Edited on Tuesday morning to add: the horses appear to be on the mend.
I had a lovely painting lined up for today, but these images from Wednesday morning are the ones in my head.
Before thinking, ‘This is going to end badly, I hope nobody dies,’ I felt total exhilaration at these huge, riderless horses running wild in the middle of London. There’s something so urgent and powerful about things not being where they’re supposed to be, escaping, breaking free. These horses’ normal lives are entirely to do with order, discipline, obedience, perfection, performance.
There is obviously danger as well as wonderment in these images, but those two moods aren’t mutually exclusive and the photos took my breath away.
Before you scroll down to the extraordinary third picture, you should know that Vida, the grey, is badly bloodied, so stop here if that is not something you want to see. It may help to know that at the time of writing Vida is apparently recovering from surgery in stables; Quaker, the black horse, is in a horse hospital in a more serious condition, but alive. The three other horses are okay and charities and individuals are queuing up to adopt any horses that won’t be returning to ‘service’. The humans involved in the incident are all fine.
Some background, if this somehow passed you by: on Wednesday morning five horses belonging to the Household Cavalry suddenly bolted, threw off their riders and ran amok in central London, terrifying people and causing damage to vehicles and, very sadly, to themselves. Some of them ran for nearly six miles, all the way to Limehouse in east London, before being recaptured.
These (usually less strange and more cheerful) Sunday picture posts alternate with my food posts. Both are free to read and live under Sunday and In The Kitchen on my homepage. For everything else, you’ll need a paid subscription. Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!
Such a special post India. I have followed this story with interest over the week and was pleased that others watched the tale unfold with emotions other than just horror. The horses were originally scared and then continued to flee as their stirrups banged their sides, 'spurring' them on. I saw a picture of Vida online, once caught, and there was a certain glint in his eye, with ears pricked forward, which told part of his side of the story...
I'm so glad you said that about feeling exhilarated to see the horses cantering through London because that's exactly what I felt. I kept writing social media posts to say and then deleting them because it felt tasteless.