Bloody horseboxes!

[Nick]

Now, for those of you whose idea if weekend fun is watching 2 ½ tons of fine French cuisine leaping over low fences, I’d stop reading right now as I’m about to go off on a proper rant… so I suggest you take you saddle soap and bugger off cos I’m gonna blow!

Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about horseboxes, the people who drive them, the things they transport IN them and the attitude of everyone who has anything to do with them.

Quite simply, I’ve had yet another Sunday errand take three times as long as it should because of some sodding event where everyone who has a covered trailer and pony that is nothing short of a four legged barrel roll up to block the bloody roads.

You see, a horse box to me is a something of a dichotomy… perhaps even an oxymoron.

You know how these events got started, be they cross country racing, dressage or show jumping?

The horse is a domestic animal because of what it can DO. We tamed and domesticated the modern horse because we needed an animal to pull our ploughs, pull our carts and transport either us or our loads on its back.

Then some bright spark got the idea of comparing whose horse was better at something… so he’d arrange a show and everyone in the local area would RIDE their horses to the show.

Spot the important word there? I put it in capitals…

So what have we got now? Now we’ve got some bloody woman with their petulant kid who’d rather be down McDonalds with her mates trolling up a country lane at precisely 4 mph in a horsebox that Noah decided was bit dodgy when he had to choose between a big boat or a convoy of cars.

Horseboxes are the dearth of the roads. Even tractors have to queue behind the damn things to overtake them!

And the worst thing is, the people driving the sodding horsebox seem to think that because they have a horse in the back, they should be given the same courtesy and respect they’d receive if they were actually RIDING the poor animal.

Even worse, they have the same utter disregard for even the simplest rules of the Highway Code, such as which side of the road to be on and who has to give way at a junction.

The problem stems from the fact that these horseboxes hit the road maybe three times in a year and sit neglected in the stable yard the rest of the time.

So once mother has prised Jessica away from texting her boyfriend and loaded her and ‘Snickers’ into the horsebox, she’s then faced with coaxing a machine that has been neither serviced or MOT’d since pre-World War One over 100 miles to some half-arsed event run by Borehamwood Pony Club.

By the time she gets there, at an average speed of 8 mph, the tailback she’s caused on the M1 and M10 has hit the lunchtime news, but she’s oblivious to this as she struggles not only with a gearbox that has the same amount of lubricant in it as a good cup of tea, but she’s lost too, and the ordinance survey map she brought along is of Salisbury Plain.

But she’s a ‘horsey type’ and therefore often views the world from a height of 8 off the ground and automatically deems everyone who couldn’t give a toss about horses as a)stupid, b)inferior and c)stupid. She Mr’s Horsey Woman will stop and ask a local for directions to Gray’s Farm.

The fact that she’s just stopped on a dual carriageway or on a roundabout or, and this is MY personal favourite, a two lane road opposite parked cars, is not important to horse bitch. What is important is that Jessica is sulking and Snickers is getting frisky, so asking anyone the way is far more important that just paying other road users a bit of civil bloody consideration.

But even more infuriating than this is when horse woman finally finds the field where the event is taking place. Now any right minded person would just drive on in, knowing full well that it’s a bloody field the other side of the hedge and there’s enough room to turn a Tornado jet-fighter at Mach 1 in there… it’s a bloody great field!

But no, horsey woman isn’t thinking like that. Despite the fact she’s driving something that she really should have an HGV license for, SHE’S going to reverse into the field.

Cue 45 minutes of cars backing up behind her as the first poor bastard though she was turning right when she in fact wanted to reverse left and was getting into position. This poor sod who has spent the last 25 minutes toiling along with his first gear cogs over-heating whilst his view was filled with horse’s arse thought he could nip down the inside only to find a flash of brake lights, a crackled beep of a reverse warning beeper and now he has a really close view of a horse’s bum through his side window.

Horsey woman can be seen heaving the steering wheel around like she’s working the tiller on the Cutty Sark and then, once she’s neatly blocked the road in both directions she’ll climb down from the cab and gesticulate to the poor sod about how he’s in her way.

Eventually the cars behind him will back up enough to let him get out of the way and then everyone will be treated to a master class of reversing a large lorry through a small gateway. When I say master class, I mean it’s forty minutes long… a full class length. Backwards and forwards, back wards and forwards until there’s blue smoke coming from the exhaust where the last piston rings have finally popped, white smoke coming from the clutch and steam spouting from the radiator…

And finally, horsey woman has managed to line up the bloody horsebox with the gate before deciding it’s too small.

So she hops out, has a word with the steward who points down the road and with a jolly smile that clock-tower snipers find irresistible, she climbs back in the cab and heads off to the clearly marked COMPETITOR’S ENTRANCE.

And that’s just the ones that have a derelict lorry hanging about… What about the bored housewives that have nothing to do all day but moan about how parking spaces for their soft-roaders are too small and isn’t Victoria Beckham looking thin?

These, to my mind, are the absolute scum of the earth. I can almost deal with horsey woman, you know where you are with her. You know that if you stay a good 100 yards back anything she does can be dealt with, but bored, rich horsey mum is worse. There should be a register for them and they should all be made to wear an electronic tag when they’re put so we can avoid them.

When the BMW, Audi or Toyota off-roader isn’t guzzling twenty gallons a minute on the school run to drop Yossidia, Francesca and Phillip off at school, she’s either parking the thing so badly it’s a ten minute walk to the kerb or she’s pulling a horse-box trailer, an offence that in my mind comes just below sex with a goat.

She’s worse than horsey woman because horsey mum has two things on her mind. First, she‘s living out the day-dream that her obnoxious, spoilt sprogs want what she couldn’t have when she was young and second, that by going to these events she somehow increases her social standing with the Rotarians and the PTA.

So she’ll load ‘Tisker’ and ‘Mitch’ into the horsebox after having dressed to look the part having crammed her orange-peel cellulite thighs into a set of jodhpurs that make her arse and thighs look like a sack of kicked in tomatoes… And let’s not forget that bulge of stomach peeping over the top… nice.

Next she’ll back the off roader up to the trailer and after 20 minutes she’ll give up trying to plug the electrics in because her husband, Terry, usually deals with all that stuff, and besides, he never told her that the grey socket is the electrics for a caravan fridge/freezer hook-up.

Terry, is the smart one. And I hate him for it.

I don’t hate Terry for his success. I don’t hate him for his money or his big house or the fact he can send his kids to private school. What I hate him for is his cunning.

You see, Terry has realised that his business acumen has landed him with a missus who spends his money like water and three petulant kids who sulk if they don’t get everything they want. In short, Terry has inadvertently nurtured a clutch of the most obnoxious people you’re likely to meet this side of an ASBO.

So what does Terry do? He spends most of the working week in the City, drinking his evenings away in expensive wine bars that used to be called NatWest and Barclays, but his weekends threatened to be filled with time with the foul four. So Terry gets his wife interested in horses, happily throwing £40,000 at a past time his wife thinks she’ll enjoy as she yearned to have a pony when she was 8. Of course, horsey mum thinks that both her girls will love it and so will Phillip, so she drags them off into her new hobby bankrolled by Terry who finds that £40,000 is a cheap price to pay for a weekend free from his revolting brood.

So why do I hate Terry? I hate him because he’s foisted his bloody family on to the road to get in my bloody way!

And what makes it worse is that unlike horsey woman, horsey mum is driving a vehicle that pivots in the middle… so you can double the length of time it takes HER to try and reverse into the gateway...

But at least she’s made good use of that 2.4 litre turbocharged engine in her school-run mobile because she’s flashed along the motorway at 80mph, horse trailer rocking wildly on its tiny 14” wheels with two terrified ponies only inches from becoming Pedigree Chum. So until she looses it and takes out two lanes of the M25 and most of the Armco, at least she doesn’t hold me up…

And the point of all this ranting?

Well, there isn’t much of one really, except to clear the anger from my system… But I do have a revenge plan, something to strike back at the very heart of the problem.

I’m sure you’ve all seen those stickers on the back of horsey type’s cars, the one’s that say “I slow down for horses”? You know, the ones that guilt trip you into not scream past at 40 mph with the stereo on full blast and horn blaring?

Well I’m getting a new sticker made it’s going to say “I slow down for horses but I run horse boxes off the road”

And I’m going to stick it on the back of my caravan before I go for a drive past every horse event in my area this weekend.

[johnny02004976]

hahaha i completely agree mate. I deal with the posh horsey style women everyday of the week (i do savings at a bank ) and they really do think there the top of the pecking order becuase they have money. Get real, you've never done a days work in your life, how does that help society? Spending money on fake tan, diamond earrings and learning how to say "how does one order" just really isnt worth it

As for women driving 4x4 vehicles dont get me started, they should be made to take special driving tests in them, 90% of them just cant drive them, stick with a micra or a KA and get the f*ck out of my way. Theres a woman who lives near us who attempts to do a school run every morning, i live about 5mins WALK away from the bus stop so thats about 30 seconds in a car, every morning she drives down there in a new range rover, parks just before the bus stop and WAITS for the bus to put her kid (YES JUST ONE CHILD) on. Whats the point, no wonder your kid is a fat sh*t he dosent have to walk anywhere, mum drops him off at the bus stop, bus picks him up drops him at the school gates, then at end of day bus drops him back off at the bus stop where his mum is sat in the range rover with snacks - im sure he requires vast amounts of complex carbohydrates for the massive climb into the back. So what does mother do all day, NOTHING, she drives back home in the Range Rover to apply more make up and fake tan all day, in preperation for the sloth returning home from school

Nick..... look what u started, im gonna have to stop now before i put my mug through my TFT

[fat jez]

Nick, you had me in stitches. I totally agree. The only thing you missed out is that horsey mum also clogs up the roads when I want to go to work dropping her precious children off at school instead of doing what most other people did when I were a lad and walking. And since she only knows how to drive with a horse box bolted to the tail end of her car, she drives the same way on the school run, doing 30 MPH down a road that is national speed limit.

Aargh!

Stephen

[FatalSaviour]

Good weekend then Nick?

[Lee @ SCAN]

Nick - Can we have these rants as a podcast please...

Oh how I would love to hear you snarling and snapping the words out.

Saying that... I bet you know a few good recipes these horses could be used in

Oh and don't get me started on these concrete warriors who think a 4x4 is for travelling 900m down a road with speed-humps to take Billy and Jane to school.

[DavidM]

Horse steaks can be very nice.

[hitman67]

Amen brother Nick, the amount of times I've been late for a meeting as I'm stuck behind a Discovery towing a Horsebox is unbelivable, and they always pick the narrowest road possible to drive down, meaning no one can overtake and on coming cars are forced to get personal with a herd of fresian cows to avoid them. Then, just as I think I've got an opening, slip the car into second and go for one thump of the loud pedal, she pulls the Disco into the middle of the road as if I am SUPPOSED to be back there.

So ok, I can handle this, I pull back in, back into 3rd and let the car drop back to 15rpm at 22 mph, at least it's good for my fuel economy. We wait a bit longer, dual carriageway. Alli-f**king-lulah (sp?) Once again it's into second and ready, when she pulls out as there is a wagon 10 miles down the road she needs to overtake. Simple answer though, I drop back into the other lane and boot it past that way

[Zak33]

we discussed this at length......I was sat on the M25 and he had just got home from being stuck behind Tarquin and Toffee-Buttercup III and he was RAVING!

[nichomach]

...AND...breathe out...

Classic, and I second the podcast idea. This cracked me up, and after my various alarms and diversions this morning was just the tonic I needed.

[Lee @ SCAN]

Originally Posted by nichomach

Classic, and I second the podcast idea. This cracked me up, and after my various alarms and diversions this morning was just the tonic I needed.

Come on Nick... Podcast us with a spoof of "grind my gears" from Family guy where you can sit there for 30 mins and RANT about what has grinded your gears this week.

It would be comedy gold and of course you could rant about games being pathetic after all the hype, or whinge about Tarquin and Marrion having horseboxes if you want too

[DavidM]

Horseboxes = meals on wheels...

[Howard]

Nick... Mate... .You should be given a book deal. What you write is just POETRY. How on earth do you come up with it

[DavidM]

I guess you mean Nick

[dangel]

I couldn't be arsed to read all that - can someone summise it?

Something like: "i don't like horseboxes" yeah? :0)

[Mike Fishcake]

Nick - that was pure, pure beauty.

Well done.

[MantisCSS]

so you feel quite stongly about this Nick....... i do agree this maybe a lil chnage of subject but how bout horses on roads? when dogs mess on a road or somethign they get a 1000 pound fine or 500 or what ever but then a horse does it and its about 20 times bigger and smells worse yet its fine! you done see the rides getting of their horse with a shovel and a bin liner and taking it home!!