The Short Memoirs of a Totally Random and Even More Useless British Teenager

5. The Only Way To Escape The Wrath of Hellhorse

I suppose I’ve talked about rain and sheep to a reasonable degree, so it’s time for a short story about hills. And walks. And pain.

It’s fair to say that I’m not really an “active” person. My idea of fun is shutting myself in my room for a few days and trawling through weird videos of dancing dogs on the internet. Moving from my bed to the fridge to my bed again, taking stops off at the bathroom where appropriate, has always been as far as I’d comfortably go into the torture you normal people call “movement”. I’m just not built for it!

So, how exactly did my only-slightly-more-active younger self deal with being dragged on countryside walks by her parents (a horror I swear all rural British children have been faced with)? To put it simply: not very well.

After a few hours of hiding, my parents would finally capture me and drag me off on a walk. I’d end up moaning the whole way: “Ahhh! The blisters! The paaaain!”, “How long is this going to last?”, “We must have walked ten miles already!”, “Don’t move so fast!”.

Alas, there was one incident soon to come, during which I was only too happy to move faster than a gerbil on steroids.

Whilst on one of these tedious muscle aching walks, my parents were split about which way they should go, so they asked me and my sister for advice. We could either go route (a), a long winding route around country roads for several miles, or route (b), a quick shortcut across a field and up a small hill. Needless to say, I opted for route (b).

We set off, and all was going swimmingly, until we realised that we were not alone. For, standing behind us with a glint in its eye, pawing the ground like bulls supposedly do, was a horse. An evil horse.

I cannot describe to you how genuinely satanic this horse looked. Its eyes were red, its nostrils flared, its mane was a charcoal black. It looked like someone had just pulled it out from the pits of hell.

My family stood there for a few seconds, examining the Hellhorse with dreadful anticipation, and then it charged. So we fled. Running full-kilt up this mountain of a hill, Hellhorse hot at our heels. We ran and ran and ran. It felt like my legs were going to ignite and crumple into a pile of ash. When I had finally reached the top of the hill and leapt over the stile, brutally shoving my sister aside as a sacrifice to ensure my own survival, I turned back to look at (and tease) Hellhorse.

I stuck my tongue out at it and gave it a cheery wave. I was going to opt for the finger, but my parents were watching, so I decided mild teasing was as far as I could go. Hellhorse let out a discontented snort and trotted back down the hill, towards whatever hovel it had come from. I had survived!

And what is the moral of this story, children? To do more exercise? To endeavour to understand animals more? To avoid shortcuts in life?

No, the moral of this story is simple: exercise hurts.

Honestly, it’s bad for you. If my parents hadn’t been so insistent about getting some “country air” (which is honestly just filled with manure and horseflies) I wouldn’t have been marked for death by such a mutated, satanic creature. Sometimes in life it’s just better to lock yourself away and never do anything. Consider investing in a padded cell without any doors. That way, Hellhorse won’t get you.