Peggly

It is normal in my home village for ponies to have different names in different places. For example, one of the old mares that used to wander around this area was called Jubilee on the lower road and known as Mary on the higher road. I'm afraid we tended to call her Wormy because she was always very lean (sorry!). In our early days here, she had a foal in our garden; she gave everything to her foals. 

Later she had a foal which was sold to one of the people who lived in the village who fancied being a Commoner. However, he kept Rumball, as he called him, in the garage and got very cross when he walked on the lawn! When he left the New Forest, he gave Rumball, who we knew as Peggly, to my friend Angelika. 

When Rumball grew up, he was the spit of his mother, with the same equable temperament. He must be around twenty years old now and yesterday we saw him close to Telegraph Hill, shading from the sun, with his collar caught over his ear.

We approached him carefully, knowing that the road is a dangerous one and we neither wanted to draw him towards us or to frighten him into the road.

I waited for a gap in the traffic and as I drew closer he nickered to me and then quietly allowed me to sort his collar out. Then he looked a lot more comfortable but still fed up with the flies. 

The ponies shade by the road like this so that the traffic wafts some of the flies away and creates a breeze.