A turn of phrase

Over the last few months I have unwittingly found myself talking like a 1950s pony book. “Jolly good” has been in my repertoire for some time – initially said with a sarcastic tinge – but it has also been joined by “Crikey!” which I’m finding myself saying more and more. And I’m not alone: a friend at work and a friend at the stables are also crikey-ers, while my sister has taken to exclaiming: “It’s simply not cricket!”

I don’t know how these archaic phrases have entered my vocabulary. I admit “jolly good” was initially said tongue-in-cheek, but it has rooted itself and now pops out quite naturally. I had a similar phase with “sweetie” and “darling”, when Absolutely Fabulous was on TV (Patsy is such a heroine of mine). That passed in time, but my current turn of phrase is showing no signs of abating.

I have to confess I think some of the exclamations in old pony books really are simply super. I’ve mentioned before that Jill Crewe was my pony book idol – and the speech of Jill and her friends was riddled with classic such as gollys, goshes and the sublime “My Russian rabbits!” which I have never encountered anywhere else.

But my word of the day has unfortunately been much more prosaic. It was repeated often while I was driving this morning. It begins with T and rhymes with fat.

A load of bull

The bull in a field near my house lives like a sultan, surrounded by his many wives and children. He is immense: his enormous, disproportionate neck dwarfs his not inconsiderable back end, where the business side of things dangles dangerously between his legs. He has a chestnut coat stippled with star-shaped dapples and nostrils pierced by a huge brass-coloured ring. Despite the trappings of his position, I believe he is a benevolent despot; the atmosphere in his kingdom is invariably relaxed.

Last year, some of the girls fed him handfuls of grass over the gate. Surrounded by curious calves, he took the offerings and chewed with a look of contemplation. Later, he chivvied his children along, curling his lip like a horse when they stopped to pee. I think he is probably a good and patient father.

In the winter, he lives in a big hemmel with another similar coloured bull. I see them from the road when the Grey Mare and I pass their farm. He and his companion chew contentedly, whiling away the hours like a couple of old blokes sitting on a park bench.

I think bulls, have on the whole, an undeserved reputation. But I can’t help feeling ever so slightly wary. My reaction is coloured by being chased by one when I was very small, and from a passage in my favourite pony book, Ruby Ferguson’s Rosettes for Jill. Our heroine and her pony Rapide find themselves in a field with an angry bull; the only way out is to jump a giant hedge. A bull, Jill informs her readers, may ignore someone on foot but will generally chase a horse. I have once ridden through a field containing a bull. He didn’t bat an eyelid.

The chestnut chap’s disposition is similar. When I climbed the gate to cut across his field the other night, his children scattered; slowly, he raised his huge head and observed the stranger in his midst, before returning to the more important task of grazing. Still, I remained close to the fence. Just in case.

Childhood favourites

Hoarding, I think, is a gene you are born with. I definitely have it; I hate to throw anything away, because it may well prove usual in the future. I have discovered this through bitter experience: I only ever want something I have not needed for years when it is gone.

I remember as a small child, going to a fete at a big hall. My granddad was determined to divert me from the toy stall, but I would have my way. I was delighted to discover the twins of some of my cuddly toys: toys I no longer played with, but whom I loved nonetheless. When I realised their true identities, I threw a tantrum, then spent all of my money buying them back.

Like those long ago toys, I consider my books to be my friends. I have vast quantities of them and am very possessive of them – which is why I can’t quite fathom why I gave away my Jill books. Perhaps it was because, about to leave home to go to university, I considered it was time to “put away childish things”.

Jill was my horsy heroine. I received my first Jill book as a hand-me-down from a woman my mum was working for, along with my first pair of hand-me -down jodhpurs. Like the jodhpurs – they were ancient elephant-eared Harry Halls – Jill was already rather quaint. Written by Ruby Ferguson between the late 1940s and early 1960s, Jill’s world had disappeared; it was another country, where they do things differently.

Vaguely politically incorrect, Jill’s world is full of gollys, goshes, and simply super exclamations such as “My Russian rabbits!” It’s a world where girls ride out in shirt and tie even at weekends, where tweed hacking jackets are de rigeur and competing in a bowler hat is the norm (I’ve always wanted a bowler hat). Proper teas with sandwiches and cake are daily occurrences and sausages and chips are the height of luxury.

I love Jill because she had attitude. She may have been a demure 1950s teenager, but she was feisty. In Jill’s world, you ‘loathed’ ‘drips’ and ‘blots’ and sarcasm was an art form. Sophistication was pressed powder and a little bit of lipstick. It’s also a world where the health and safety police would have a seizure.

A lot of Jill’s design for life has stayed with me. You try to play by the rules, you tell the truth, you don’t go ‘pot-hunting’ at gymkhanas, and you always put your horse’s welfare before your own. If you do that, you too can win the under-16 jumping at Chatton Show with your ‘ordinary’ ponies Black Boy and Rapide.

There are nine Jill books in the series and in the last few years, I’ve bought them all back. Dipping into one is not only nostalgia for my own childhood, it’s also a rose-tinted wallow in a world I never knew.