Lessons from Nelipot Cottage

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“A good horse is never a bad colour”

There are many phrases threading through the English language handed down from the old days when horses were the main form of transport and we humans owed them our livelihoods and oftentimes our lives. This blog has mostly been pre-occupied with

“No Foot, No Horse”

but the BLM movement has dramatically leapt to the forefront of public awareness again at a time when I was a little lacking in inspiration for topics to write about and

“one should never look a gift horse in the mouth!”

That was a flippant link. But colour is a hard thing to write about, and flippancy has always been a sterling defence against the difficulties of existing as an outsider in an often monochrome world.

and please excuse the use of the judgemental terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’- it’s a neat phrase and an old saying- let’s not argue those semantics today LOL

We don’t generally judge horses on their colour, although we do offer up some tired stereotypes as facts.

Gingers (chestnuts is the correct term in the equine glossary) are sensitive, twitchy, flighty, a bit mad- like Ginger the highly strung chestnut mare in Black Beauty, and similar to the many of the oft quoted stereotypes about human redheads. In less politically correct times there have even been scientific studies conducted in an effort to ascertain whether there is a real difference in the way redheads perceive pain, for example

Do redheads feel more pain?

I had a whole polo team of chestnut mares at one stage. They were all brilliantly unique. Horse people will mostly judge you on the quality of the horse you are sat on, rather than on your human attributes. I once nearly ran over Lady Vestey senior at a polo match; it was in the early days of the Innerwick team and I was on Francesca, Roger’s chunky, solid, dependable chestnut starter pony. We spun around and Lady V walked more or less into us so it wasn’t mine or Francesca’s fault. Lady V turned around quick as a flash and said “I’ve been squashed by much classier beasts than that”, looking down her nose at Francesca’s ample behind and perfect white feathers. Francesca certainly wasn’t a blood horse!

“The term bloodhorse dates back to 1615 as a term for a horse of good descent. Its usage spread in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to the English Thoroughbred racehorse breed.

The name may derive from the idea of blood as pedigree or from the concept of hot-blooded and cold-blooded horses.

In an 1857 book Horse and Horsemanship, English author Henry William Herbert describes blood as “descent, through the American or English race-horse, from the oriental blood of the desert,” referring to the Arabian horses that were the ancestors of the Thoroughbred. In the same book, he contrasts the blood horse with the “cold-blooded cart horse.”

It was a funny day that- shortly after us nearly trampling our lady host, the Kiwi truck driver completely wedged the new artic sideways in the narrow gateway between two dry stone walls. Roger then tried to cheer us all up by taking us for a drink in the clubhouse but ‘staff’ weren’t allowed to drink at the bar. He bought a slab of beers and sat on the ramp drinking with us instead. A true gent our Roger.

Other horse associated observational myths- dark bays are the spooky one while greys tend to be calm. This is certainly true in my little herd. Paddy the dark bay always signals my presence first; maybe the other two see me and aren’t bothered but Paddy’s is the head that always goes up. Cal just keeps eating most days; he will possibly deign to flick an ear as an acknowledgement. And Cal has always been a pleasure to take out and about whereas with Paddy one could never relax for a moment. He can untie knots, break string, dismantle a trailer, flatten the picnic…all in the blink of an eye.

Horses are strangely attracted to other horses of the same colour. Cal is fascinated by the little grey mare on out yard, and was also very attached to Bliss when she lived with us. And horses are really freaked out by very tiny ponies if they haven’t met them before; similar but different. Donkeys too- the braying and the funny ears really alarm them.

So ‘people like us’ is not just a human phenomenon.

“People Like us”  Hashi Mohamed-  “what it takes to make it in modern Britain”

https://amzn.eu/3vCYlcC

I will say this now; I myself have never encountered overt racism directed at me amongst the horsey community. Horsey people love horses much more than people, look at horses, talk about horses, dream about horses. The people attached to the horses are mostly incidental. I recognise many of my horsey acquaintances by their horses first.

There was a classic line in a Dick Francis novel- the protagonist thought the crumpled photo that the groom was keeping in her wallet was of her dead boss, and that they must have been lovers. Of course the photo was of the horse, the boss just happened to be holding the rope!

But it is undeniably true that there aren’t many people of colour involved in equestrianism in the UK. Not so in America where most of the barn work is done by cheap manual labourers, therefore often by Mexicans. In the UK we tend to employ skilled grooms to do all the work including the hard manual labour, and mostly pay them a pittance to do so. Polo was an exception, hence my summer holidays spent sweating in the sunshine, messing about with fast cars and fast horses.

I can’t think of a single contemporary famous black equestrian athlete. Yet historically in the USA, Black jockeys were commonplace. They started out as slaves of course….

“On May 17, 1875, thousands of eager horse racing fans poured through the gates of Churchill Downs to get their first looks at Louisville’s sparkling new racetrack and cheer on the thoroughbreds in the featured race, the inaugural Kentucky Derby. Finely dressed gentlemen and ladies adorned in bright colors thronged the grandstand and hundreds of carriages filled the infield as the horses toed the line for the day’s second race. At the tap of a drum, fifteen horses thundered down the track. As excited shouts echoed across the oval, jockey Oliver Lewis spurred on his chestnut colt Aristides to a one-length victory in the fastest time ever recorded by a three-year-old horse.

That Lewis was a black man in the sport of horse racing was of little note. In fact, 13 of the 15 riders in that first Kentucky Derby were African-Americans. In the years following the Civil War, black jockeys dominated horse racing at a time when it was America’s most popular sport. African-American riders were the first black sports superstars in the United States, and they won 15 of the first 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.

For centuries, Southern plantation owners put slaves to work in their stables. Slaves cared for and raced their masters’ horses. They served as riders, grooms, and trainers and gained a keen horse sense from spending so much time in the stables. After emancipation, African-Americans continued to rule Southern race circuits while white immigrants from Ireland and England predominated in the North.”

In contemporary British life, access to horses is an expensive upper middle class pre-occupation in the cities, and an upper class pastime providing a working class source of employment out in the country. And rural Britain is still not an ethnically diverse community. I live out in the country. I can think of one black man, an Asian friend or two and a few diverse kids that I have encountered on horse back at 20 years of equestrian events in rural Cheshire and the surrounding countryside.

Where do most BAME communities live?

By contrast, my beloved NHS family is incredibly diverse, on the frontline at least

although we are now getting called out for a shocking lack of BAME representation at higher levels

Having said that, I don’t declare as BAME- there isn’t a box that describes me so I refuse to engage in being inadequately or inaccurately pigeon holed.

If wishes were horses

It didn’t matter to me as a child that there were no brown horsey role models for me to look up to. I was obsessed with horses long before I even knew what the colour of my own skin was. I don’t remember not being obsessed with horses.

I was already reading pretty fluently aged 4 or 5, and my first books were the well known stories of silver Brumbies and chestnut Arabs. My first poem was about Thowra, Evleyn Mitchell’s brumby stallion. I didn’t know I was a brown person until someone shouted “Pakki” at me on the way to school; that was on the way to junior school in London so I must have been about 6 or 7 then.

When does a child realise he/she is brown?

At what age do kids realise skin colour is a thing?

The Black Lives Matter slogan has been incredibly triggering for some people. Of course all individuals have their challenges, but it is fair to say that in most of the countries of the world, having black skin as well as being poor, female, alone, less than able bodied, will add a layer of complexity to the other challenges that you might face, not make your life easier.

I am lucky, I am very privileged. I’m a middle class, intellectually gifted, slightly brown woman with a first class education and a first class RP (posh) accent, tinged now with a tiny bit of North. I am able bodied, fit, and healthy. I count my blessings every day.

Racism comes out of the funniest, darkest, subconscious corners. Most often it comes out as a stray comment, from a friend, directed at someone other, because of course your friends don’t include you in ‘that group’ they are talking about. Often the assumption of difference comes from other people of colour- I wrote a long rant many years ago about how much I hated the question “where do you come from?”, a question that is most often asked by well meaning others from elsewhere looking to find a connection.

And the reason I hated that question was because I did not have, and still do not have, a truly simple, assured answer. I am a child of globalisation; my mother is Singapore Eurasian but she left there when she was 20 to escape the benign but still politically oppressive regime. My uncle got jailed briefly for teaching history as it actually happened rather than the government sanctioned politically correct version, and the many siblings scattered around the Commonwealth after that episode. My Dad is from the Wirral, but he would say he is Scottish (by age old ancestry) and I was conceived in Sweden, then born in Germany, where I spent my formative years as an expat child of the European Space Agency, before we came “home” to London. We then spent a year living in France and I have always loved travelling in a way that enables me to live and work in a country not just visit. The place I have felt most viscerally connected to was the West Coast of Scotland, as would befit the McNicol heritage, but the Scots say you only truly belong to the place you were born in.

And yet fundamentally I am British through and through. No ignorant bigot can take that identity away from me. I was born and registered a British citizen. Both my parents are British citizens, Singapore was in the Commonwealth after all. My mother was brought up a full British citizen, in Singapore, educated in English at a convent school, leaving with A levels and perfect RP pronunciation and a weird attachment to British rituals like afternoon tea. I grew up in London, went to one of the top ten schools in the UK, sailed through a top notch British education and devoured all the reading and conditoning that goes with that. When we learned about the colonies, a risible few lines that came up mostly in English Literature rather than history, I thought of myself as one of the British colonial ladies, not one of the indigenous natives.

There is a fine balance between not talking about colour and talking about it too much- different experiences can separate us as well as connect us.

Note that I make a deliberate distinction between colour and race- because for me in my peculiar mix of experience and genetics the two are not connected at all.

So I find it very unsettling when people ask me where I am from, or if I will ever go back home, or where I learned to speak such perfect English, or where I got my lovely skin tone from. Because all of those questions threaten my sense of belonging, question my right to thrive here, in the country that I belong to by birthright, where I grew up, where I should be able to feel secure and at home, like most of you do.

And if the inability to deal with that question is my weakness, so be it. I have shared it with you now, so you can treat your friends, and the strangers that aren’t friends yet, with the empathy and respect that all humans deserve. And that respect doesn’t involve making preconceived judgements based on appearance, skin tone, level of ability, sexuality or any other protected characteristic.

Please read this link- unconscious bias is rife among the well meaning

Horses are simple, if not always easy. Horse sense intent, and connect with congruence and truth. Horses never say one thing and mean another. Horses read energy, and have no preconceptions. And that is why, to a horse at least, a good human can never be a bad colour.

Peace and love.

Thank you as always for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you. To those influencers who comment, share the site with friends or help to promote in any other way, I remain eternally grateful. To those supporters generous and able to offer funds, whether small or large, karma is finding its way back to you with a rainbow of horses and abundance beyond dreams. Thank you all for joining in the adventure.  

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