So there I was, sitting on a horse.

Why was I sitting on a horse?

I don’t particularly like horses. I don’t think horses particularly like me. I can’t remember ever having expressed an interest in horses, looking at a horsey picture or playing with a horse toy. It’s safe to say that horses aren’t really my thing.

And yet there I was… around 7 years old and at something called Riding for the Disabled – a pejorative term if ever I heard one – but to be fair they seemed like really nice, friendly, if delusional, people. Their poster said they aimed to provide therapy, achievement and enjoyment to people with disabilities across the UK. And presumably to encourage a closer relationship with a large, furry animal. I just wish they’d done it with someone else.

I mean puh-lease… are we still living in the dark ages? Did the industrial revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine completely pass these people by? Horses these days are purely a recreational activity and I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing with my recreation time.

They’re all very well when you see them in fields or in cowboy films but the whole horse thing just isn’t for me; Smiley and Frowny had tried taking me once before and I was so bored I decided to have a lie down in the saddle halfway through the session. Everyone got very excited by that, but I just didn’t see the point of making me trot around on an enormous beast – it’s not as if they were going to let me keep it and I wasn’t going anywhere fast with two people holding the reins. I’m pretty sure the horse didn’t want to be there either – it looked perfectly capable of making its way round without any help from me and quite frankly I thought it had viewed me with a certain amount of disdain. Just like this one.

So: very uncomfortable saddle, very stupid hat (I was having that off at the first opportunity) and two very enthusiastic young girls to trot along with the reins… hello, they seemed to have added a third girl since the lying-down incident. And Smiley and Frowny weren’t there to rescue me this time, this was a school trip. Bummer.

I was hungry too, but then I’m always hungry. To make matters worse I could see a toddler in a buggy on the other side of the barn, eating what looked like either a digestive or a raisin cookie… it was too difficult to tell from that distance, but I knew she’d be easy prey if I could only get off the horse.

I was just working out an exit strategy involving a clever deception with the hat when one of the enthusiastic girls made an impressive clicking noise with her mouth and the horse set off at a gentle, strolling pace. Actually this wasn’t so bad. Ok, walking round a big barn in circles is a bit of a pointless way to spend the day but I’ve had worse experiences and the two girls holding the reins seemed to be enjoying it enormously. Where had the third one disappeared to?

Then one of them made another clicking noise and it all went pear-shaped as the horse broke into a trot. To say I wasn’t very keen on this would have been putting it mildly… it was g-g-getting a b-b-bit b-b-bouncy! The hard seat was banging me in the booty and the ridiculous hat was slipping down over my eyes so that I couldn’t keep my eye on the biscuit. I tried making a noise that I thought was a pretty good approximation of “Excuse me, but I really don’t care for horse riding” but one of the dim-witted girls made an incorrect translation and replied “Ah, listen, he really likes it!”

Time to bale out. I decided that stretching my arms out like last time and laying down backwards should do the trick. Hang on, what was this hand behind me? Ah, that’s where the third girl had got to; she was there to disarm the ejector seat.

Lying down wasn’t going to get me out of this one. I always find that a quick tug on someone’s hair gets their attention straight away – although this has stopped working on Smiley because he doesn’t have much hair left. I couldn’t reach any of the girls so I’ll thought I’d try giving the horse’s hair a good yank.

Nothing. Well, some ear flicking, but otherwise we were still trotting and now I was starting to feel quite nauseous. This was serious; I was running out of ideas.

Ah well, sorry horse… but emergency measures were called for. When all else fails I can think of only one more thing to do to get someone’s attention. A little nip with the teeth is all it takes. And I know this doesn’t really hurt because Frowny always makes an appealing yelping noise and does a little dance whenever I do it to her.

So I leant forward and sank my teeth deep into the horse’s neck. The horse gave a loud splutter and all the smiles on the young girls faces vanished simultaneously as if someone had turned off a switch.

Anyway they seemed to know exactly what I wanted because they immediately turned the horse around, lead him back to the little set of steps, someone helped me climb down and they removed the silly hat. Result.

My chair was brought – ah, the relief after that saddle! – and someone guided me back to the office. And while my school teacher had a good old ding-dong with the now somewhat less enthusiastic girls, I was close enough to the toddler to offer my help with the uneaten biscuit. Chocolate chip. Bonus.

As I munched on the biscuit I heard the oldest of the girls patiently explaining to my teacher that it wasn’t a case of my being ‘not quite ready’ for horse riding, but that there were never going to be any circumstances under which they’d ever let me near one of their horses again.

The horse looked as relieved as I was.