Full of Memories
Image by Julie from Wexford
The instant I saw this beautiful palomino pony she reminded me of one owned by a farmer called Mr Jenkins who rented out an old stone farmhouse near Bwlchllan in Mid Wales. We spent family holidays there each Summer in the mid – late 1970s. When it rained toads & banded snails emerged from the stone walls. It was my task to track down the Guinea fowl eggs each morning & Mrs Jenkins made the most delicious Welsh Cakes.
That pony’s name was Phantom & I have happy memories of going to catch her, tacking her up in the barn & riding her proudly around the paddock by the cottage. Sometimes (with my Dad & our black Labrador accompanying me) we’d trot along a tree tunnel track which opened out onto a windswept hill where you looked down on the valleys below & could often hear distant shepherds whistling their sheep dogs.
A not so happy memory is falling off of Phantom & breaking my humerus (upper arm bone) as she cantered around a large field. The ground was rock hard as it was mid summer. I was slightly concussed I think as I was knocked unconscious (I was wearing a riding helmet) & woke up some time later with her grazing next to me. My parents didn’t take me to hospital for 3 days – didn’t want to spoil the holiday I guess but I was sick & in so much pain they had to in the end. I remember the embarrassment of being naked from the waist up in front of strange people as I was x-rayed & examined (I was 12). My right arm was strapped against my torso for 5 weeks. I hardly saw anyone during the rest of the school holidays & I had the bandages removed the day before school term started – at a new secondary school. My friends didn’t believe I’d broken my arm, there was no proof, no plaster cast to sign. I can still feel that disappointment now that nobody believed me.
Another year when it rained for days on end poor Phantom slipped down the steep field behind the farmhouse & gashed her neck on the barbed wire fence. My Dad helped Mr Jenkins by hooking 2 fingers up Phantom’s nostrils to keep her still while blue spray was applied to the wounds. He still recounts that tale to this day!
Seeing this pony brought back all these memories & many more. Uploading for "Smile on Saturday" theme "Full of Memories".
