WORTH A PUNT

Elinor Goodman on the Arcadian pleasures of buying a horse in Ireland

I DIDN'T, it has to be admitted, actually need to buy a horse. It hits me, now that the deed is done and the money sucked from my account, that I already have a very large horse of my own and, come to think of it, two ponies which I acquired for my neighbours' children.

All I can say in mitigation of my behaviour is that we were in Blackpool, surrounded by pinch-faced Glaswegians who regard being in that resort as some kind of a treat. It was the Tory confer- ence. Ahead of us stretched the rigours of the parliamentary session, and all at once I was seized by a kind of madness which, in my case, could only be assuaged by retail therapy.

Irresistibly my fingers were drawn to the classified ads in Horse & Hound. Ignoring the intemperate cover showing Blair as a dictator, I let my fingers do the walking down the small ads. It was thus that I found the advertisement for a 14.2 Con-

nemara pony in Ireland; and the great thing about Blackpool, I rationalised to myself, is that it is only a hop from Ireland, the ultimate comfort-zone for a horse- lover. In this children's pony-book world, everyone talks horses, rides horses; every pony is 'a grand sort', 'a real goer', or the ultimate compliment — 'a hectic little fellow'.

I was met at the airport by Marion, who was wearing, as promised, a sweater emblazoned with a life-size fox terrier. She didn't have bandy legs or a squint, as horse dealers should, and seemed perfectly charming. Even so, as we drove out of the airport past an encampment of tinkers, I thought I might as well stop and buy a horse there, for all I knew about this woman. But Marion drew me into her world.

On the 50-mile trip to her farm, every landmark was an equine one: that was where Arkle was born; that is where Bob Champion lives; and that, 'would you believe it, was where a yearling filly had been sold for £1.1 million, and that only for what was written on its papers'. By the time we got to the farm, any scepticism had melted away.

The pony was standing in a stable look- ing as docile as a seaside donkey. He could have been made just to tempt me: he was a smaller version of my own huge dapple- grey. He even had a name — Fred which could have been chosen by focus groups to appeal to a Middle Englander.

I mounted him and Marion led me into the fields. `Do you mind jumping a drain?'

she asked. Before I could answer, her horse had leapt over a river — OK, more of a stream — and Fred had bounded after her.

Marion was astonished when I told her that the only drains in England were the ones that carried the sewage. Fred, meanwhile, showed exemplary enthusiasm for anything but stopping.

Over lunch Marion's husband Michael, a farmer, opened a bottle of wine. A small voice of caution whispered in my mind that perhaps they were trying to weaken my already crumbling resistance to Fred's charms. But I couldn't believe that. Every- thing was so wholesome. Illuminated madonnas vied for space on the dresser with rosettes and battered children's books,

while a terrier called Yeats climbed on to my lap. The. children actually talked to their parents at mealtimes, and had a fine

turn of phrase. 'That prop forward is so fat you'd send him to the abattoir,' said 15- year-old Bernard, and then, less charming- ly, when asked by his father to pick some potatoes the next day: 'Oh hell, no. I'll be so busy I won't have time to pick my nose, let alone pick potatoes.'

'What's that Tony Blair really like?' Mar- ion asked. I replied that he was a fairly decent bloke whose heart was in the right place. But did he understand the country- side and what about that sister-in-law of his — wasn't she a militant animal-rights cam-

paigner? I said, as neutrally as you'd expect from a political editor, that he didn't take

any more notice of his sister-in-law than anybody else did, but that he had never really lived in the countryside. So doesn't he like animals? they asked in tones of growing horror. I had to admit that he had got rid of the Downing Street cat and, to my personal knowledge, he positively dis- liked dogs. At that point they saw the extra income they got from selling hunters to the English market finally disappearing.

Marion persuaded me that I should stay overnight and 'see Fred in company', by which she meant go hunting. I know that in

the present climate this is a provocative act. But in Ireland it seems as natural for a

visitor to go to a meet as for a tourist in, say, Italy to go to the Palio. So at six o'clock the next morning I was being driv- en to the meet along with Fred, 15-year- old Bernard and his horse, which had never seen hounds before and was there- fore, he said, more than likely to 'ping' him off. As we drove through the darkness he successfully wound me up with talk of fly- ing over hedges and double dykes.

I should have known what was coming when Bernard started praising the merits of Fred. 'You wouldn't want a pony that didn't want to be at the front, would you?' Well, I did actually. I thought I'd found my salvation when I saw a tiny child on a white Thelwellian pony. She told me that she didn't like jumping anything but drains so I offered to look after her. After the rest of the field — only half-a-dozen rid- ers, most of them farmers — had galloped off, I asked her whether she'd like to trot after them. 'Hell, no, let's gallop.' And we did.

I had to leave at 9 a.m. to catch my flight, but they said I couldn't go without trying Fred over a proper fence. The one they had in mind had barbed wire across the top, so I used that as an excuse not to jump it. Quick as a flash, Bernard leapt off and took the wire down. 'Now you can jump it."No, I really must be going.' 'You're just chicken. You're just an English chicken,' he shouted, to everyone's delight. To show that I wasn't, I galloped off and jumped some hay bales which Fred could hardly see.

At which point it was time to do the deal; and I discovered the final, clinching reason for splashing out on the horse. Thanks to the Tories, who have made it impossible for us to join the euro, the pound is extremely strong against the punt. In fact, the 3,000 punts she was asking translated into £2,428. It would have been a waste of money not to buy Fred — or so I persuaded myself.

Elinor Goodman is political editor of Chan- nel Four News.

'He wouldn't give me a real Rolex would he? I know that because no one's tried to nick it.'