Day 15: The Day I Tried Horse Riding

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try and make the most out of 2012. So when I arranged to see my friend Dan Rosen today, we decided to book ourselves onto a horse riding class. I know nothing about horses, I've never ridden one before and I've never even really had an urge to. But it was something a bit different, and I'll try anything once.

When I called up to book the lesson yesterday, the woman asked how much Rosen and I weigh. I told her my weight, and couldn't help but laugh when I told her how light Rosen was. Rosen is just over six foot tall and last time I checked, weighed in at a puny eight and a half stone. He's so thin he has to run around in the shower to get wet, and so pale that he's almost transparent like a newborn fish.

In my head I had visions of leaping onto the back of a stallion and galloping off into the woods like a scene from War Horse or Black Beauty. The reality was slightly different...a kids' group riding lesson around a small, manure infested, square pen, where Rosen and I were the oldest riders by about twenty years. We were both introduced to our horses and our leaders. Mine was a thirteen year old girl.

I was helped onto the horse by a nine year old boy who didn't seem to mind that my horse was trying to lick his head off. Within seconds my hands were painfully numb from the cold. I kept whinging to the girl who was leading my horse until she eventually gave in and leant me her pink gloves.

Rosen's horse was beautiful. A white stallion with a long flowing mane. It rode calmly and smoothly around the pen, causing Rosen little trouble whatsoever. Mine, however, looked like a cross between Camilla Parker Bowles and Boris Johnson and spent the entire lesson jerking its head up and down like a Jibba Jabba doll. 'She gets very irritated', my leader warned me. 'Someone rode her yesterday and she bucked them off'. That filled me with loads of confidence.

I'm not quite sure if I actually enjoyed the lesson or not. I had no idea what I was doing and had to put up with a middle aged female instructor shouting at me for an entire hour from the middle of the pen. 'Keep your feet in the stirrups', 'Choke down on the reins', 'Use the rhythm of the horse'. Too much for one lesson, in my opinion. I had no idea what stirrups were, I didn't know how to hold the reins, and I only just about knew what a horse was.

After about 45 minutes of going round and round the pen aimlessly, the instructor told us that we were going to try and break into a trot. 'Is that faster or slower than a gallop?', I asked my thirteen year old leader, whose hands had turned red from frostbite. She seemed shocked at my ignorance. 'Slower', she replied. 'But she's really quick, so you'll probably have to grip on really tightly with your thighs'.

I've never gripped anything with my thighs before. It's quite uncomfortable. As my horse broke into a trot, I forgot about the cold weather, I forgot about trying to stay balanced on the horse. All I could focus on was my poor testicles which spent the next few minutes being battered relentlessly against the horse's back.

The lesson finished and I was relieved to get off. I limped around the pen, numb from the cold, thighs aching and fairly convinced I was now unable to have children. That's the price I paid for trying something a bit different.