been sold to another family who wanted a pony for their little girl and this had been agreed to as I had not been looking after him well enough. I believed my parents and felt bad for a couple of hours about my neglect of Tim, but not bad enough to regret his disappearance, then forgot all about him during a skipping contest.

I suppose the hairy little menace had somewhat of a conscience because he could easily have killed me with a kick, but they always seemed to miss. His bites, although immediately painful, did not leave bruises. He helped me strengthen my upper arms for a later first class serve in tennis with much fruitless hauling of his foreleg when he stood on my foot - that never really hurt either. He didn't care though that I could have broken something important when I got bucked off - although that never happened either and I can only think that, being a Shetland, Tim was so close to the ground there wasn't far enough to fall. I don't know how the little girl from down the road broke her arm. Not used to it I suppose. The most hurt I suffered through visiting Tim was when I trod on a nail sticking up out of a piece of wood lying in the long grass in the pony paddock. I had to pull my foot off the nail and by the time I got home my canvas shoe was red with blood. New Zealand is rich in tetanus, especially around horses, so my mother put a bread poultice on the wound but I expect the copious bleeding had flushed out any germs because I didn't get tetanus.

When I look back, I guess I lived pretty dangerously for a six year old. My mode of transport, my bike, was full sized - I had to reach up to grasp the handlebars, and my father had put wooden blocks on the pedals and lowered the seat as far as it would go so it was a bit like an aeroplane where the most dicey part was the take-off. Getting off was no problem to someone who had been thrown by Tim as often as I had. Until I got bigger I would brake to almost stopping point then jump, leaving the bike to fall where it would - something a pilot would recognise as bailing out (without a parachute). I didn't ride the bike to school but I went everywhere else within a half mile or so on it and remember distinctly practising riding with no hands, a skill much admired in those balmy days. After regular run-ins with Tim a bike was my preferred mode of transport - no feeding, no watering, no curry combs, no tack, no hurtie bits, just the beginning of my affection for a technological form of transport over the organic and I don't care how romantic some people find horses - I think they are expensive, time consuming, and dangerous.

Yours unrepentedly,

Jude