Try Again. Numnah

I just pressed the wrong key and posted a blog with nothing on it. What I meant to say was -

'Numnah' is the pad that goes between a horse's saddle and its back, so the saddle doesn't hurt it. It was also the word in my head when I woke up this morning. I have just finished the final stages of work on a pony book, and my head is full of fetlocks and forelocks, traces, paces, feathers, leathers, shivers, withers and wothering wuthers, Carruthers. It reminded me of -

A freezing late afternoon in winter, many years ago, when LYS was, I think, six years old. We'd all gone to see my sister's horses and have a wee ride, and it was time to put the horses in their stables for the night, which means fresh straw, hay, buckets of water, etc. At the time there was an Anglo-Arab with an attitude problem, so my sister looked after him herself. Then there was Glen. I think his surname was Mammoth, honestly, you could have hidden a barn behind him. I don't know if the sun had gone down or Glen had stood in front of it.

I looked up across the field. There stood the tiny figure of my youngest son, perfectly still, calm and contented. He was holding a rope across both hands. Behind him at the end of the rope was Glen, also perfectly still, calm and contented. It seemed that LYS had taken on quiet responsibility for Glen, and Glen felt the same way about him.

I could imagine LYS turning up at our front door like that - 'he followed me home, can we keep him?' I think I would have said yes.