home on the range

Of course, no one picking up on that casual reference the other day to my buying another plastic pony in Target would expect it to be all that long before he appeared - quite definitely a "he," too - someone, back where they make the molds for plastic models, quite definitely cares about anatomical exactitude, to such an extent that this little Welsh Cob, section D stallion (for such I take him to be) reminds me, inescapably, of one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing moment of my life when, aged 10, I pointed out to a young man riding a rather handsome male horse at a local horse show (the Tally Ho! show of 1964, held in the Wimbledon Branch of the Pony Cub's paddocks, on ground that was subsequently built on by the Atkinson Morley hospital for nurses' dormitories, already, now, abandoned and boarded up) that his mount had something Hanging Down. I was worried by this long, snaky, rubbery protuberance. I wish I hadn't said anything.

This particular creature - made rather strange by pale blue spots, but one does really need a macro lens for them to shine out so - is staring at a shot glass that I bought at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming. If I'd known when I was ten that I would be rescued from my embarrassment and transported to a life where I was actually driving across the state that was home to My Friend Flicka and, yes, Green Grass of Wyoming (never mind that last May this grass was still a just-emerged-from-snow dull brown), I think that I might have recovered more quickly from this humiliating experience.