Page 153 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

when he stopped, the wagon stopped too. It was one of these that had come adrift.
I had to make him slow down ever so, ever so slowly with no sudden jerk or sudden stop.
It was not to be.
As soon as I began to explain what was needed, he obliged by just stopping dead in his
tracks.
Within a split second, because he had lost his brake chain, the wagon kept going and hit
Ebony a huge clout up his bottom,
Horses do not like being hit up the bottom by their cart or wagon and normally retaliate by
lashing out with their hind legs.
Within a second of receiving his ‘clout’, both Ebony’s back feet rose up to meet me on the
wagon front and smacked into the front boards with a resounding “thump, thump”.

DOUBLE TROUBLE
He was such a tall horse that in his leaping about, one of his legs crossed the wagon shaft
on the left and there he was with his back legs straddling the shafts.
Double trouble and all in the blink of an eye.
Now, things did not stop at that, because the horse was not happy, he continued to jiggle
to and fro trying to get back to where he was without this huge piece of wood between his
legs.
Within another blink of an eye and as I am dismounting in my efforts to take charge, he
had jiggled sideways on to the very edge of the dyke bordering the road.

(Picture of Ebony a year later with his
personal “Minder” Joe House, at Young
and Co. Brewery. Note the lovely
chains!)

THE TELEGRAPH POLE
If you have read our other stories, you
will realise that Lincolnshire roads all
have dykes at the sides. They vary in
depth and width from small to huge, this
one was big enough to swallow the horse
and wagon.
I leaped to the horses head just at the
very moment when he took another huge
jump the wrong way, in his efforts to
remove that dratted shaft from between
his legs.
He slithered sideways on the dyke edge
and landed right up against a well placed
telegraph pole half way down the dyke
bank.
It could not have been more convenient,
or inconvenient depending on how you
looked at the problem.
Now he could not move any further sideways, I could steady him and give him chance to
catch his breath and weigh up the situation.
It was obvious from the first that I would now need more that one horse to recover the

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