Of Pears and Horses

‘I know two things about a horse’

my grandmother used to recite:

‘And one of them is rather coarse’

From which you may gather that she was rather coarse herself.

My grandfather used to run into the street with a shovel whenever a horse passed, to collect the dung for his roses.

City dwellers, they weren’t otherwise much interested in horses. Unfortunately, I seem to have inherited this quality.

I have just delivered another wheelbarrowful of fat green pears to my neighbour M. M is a village schoolmistress and passionate horsewoman. Her small cottage is attached to a very large field containing a brook, some wonderful old oaks, and a big stable block, home to her own two mounts and various paying guests (‘in livery’ is the correct term, but conjours up in me disturbing images of M mucking out in a footman’s powdered wig and blue satin breeches).

I’m not interested in horses, but I do like M, and I’m happy to have found a use for the pears, at last.

They are beautiful pears, the size of cricket balls and of a similar consistency. No-one has yet succeeded in rendering them edible to man.

‘Try poaching them in red wine’ people suggest: (the sort of people who ask chronic insomniacs if they’ve Tried Hot Milk).

I’ve poached the wretched things for hours and hours. They do eventually develop a pinkish hue which penetrates about a millimetre into the fruit. The rest stays white and rock-hard. I’ve even tried poaching them in Devil’s Wee, which dissolves pretty much anything. No success.

M suggested her horses might care for them. I don’t like horses, but not enough to poison them deliberately, and I couldn’t help feeling this was a bad idea. But M knows much more about horses than I do, and hers seem to thrive on these pears. Either they have remarkably corrosive digestive juices, or the pears simply cannon-ball straight through, in which case they will turn up back in my garden in a couple of years’ time.

For M’s horses perform one important service to the community. Their dung is piled into a field where our mutual neighbours, Rupe and Jo, keep three remarkably spoilt pet sheep. The resulting mound has grown a couple of metres high – the sheep use it as a lookout station – and one end is beautifully matured. Rupe and Jo allow free access to all comers interested in manure, so all my beds are deep in rich, well-rotted pooh from M’s horses.

My grandparents would, I think, understand my satisfaction.