The Horsh whisperer

-“There she is Mick,” my uncle said to a man from the country.
-“16 hands she.”
I took one look at the beast and said to myself
-“Here’s to hands that are going no where near that thing.”
 
Growing up with my serious condition was hard enough but being subjected to the torture of being within kicking distance of it, that is nervous work.
Mick was walking around the poor horse like it was a car he was about to buy. I almost expected him to kick the horse as if he were checking tyres.
 
-“Aye she will do John, a fine horsh’”
A ‘horsh’, what the hell is a ‘horsh’? I’m sure their unique trading dialect was fitting in the art of equine marketing, but to a lad still in school it was something that needed correcting. Of course me being me with my big stupid academic head on me had to correct the two lads on their mistake. Now it wouldn’t have been so bad if I corrected in a nice way but when I turned around and said,
 
 “A horsh, are ya thick or something, what’s a horsh?  It’s a horse, h.o.r.s.e,”
 
The mick turned to my uncle and asked,
 
- “Who’s the scholar?”
-“I don’t know,” said my uncle, “but he would want to be getting out of my S.I.T.E.
 
I then remarked on this mis-spelling, well lets just say it wasn’t the “horsh” that kicked me that day.
 
So Mick loads up his new family member in the back of a “horsh” box and checks his hitch. I’m looking as three snotty nosed kids get out of the back of the van to inspect the animal. These kids looked like they came from a family that could barely afford to keep a dog, yet here was John Wayne paying over a grand for a “horsh” that looked like it was two gallops from the knacker’s yard.
 
I often wonder about these people that buy horses. Like what do they do with them? Do they ride them? Or just breed them? Like we have all see that film ‘Into the West’. I have this comical image in my head of a couple of Traveller teens riding in to Tesco for the shopping or the drive through at McDonalds for the dinner. There is nothing funnier I have to say than a couple of teenagers trying their hardest to shoe a horse. It’s like a man trying to get a cow with ADHD to sit down.
 
 I make all these jokes about the things I find funny within the Travelling community, but to be fair the biggest laugh to be had is on me. I’m what you might call "certified as petrified of any four legged animal bigger than a dog". To Travellers this is the funniest thing you could imagine. i used to wake up in the middle of the night and check the room for intruders, not the boogie man like most normal children, no, i used to check the room for piebalds. when i was really young i woke up thinking that i as kicked in the chest by a horse, still half asleep shouting to my imaginery room mate to stop and to move over. i told my mother this and all i got back was, "well if you didnt keep your room like a stable they wouldnt come visiting ya" i hope those words are not true because the other day she said it was a pig stye, and the last thing i need is sharing the bed with an epidemic on legs. a few years later i was watching the film "the god father" and guess what, a man ends up in a bed with a horse, well a horses head to be exact, but close enough. it wasnt me that was staring in shock. my father had a very important point, i told him about the dream. he said, if ya think a kick from a horse in your sleep is bad, i get worse from the mare thats in my bed.meaning my mother of course.

 
So hay to the ‘horsh’.