More horses and things, and premiere of our latest horsey movie

Once in every two weeks, it is my duty to get up early and escort a number of mounted young ladies through the woods to the Pony Club. And there to drink weak coffee from a cardboard cup made from stiff blotting paper that slowly gets soggy and collapses. And stare in numbed stasis as ponies go round and round and round again and jump over fences as high as match-boxes. For hours and hours.

Wishing to share this excitement with you all in the past, I strapped the video-camera to my trusty velocipede and filmed away. The results were very good. Until I tried to get the tape out of the camera in order to put in a new one on that blustery day. The tape cassette did emerge, but the tape stayed put and your humble scribe was almost strangled in a web of thin, brown streamers and my head looked like a cellophane-wrapped toffee-apple. My masterpiece was lost. Apparently the camera is not shock-proof. I sent it to E-Care for repair. There is a basic charge of 10 euros to which will be added costs of material, labour and transport. Should this ammount exceed 140 euros, one will be contacted to determine if one really wants to go ahead. I have the camera back in working condition, with the bill which reads:

Basic charge 10.00
Material 5.00 (a 'clip')
Transport 7.00
Administrative costs 12.00
Labour 105.99
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Total 139.99
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....which of course is within the 140.00 limit and no contact with the customer required. The world is as full of corporate shysters as it ever was.

Lessons having been learned, I resolved to treat the precious camera with loving care. This time I would not strap it to the bike, but would hold it in my hand. While riding a crummy bicycle along muddy, rutted forest paths with the other hand doing the steering, and with only the viewfinder to see where I was going. My first mistake was to leave the zoom zoomed in. I saw a woman with two scruffy dogs in the distance and wondered why the dogs were barking at me and the woman gesticulating wildly. Suddenly they loomed up and filled the viewfinder and I almost mowed them down. She called me a 'klootzak' which always makes me die laughing when the people here call each other scrotums (or is that scrotae). Enough of this banter, you are anxious to know about the newest epic. It was hard to come up with anything better than our earlier successes.
Who will ever forget 'Static Stallions in a Stall', 'Heiloo Hanghengsten', 'Doelloos Dravers', 'Shuffling Shetlanders', 'Arabiers in Apathy', 'Fresian Tedium' and of course 'Vier Veulens in Verveling'.

We now proudly bring you

The Boring Ponies

Halfway through, there is a real mangling of man and bicycle as I watched in horror an Impending and Inevitable Accident loom into the viewfinder. Knowing that if I damaged the camera the subsequent bollocking would be both severe and public, I kept my camera hand in the air and ignored everything else as I crashed to the ground, my fall cushioned by sharp flinty stones and cruel metal protuberances of the bicycle. All recorded live. Having almost lost my life to bring you this, it is your duty to sit through all 10 minutes. Come with me, and together let us plumb the depths of mediocrity.