The Bless­ing of the Hors­es at St John’s Hyde Park

What on earth, you might ask? Is that real­ly an Angli­can priest on horse­back? It sounds like a third ver­sion of those won­der­ful old-fash­ioned appe­tiz­ers, “Angels on Horse­back”, which are oys­ters wrapped in bacon and grilled, or “Dev­ils on Horse­back,” the same thing only I think kid­neys instead of oys­ters? What­ev­er, no, the pho­to­graph above isn’t a tasty treat, but it was a treat nonethe­less. I’ll explain.

So Avery has been rid­ing at her sta­ble this week, the won­der­ful Ross Nye Sta­ble, meet­ing lots of new peo­ple and hors­es and gen­er­al­ly hav­ing the time of her life. They are a com­bi­na­tion of relaxed and intense, relaxed in terms of sched­ul­ing, cloth­ing, etc., but very pre­cise as far as train­ing goes. So I got to see her on Thurs­day in the ring in Hyde Park just below the Bayswa­ter Road, and met a nice moth­er called Dana whose lit­tle girl Syrie was hav­ing a les­son at the same time. It’s always a bit nerve-wrack­ing walk­ing from the sta­ble in the mews to the ring in the park, because the road is extreme­ly busy with those typ­i­cal Eng­lish dri­vers who would be as polite as any­thing if you run over their feet with your trol­ley in Marks and Spencers, but would as soon flat­ten you in the road as look at you. I think it’s the enforced stop­ping for pedes­tri­ans in zebra cross­ings that makes them so aggres­sive absolute­ly every­where else. I always tor­ment myself by won­der­ing what would hap­pen if the pony Avery was rid­ing spooked at some­thing and just decid­ed to go some­where else, rather than fol­low­ing the oth­er ponies in a nice order­ly group to the park. Any­way, after her les­son, Alexa the train­er men­tioned that there would be a lit­tle get-togeth­er on Sun­day, and did we want to come? She gave me a lit­tle card announc­ing “Horse­man’s Sun­day: a unique local insti­tu­tion cel­e­brat­ing the life and work of hors­es sta­bled in Cen­tral Lon­don.” Appar­ent­ly in the 1960s, to protest the threat­ened clo­sure of the sta­bles, Mr Ross Nye (who is per­haps 80 years old now) began to take his hors­es over to the near­by church, St John’s Hyde Park, and ask the vic­ar to bless them. Tru­ly, I am not mak­ing this up. Well, over the 39 years it’s been going on (Mr Nye is AWFUL­LY excit­ed about the 40th anniver­sary next year) the event has grown enor­mous­ly both in size and in elab­o­rate­ness. Alexa explained that Avery should turn up at 10:30 on Sun­day and they would walk the hors­es over to the church, have the bless­ing, and then go to the park for a “gymkhana.”

I have always won­dered, from all my Eng­lish books, what a “gymkhana” is and why on earth it is called that. Well, now was my chance to find out. It turns out that the term refers to the Urdu word for “rack­et court,” and was orig­i­nal­ly used to mean any organ­ised sport­ing event. But in Eng­land it has come to be applied only to eques­tri­an events, and espe­cial­ly those high­light­ing chil­dren’s par­tic­i­pa­tion. So as in so many Eng­lish things, it’s impor­tant to be up on your Indi­an terms. Like jodh­purs. An odd word, I always thought, but I nev­er knew until now that it was the cap­i­tal city of an Indi­an state, and the inhab­i­tants wear tight-fit­ting breech­es suit­able for rid­ing. So there you go!

We took Avery to the sta­ble, then, yes­ter­day morn­ing where she was pressed into ser­vice groom­ing the hors­es. At times she finds it a bit awk­ward to be thrust into yet anoth­er barn with unfa­mil­iar chil­dren and train­ers, and not know­ing exact­ly what’s expect­ed of her. I don’t blame her. Luck­i­ly Emi­ly was there! So she guid­ed her around and before you knew it Avery had a cur­ry comb in her hand and was busi­ly tak­ing care of some pony. The plan was that the chil­dren would draw names from a hat to see who was lucky enough to ride to the church, and who would mere­ly walk along help­ing out. Up came a dap­per elder­ly fel­low wear­ing immac­u­late jack­et and trous­es, and a HAT, and he imme­di­ate­ly enjoined her to tie back her hair. Did you know it was the law in Eng­land that peo­ple han­dling live­stock can­not have loose hair? “Easy enough for us blokes, mind you,” he said cheer­i­ly, “but you young ladies must keep neat and tidy.” This was, it turned out, Ross Nye him­self. It was clear that John and I were entire­ly unnec­es­sary to the pro­ceed­ings, so we head­ed off to find the church and wait for her there.

It was just a cou­ple of blocks away and prepa­ra­tions were under­way. Local busi­ness­es had set up odd lit­tle tables with favors and infor­ma­tion about them­selves. There was a young lady sell­ing draw­ings of hors­es, and she would draw your horse if you want­ed her to. I spied one chap who looked ter­ri­bly famil­iar but I could­n’t think why: was he an actor? No, I realised, it was my vet! There pro­mot­ing his clin­ic. There was a church ser­vice going on, and choral music float­ing out into the cool Sep­tem­ber air. When it was over, two vic­ars came out in their long black soutanes, which they quick­ly cov­ered up with bright green embroi­dered robes. Then, believe it or not, came the sound of hooves. Many, many hooves. Eight of the hooves belonged to two hors­es that were des­tined to be the vic­ars’ mounts, so with some real­ly awk­ward help from lit­tle Pony Club peo­ple, they climbed onto the sad­dles and sat there, look­ing com­plete­ly odd! Up the square came the Ross Nye con­tin­gent, and there was Avery on a pony! The lucky girl. He was called Win­ston, and he looked ter­ri­fied. So many hors­es! And carts, and car­riages and fan­cy out­fits. There was one fel­low in a blue vel­vet jack­et and pink jodh­purs, with spiky white hair, and a lady (it took me a long time to dis­cov­er that she WAS a lady!) in prop­er tar­tan tweeds and knee-high boots. And many, many lit­tle girls (includ­ing Avery) in the tra­di­tion­al blue but­ton-up shirt of the Pony Club.

The church bells rang for noon, and the hors­es all gath­ered around the fore­court of the church for the prayers and hymns, and Ross Nye’s speech about the impor­tance of hors­es through­out his­to­ry and their mean­ing in all our lives. Let me tell you, hun­dreds of hors­es all crowd­ed togeth­er lis­ten­ing to prayers and speech­es get real excit­ed when peo­ple applaud. I thought there would be a mass revolt, but the rid­ers got their mounts under con­trol (although Avery report­ed lat­er that Win­ston was scared to death). Then they were all marched out, around the block, and then back, one at a time, up to the front of the church for Ross Nye to offer the rid­er a rosette, say a few words about who owned the horse, and pass them along to the vic­ar (in a bright green robe ON A HORSE, too odd!) who made the “father, son and the holy spir­it” ges­ture with his hand and blessed the horse! Hon­est­ly. And then they all trot­ted away, back where they had come from, some from as far away as Oxford­shire. Just to be blessed.

Back at the sta­ble it took some time to estab­lish that we had time for lunch (which some peo­ple had been smart enough to bring as a pic­nic) and then we’d head to the park for the gymkhana. So we found a pub and had cot­tage pie and fish and chips, and John went home to take a nap, hav­ing just come in the day before from New York. Some of the girls rode ponies to the park, but they ran out, so sev­er­al includ­ing Avery rode over in Mr Nye’s car, which she reports he dri­ves VERY slow­ly. I bet. Anoth­er moth­er and I walked over, dogged­ly fol­low­ing the ponies all the way around the park instead of cut­ting across. I was already tired from hav­ing walked all the way to the Tate Mod­ern yes­ter­day, to see the Kandin­sky exhib­it (more on that lat­er) while Avery and John saw “Pirates of the Caribbean.” So by the time we reached the enclo­sure I was worn out! Just as I got there, my mobile phone voice­mail called me, and there was a mes­sage from friends that they were at the ring, and so was my daugh­ter, and where was I? We met up and watched the girls play lots of pony games, rid­ing around cones, try­ing to grab flags as they passed by, and final­ly some jump­ing. It was a gor­geous day, per­fect to be out and about. And you know what? The hors­es all looked, well, blessed.