Tony was a magnificent white carthorse who, every morning of my early childhood, knocked his head on our kitchen window for a sugar buttie – a thick piece of white sliced, thinly spread with margarine and dipped in sugar. How we must have loved that horse, as this was just a few years after the second world war ended, and sugar was still rationed.
Tony was one of a dozen or so horses looked after by my father, used to haul goods from Liverpool’s docks to the various warehouses along the waterfront. He needed to be on hand continually, and so we lived in a tied house across the stable yard. Our home was a sort of unofficial refuge for lost, unwanted or injured animals, and there was often a blanket-lined box containing a recovering bird or animal close to the warmth of the kitchen range. We had, among others, a one-eyed cat, a neurotic dog and even a parrot that whistled Colonel Bogey, all rescued by my dad, who couldn’t bear to turn an animal away. He’d inherited his job from his own father, who had also been a horsekeeper for many years.
