Before we get onto the Saddlechariot and what it does, lets look at the people and ponies who will use it.
People love ponies and ponies love people. People includes all members of Homo sapiens, ponies all members of Equus caballus.
All Homo sapiens can interbreed, and have, and the result is you and me. I cannot in law discriminate against any of you, my readers, on the basis of parentage or physical conformation. If I insist on White, Anglo Saxon, able bodied, employees or customers I will be prosecuted.
Henry and I have just been working in Balsall Heath at the St. Paul's Trust City Farm. I call it working, but it was pure magic to watch the pleasure that Henry can spread just by being there. Henry was mobbed wherever we went, by all ages, all backgrounds. And over and over I was told "At home we had........" and home was Jamaica, or Yemen, Iraq, China, Ireland..............
With fuel going through the roof, and Global warming in every headline, pony power is the answer. For recycling projects, street cleaning, local deliveries, pony power makes cold economic sense. The goodwill in the community, something that unites all communities with a smile, that's just a free bonus, but may be worth more than all the other factors combined.
Cities are full of statues to War Horses, as they ride roughshod over the vanquished, but those aren't the horses that people love. Millions remember the milkman's horse with real affection yet those have no statues. Possibly because no bronze monument could replace them, only flesh and blood will do.
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1 comment:
As soon as I can save up to buy 1 of these, I'll do so & tell you how I use it as a partially hemiplegic driver. I fear that I may have to hold the reins "carriage" style, albeit in the "wrong" hand as my left hand will grip, but not let go & it has no strength in it. Still not tied daughter up to measure horses, but my father is coming over next week, so I'll ask him to help (my mother is terrified of anything that big!). This terrified disabled driver WILL talk to you!
On a separate note, I told the Welfare Officer (village is worried about daughter going over 2 miles in the dark & rain to catch the school bus & sent him up) about your chariot & he asked why I didn't get a scooter! I was in the sidecar of a motorbike when I was left paralysed after being driven under an oncoming tanker & have no sense of balance now... On explaining that I couldn't even ride a bike he suggested a sulky. I doubt he has ever seen a true sulky ~ a frame attached to a horse, as light as possible & driven at high speed. How does he expect my daughter &/or shopping (our 1 bus a week is under threat)to cling on to that? They are prepared to help my get my trotting cart over, so I'm trying to plot to get both rigs over as cheaply as possible & still madly save for your chariot & use that instead!
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