Carrot on its outstretched palm, the Observer took a close look at horses on 20 July 1969. TV coverage of competitive riding and postwar affluence had contributed to ‘a growing army of equestrians’, with 80 London schools adding riding to the curriculum and 25,000 urban riders. Soon, it claimed, riding facilities might be ‘as much a community essential as a public swimming bath or children’s playground’. Horsing around was no longer the preserve of the landed elite: ‘Anyone, say the riding school bosses, who can afford to buy a weekly LP or pay a couple of visits to the cinema can ride.’
Here and there, horses were still earning their keep. At Young’s Ram brewery, drays were cheaper to buy – and run – than £3,300 diesel lorries. Farms (tractors had ‘lost their novelty’, the article assured), mines, police plus London’s ‘costers, flower sellers, coal merchants, removal men and rag-and-bone collectors’ all remained partly horse-powered. Once they had outlived their usefulness, ‘Almost all horses are eventually eaten,’ declared a grisly blow-by-blow (literally) guide to horse butchery, going on to explain how and by whom. The French found British horses too fatty; the Belgians couldn’t get enough of them (especially diaphragm, a particular delicacy).
Despite these alternative takes on horse life, the pony-girl stereotype remained alive and bucking. Girls ‘feel maternal towards animals from a very early age’, the article claimed and the ‘pony phase’ was ‘almost as inevitable a part of puberty for the English teenage girl as spots or puppy fat’. Supporting a pony-girl habit required more than your weekly LP budget: a minimum £100 for a ‘reliable but not especially beautiful or accomplished pony’, then bottomless running costs from hoof oil to hay nets.
Parents were offered alternatives. ‘Donkeys aren’t all that daft,’ read the headline on a section extolling their praises (cheaper and less likely to eclipse a woman’s beauty than a horse, reportedly). Or a higher-tech solution: ‘If all else fails, promise her a car for her 17th birthday, it will be cheaper.’
