10 Reasons why we all love the showing mum!
- No one cleans your tack and boots better than she does. She’s also a magician with stained jodhs and mucky shirt-cuffs.
- Her right leg involuntarily flicks out behind her at every fence you jump.
- She once thought a breastplate was an early brassiere and Martin Gayle was poet, but now she’s got them stripped, cleaned, reassembled, and fitted in a jiffy.
- She cannot fathom why the supermarket assistant questions her need for six bottles of baby oil, four tubs of Brylcreem, shoe polish and eight tubs of talcum powder just to tide her over the weekend.
- She watches you practice the same show 101 times with earnest enthusiasm.
- She thinks nothing of getting up at the crack of dawn to drive 4 hours to a show with no amenities beyond a portable toilet.
- She understands why it’s way more important to get a good photo of your horse than you.
- If she doesn’t make sure your girth is tight enough, who will?
- She tolerates nerves, shouting, and overtired tantrums so long as she can have a bacon butty, or on a really bad day, an hour in the food hall.
- She’s a realist and keeps you grounded: if your show was amazing, she’ll tell you it was ‘ok’; if it was rubbish, she’ll tell you it was ‘rubbish’. She’ll root for you anyway.
