The Truth About Riding Sheep

There comes a time in every girl's childhood that she notices a void in her life. For me that was a horse. Having never wanted anything much, up until that point, it seemed like it would be something easy to obtain by simply smiling and requesting it.

But the pony request was met with silence. It seemed there was a limit to the happiness my parents would allow me. So I decided to pray to the God-person everyone was always talking about.

It became clear that he was a fake.

So I turned to the other magical entity of childhood....Santa....

It was harder for me to understand why Santa didn't answer. I had physical proof of his existence every Christmas morning. It seemed silly he wouldn't bring me a pony, when I did all the things that adults told me constituted being a good girl.

It was clear I needed to take matters into my own hands.

I decided to turn our dog into a horse.

The dog was less than cooperative and I soon gave-up. I cast about for different ideas and soon I had an idea.

I scoped out my mother's small gathering of animals (her attempt at rekindling her childhood farmyard memories) and decided on my next victim.

I wanted to commandeer the fastest animal. I was surprised when I discovered which animal that was.

The geese were by far the speediest of our creatures and also, as I soon discovered, relatively difficult to straddle. After several attempts I finally had myself the most unlikely of pony substitutes.

However, geese are an oppressed creature and it wasn't long before my goose-horse turned quite violently against me.


The Goose was not a long term solution.

It was clear to me that I would need to pick an animal with less dexterity of the neck, no beak and no tendency to manic fits of violence.

I decided upon what I deemed to be the most gormless of creatures.

The sheep were faster than me and after running several futile laps of the field, I had to reconsider my tactics.

I decided to pull out all the stops.

After several ninja-type approaches that failed, I decided to scale a tree that they grazed under. I knew they would never expect me to drop from the sky onto their fluffy little backs.

I'd like to say I only tried this method once, but we both know that would be a terrible lie. Instead I plunged from the tree countless times.

Each time. the sheep would wait till I was inches from straddling them, before side-stepping neatly out of the way and continuing to graze. The sheep broke me, I lost interest in finding a pony and learnt an important lesson about underestimating our fluffy friends.

The One Thing That Will Make Men Love You

My poor mother gets a bit excited when she visits. This is probably due to spending a lot of her time in the company of a sinister cat and a mentally depraved spaniel. Last weekend she came to visit, and although she was not wearing the outfit sketched below ..she acted like she was.

She was giggly, loud and excited. You could see from the glow in her face that she felt like a twenty-something again.

We were sitting around sipping tea and swopping boy-related-horror stories. When Mother decided to interject and not in a casual way. Oh no, this was a stamp of authority on the conversation.

We were in awe. What wisdom would she impart? Would she resolve all our boy troubles with one single piece of knowledge passed down from generation to generation?

She knew she held the power. She grinned at us for a moment. Drawing out the tension.

Then it came. The advice. The oracle. The one piece of knowledge that must have been handed down from woman to woman in our family for centuries.

My housemate was horrified.

My sister was disgusted.

I tried to figure out where she had heard this phrase.

Our collective horror, only made my mother smug. She thought she had out-cooled us. That we were great big prudes and she a bank of hip boy-advice.

It soon became clear that Mother had not fully understood the phrase "jump his bones".

We've decided that next time we introduce her to friends...we'll take some important measures to restrain her wordly wisdom from frightening them from the room.

Although if I'm really honest, I want things to get worse. I want to see how far she'll go and part of me hopes she'll embrace her inner-snoop-dawg and do this....

My Brief and Terrifying Encounter With Yoga

On Wednesday, I left a poetry reading high on words. I was determined to become inspired by every small thing in my path.

That attitude died a dramatic and sudden death when I got to my bicycle. It was locked beneath two bikes I had never seen before and it was impossible to extract from the situation. My naturally sullen disposition was restored and I fought the desire to strangle the nearest lamp-post.

It was clear to me that this was some drinker's revenge for all the poetry we'd subjected them to. I returned to the pub and started to make my inquiries.

The barman was not impressed by my assumption that any of his customers would have anything to do with cycling.

 Which led me to believe he was losing the plot.

 He led me to the pub door and pointed across the road as he explained about the "Yoga Fuckers".

I stood staring at the glowing green door of the Yoga Studio. I'd like to say I took a moment to consider a plan of action, but alas such things are not in my nature. I plodded across the road with all the grace of a pitt-bull and trooped up the stairs in search of the culprits.

It was pitch-black upstairs, so I assumed the place was empty and turned to leave. Nothing is creepier than being somewhere you've never been before when it's dark and empty. You don't even know any good hiding places.

I heard a sneeze coming from the dark room behind me. I should have probably hightailed it. Instead, I peered back into the dark and as my eyes adjusted I noticed the small curled up mounds of people all over the floor. 

 I did what any other person of questionable sanity would do and walked into the dark yoga class.

Nobody answered my initial self-introduction. I was impeccably polite and treated their silence as some sort of state of shock. I knew I would eventually charm them out of silence with my awkward interrogation skills.  I stood in the doorway and just kept talking....

and talking.... 

 Until their leader unfurled and addressed the room in a whispery voice.

Being referred to in this manner was a little off-putting, I felt like my integrity was being compromised, so I lunged across the rolled up people to validate my claims that my bicycle was imprisoned.

 I gestured widely out the window as the room of yoga blobs remained disconcertingly silent.

I heard a woman's voice behind me. I spun around and in the entrance to the room stood the most horrifying woman brandishing a yoga mat. She slowly approached me.

 As she approached the leader continued to whisper to the room about my presence.

 I was trying to figure out how to get past the yoga lady without falling victim to her yoga mat, when two of the people curled up on the floor sprung to life and sprinted from the room.

At this point I was certain this was all an elaborate dream. The woman was still approaching and nobody seemed to want to explain the disappearance of the two men.

 I asked the room where they were going.

Faced with hostile silence, that I now consider to be synonymous with yoga, I decide to leave.

Outside, the two men were standing over my bike debating in Spanish. I stood beside them wondering when the entire nightmare would end. We stood that way for the longest minute of my life, they argued, I simply stood there. I had given up on ever releasing my bike.

 At one point I asked why they were still standing there and was not surprised to find they didn't answer.

Eventually, having decided that I was either a) to poor to pay ransom for my bike or b) more trouble than keeping it hostage was worth, they took out the key and released my bike.

I thanked them despite my innate desire to lock their bikes up and throw away the key. They, again, said nothing.

I cycled home, sure of one thing. That barman was right about the "Yoga Fuckers".