Episode written and produced by Ross Sutherland

Voice: Ross Sutherland

Transcribed by Sathya Honey Victoria

Contains live recording from Tongue Fu at Rich Mix Cinema, London

Download PDF version

 Imaginary Advice, Episode 56

HORSE FACTS

[cheerful background music]

What’s up partners? You are listening to the Horse Facts podcast. Welcome. Welcome, and “hyah.” Thanks for riding along with us. [horse whinny] This is episode 98. [cheery clip-clopping hooves] If this is your first episode, go back and listen from the beginning. Otherwise, let’s saddle up and get on out there into that bright yonder of Equine Trivia. See you on down the trail!—

[distorted voice:] Number one. [horse whinny]

[peaceful ethereal music]

The phrase “getting back on the horse” derives from the old adage “You have to get back on the horse that threw you.” The phrase suggests that one should return to a challenging action after a failure and attempt it over. In this scenario the horse here, is standing in as a metaphor for Your Life. Yes, you have been rejected by Your Life in some way. But don’t be discouraged! You can try again. [distorted:] You should try again. [normal:] One must always try again. One thing that we can all agree on: you and your horse should never be separated!

[distorted voice:] Number two. [horse whinny]

[peaceful music continues after interruption]

Horses are a prey animal. In order for a horse to survive, a horse is biologically programmed to seek the intentions of all those within its proximity. The horse is constantly asking the question “Am I safe?” “What about now, am I safe now?” And so on. To answer this question the horse must have an incredible aptitude for environmental observation, what we could call…intuition. Have you ever heard someone say [distorted:] “I am afraid of this horse. [whinny] Somehow, I think…I think it knows I am.” 

A horse can read your posture, your behaviour, your respiration, even your adrenalin levels. Imagine a set of enormous invisible antenna protruding from the head of the horse. Long invisible fingers stretching deep into your brain. [buzzing distortion begins quietly] Deep into your thoughts. What a hilarious image you’ve just imagined, only, in a way it is true—

—[distorted voice:] Number three. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

Mounting and controlling a horse has always been a potent symbol of power. [horse scoffs] The horse-rider, of course, is elevated, not to mention faster and more dangerous than their pedestrian counterpart. [horse galloping] Nature is both mankind’s primary resource and also its hereditary threat. Controlling a wild beast, an avatar of nature, therefore shows mastery over nature. The horse becoming an extension of human will.

—[distorted voice:] Number four. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

Of course, this power dynamic can also be reversed. In the Western film genre, a character being dragged by their own horse was more than just an embarrassing piece of slapstick, it was the ultimate humiliation. Usually in a film a horse-dragging occurs when a character has revealed their weakness, whether cowardice or fear. Remember: horses smell fear. [excited whinny] Having revealed this weakness, said weakness is immediately exploited by the horse. The natural world reasserts its dominance. The horse becomes the rider and the rider becomes the horse. [horse galloping] The coward is dragged off by their foot into the forest. [galloping away] Eaten by the landscape…

[on the TV screen:]

Woman: “You’ll hang for what you’ve done to Jose”

Man: “Get back and shut up.”

Usually, within the context of the film these characters are never seen again. 

—[distorted voice:] Number five. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

In his dialogue, Phaedrus, Plato describes the human soul as a chariot, pulled by two horses. One horse is white, [interested whinny] representing the rational, positive parts of our passionate nature; the other horse is black, [disapproving whinny] representing the soul’s irrational passions and apetites. 

The charioteer themselves represents intellect, reason, forever trying to stop their horses from going in different directions, steering both towards enlightenment. Plato’s Phaedrus, with its complex souls of light and dark, with its belief in an ever-shifting reality, a reality as knowable as a horse—which, according to Plato, was pretty inscrutable—Phaedrus would have made for a…pretty weird Western. Every cowboy forced to ride two horses simultaneously, the white and black hats now on the horses, not their owners. 

Phaedrus the Western would be 99% dragging, I suspect, with only the briefest moment, say a minute, when a character manages to actually ride. A brief flash of clarity, then back into the dust.

—[distorted voice:] Number six. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

As long as there has been horse racing there has been horse doping. Trainers have experimented with Viagra, energising opioids, drugs that dilate airways, unlicensed concoctions such as “blue magic,” thought to boost cardiovascular function…even EPO, the hormone made famous by Lance Armstrong.

A hundred years ago trainers had to make do with street narcotics like morphine and heroin. Low doses of heroin were supposed to make a horse less skittish before a race. In 1933, track president Joe Widener of the Flamingo Derby tried to ban doping through a horse saliva test. He gathered together a hundred and fifty horse owners and trainers. 

[distorted voice:] “Gentlemen,” he told them, “training is no longer a matter of skill. It has simply become a question of formula.” The remark was met by laughter, because it was true. 

The use of heroin in horse doping may be the reason why “horse” is one of the many street names for the drug. Heroin addicts became closely associated with the racetracks. Some would serve as heroin testers, checking the purity of the heroin before it was given to the horses. Wherever there were horses, there were dr—

—[distorted voice:] Number seven.

[music continues] 

I was once thrown from a horse. Her name was Misty. I was thirteen years old. It was a school trip to the lake district. The rest of my classmates were all given ponies. They were small, cartoonish things. My best friend Henri was on a pony so small his feet nearly touched the ground. Misty, however, was nearly twice my size, my eye-line was barely level with her anus. The woman who ran the, uh—I guess it was an equestrian centre—I remember, she was in her seventies. She thought that I was a girl, which meant I kept tuning out of her instructions. The old lady was saying things like “That girl needs to tighten up her reigns a bit,” and “That girl up front needs to stop looking around like that.” I remember thinking “whoever this girl is, she’s going to get herself killed.”

Soon after, I was lying winded, on my back, Misty kicking her hind shoes, inches from my soft thirteen-year-old head. The old lady shouted, “Now you’ve done it!” Whether to the horse or to me, I am still unsure. After that, I did not ride Misty again. I did not get back on the horse. My teacher, Mr. Bibby rode Misty instead and I went back inside.

Later, my classmates told me that a mere five minutes after my accident Misty had broken line once more, this time charging full pelt into thick forestation. Mr. Bibby held on for dear life, despite colliding with several tree branches. Mr. Bibby refused to give up, just as Mr. Bibby had refused to give up time and time again throughout our education. Mr. Bibby always remained true to his number one passion: throwing sticks of chalk at students whenever they failed a maths question. No matter how many times Mr. Bibby was challenged, this was a man who would not yield. Neither horse not Parent Teacher Association could dislodge him. 

There is a proverb from a Hibernian sage, that says “there are three things a man never forgets: the girl of his early youth, a devoted teacher, and a great horse.” It pleases me that the last anecdote contains all three. Having covered all three bases so efficiently, I doubt I ever need recall anything else.

[distorted voice:] Number eight. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

Trojan is the worst possible name for a condom company. I am sure you agree. If my memory of Ancient Greek technology serves me correctly, the primary function of the Trojan Horse was once it had passed safely through the gates of the enemy—the primary function of the Trojan Horse was to spill out hundreds and hundreds of little people [music cuts:] with swords. [tranquil music resumes:] I don’t know about you but when I’m trying to practice safe sex, that is literally the last thing that I want to happen. 

[distorted voice:] Number nine. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

“Horses are uncomfortable in the middle and dangerous at both ends.” This quote, attributed to Ian Fleming, novelist, and naval intelligence officer, who died age 56 of a heart attack. One could easily apply Fleming’s model of a horse to other objects. Many things are dangerous at the ends and uncomfortable in the middle: a cigar, nunchucks, the Daytona International Speedway…One could even apply Fleming’s Horse Model to a human life as a whole, i.e., mostly uncomfortable, with a highly vulnerable entrance and exit. Here, we see the horse represented as timeline. Our life as a creature that we pass through from one end to the other. A horse called Reality that slowly absorbs us, until all that remains is waste product. 

I dunno, something to think about— 

[distorted voice:] Number [garbled]. [horse whin—

[music continues] 

A dream: You are running down the middle of an empty street. It is the start of the second world war. There are no streetlights, no lit shop windows. The houses that line the road are black and silent. You run pass the cinema, now boarded up. Someone has arranged the marquee lettering outside the cinema to read: “OH WELL NEVER MIND.” Even running past at speed, you appreciate the gesture, which feels instinctively to be the most palatable mode of thought in wartime. The songs are far too cheery. The newspapers far too sad. Best to aim for a kind of bored middle-ground. To begin with, in the dream you do not know where you are supposed to be running to. All you know is that it is extremely urgent. Then you turn the corner and see the town bank ahead of you. The clock-face above the bank reads one minute to four. And immediately, you know your purpose. 

Bursting through the door of the bank you pull out your savings book and thrust it into the hands of the teller. You tell the teller you need to close the account this minute. It is imperative that you leave the bank with every penny. The teller regards the savings book upside down, removes their pince nez and shakes their head. [distorted robot:] “No,” says the teller. “It is just not possible.” 

“But you must,” you say. “You have to.” [words echoing] This second utterance comes out of you at such a volume that it rings the bank like a bell. Several customers stop in their tracks to look at you. A man holding a newspaper coughs pointedly. The teller points to the back office. The manager, they say, has given explicit instructions to hold all account closures for the next three days. 

But you are already climbing over the counter, heading straight for the manager’s door, ready to give them a piece of your mind. [buzzing begins, drowning out music] Above you, an alarm begins to ring. [distorted:] “Stop” says a voice. You push open the manager’s door into a large, white-tiled room. Like a bathhouse [distorted:] or a slaughter-shed. 

[distortion, rising and falling:] The room is empty, except for the manager, eyes shining like diamonds dipped in blood. [the silence in the room reverberates hugely for a moment]—

—the manager is a horse.

[distorted voice:] Number eleven. [horse whinny]

[calm music resumes] 

The word “metaphor” comes from the Greek metaphorein, which means “to carry” or “to transport.” To create a metaphor is ostensibly to transfer something from here to there. Take an example metaphor like [music cuts out, replaced by an echoing void; distorted robot voice:] “My voice is a prison from which you will never escape.” 

Now, in this example here, like all metaphors there are two parts at play: “my voice” and “a prison.” And the metaphor acts as a shuttle service between these two concepts. The journey begins at my voice and then through the metaphor you are carried a great distance until you eventually reach…a prison. [heavy buzzing] 

[music cuts back in] Real life long-distance transportation comes in many shapes and forms but before cars or trucks or container ships it all began with the horse. A living, breathing technology designed to transport objects across great distances. Thus, the concept of the horse [gentle galloping sounds] and the concept of the metaphor have always been intertwined. Horses bring messages from far off lands. Riders coming over the hill clutching news you may…or may not…be happy to hear. 

[distorted voice:] Number twelve. [horse whin—

[music continues] 

Horses not only transport messages but they are message in themselves. Horses are walking metaphors. The literary potential of the horse has proven endless. Think of the social novels of the nineteenth century with their themes of illegitimate love and broken marriage, where horses stand in for the things that cannot be spoken aloud. When Tolstoy writes the steeplechase scene in Anna Karenina where Vronsky, over-excited rides his horse Frou-Frou so hard that he breaks its back. We know this is not just the death of a horse but the portent of something else, something that will take a hundred pages of the novel to appear but still is set in motion from this moment.  

The horse is the living metaphor of love and death. This is why Polish philosopher and historian Krzysztof Pomian, describes the horse not only a phoros, a carrier of something, but also a semiophoros, a semaphore, a carrier of signs. 

So, with that in mind, how much do you know about…[voice starts echoing] this horse? This horse, the horse transporting you right this moment. Do you know where this horse is taking you? [galloping] Do you have any idea what this horse represents? [ringing void, building]

[galloping continues]

[snap back to normal voice:] No. I didn’t think so. 

[distorted voice:] Number thirteen. [horse whinny]

[tranquil music resumes]

The degree to which horses can read us rivals the greatest human fortune tellers and mentalists of all time. The slightest human tell is apparent to a horse: a tiny movement, a change of posture, a slight tightening of the vocal chords…Hence the astonishing ability of Clever Hans, the famous counting horse. Whenever a sum was proposed to the horse, Hans would tap his foot the appropriate number of times and then stop. Of course, Hans was never actually completing arithmetic. He was actually responding to minute postural changes in his trainer. 

Hans became so good at reading human signals, that the trick worked even when the trainer left the room and someone else took over. When the correct number of taps was reached, the stranger could not help but tense his body slightly. The horse would read the sign and stop. You could try to trick the horse, maybe shout “That’s enough, you got it!” to try to make him stop early, but the ruse would not work. Clever Hans was not listening to your words. He was listening to your body. [rising, eerie void sound] You could not lie to Clever Hans. At least, not where the subject of counting was concerned. 

[distorted voice:] Number fourteen. [horse whinny]

[no tranquil music this time]

You have probably noticed that I too am counting…much like a horse tapping their hoof on the floor—

[distorted voice:] Number fifteen. [horse whinny]

[eerie sound continues, higher key]

From this observation you might ask yourself, am I too trying to solve a question?  Just as Clever Hans counted out his answers, am I counting out an answer of my own?—

[distorted voice:] Number sixteen. [horse whinny]

[eerie sound continues, higher key]

Let us say for a second that I am a horse, and that, like Clever Hans, I have been tasked with solving a question of some kind. If this is true then at some point, presumably, I shall stop counting. You shall know I have reached the correct answer at the precise moment I stop counting. The truth is the end. Once reached, there will be nothing more to say. 

[distorted voice:] Number seventeen. [horse whinny]

[eerie sound continues, even higher key]

Here’s the problem though. If I am a horse—and for the purposes of this thought experiment [distorted:] I am a horse—then, I don’t actually understand the question at all. All I’m doing is looking at you and following your lead. If you don’t tense when I reach the correct answer, I will literally count forever. You are the one who needs to answer the question. You are the only one who can answer the question. It’s you who needs to tell me when I finally get it right. 

You might think you don’t even know the answer…but you do. The body always knows. [distorted:] Every flinch. Every twitch. You don’t even know that you’re talking to me, but I can hear you. Through that long invisible antenna, I hear you. You’re talking to me now. I can hear it. I know what you’re thinking. You know you can’t lie to me—

[voice back to normal:] Close, but still…

I don’t think we’ve reached The Answer. And so…I keep counti—

[distorted voice:] Number eighteen. [horse whinny]

[serene music resumes]

Did you know, [tranquil music returns] the phrase “One Horse Town” comes from the name of an actual place! A small town in Shasta County, California. One Horse Town was a regular stop for gold miners. 

[distorted voice:] Number nineteen. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

Did you Know! Being told you were “on a high horse” used to be a compliment! Isn’t that absolutely mental!? Originally only soldiers and royalty rode those tall war chargers. Therefore, being on your high horse meant behaving in a regal fashion, which used to be seen as a good thing, until we lost all respect for the monarchy and started executing them all.

[distorted voice:] Number twenty. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

Did you know! In Robert Smith Surtees’ 1853 novel Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, the novelist remarks that “there is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse.” [pause] 

[a bit manic:] I mean, I haven’t read the novel so who knows what the fuck it means in the context of the story. I mean, I know it’s to do with fox hunting and scamming the upper classes, but what do you want, a fucking book report?—

—[distorted voice:] Number twenty-one. [horse whin—

[music continues] 

Did you know! Horses live a really long time twenty-five to thirty years, actually. The oldest horse in the world was called Billy, later re-named Old Billy. He was a barge horse, born in 1760. Old Billy lived sixty-two years! 

[void starts creeping in:] Just think about how many Horse Facts you could learn if you were forced to listen to them non-stop for sixty-two years! Averaging a new horse fact every minute you’d learn 32.5 million Horse Facts. sixty-two years before the nightmare finally came to a—can you imagine that!? You would welcome dea— 

[music fades, replaced by buzzing]

Death: a rather obvious answer to a question you hadn’t even realised you’d asked.

[music stops, only void:]

For the record, I will accept death as an answer…but it is not the answer I am looking for.

[distorted voice:] Number twenty-two. [horse whinny]

[music continues] 

[so upbeat:] Did you know the phrase “beating a dead horse” goes back to the 1640s? Sailors were often paid in advance for work. The problem was they took the money and immediately got off their face. After that there was little motivation to complete the tasks they had been paid for. This period of work became known as [distorted:] “dead horse” time. The men became dead horses. [distortion creeps in:] Horse parts, pickled in alcohol, flung around the dockyard. 

The logic, therefore, must be this: [music, but you hear the void below it:] kick a live horse and you can get more work out of it. Kick a dead horse, you get nothing. You can’t fight a dead horse and win. [music fades, only void:] The dead horse is a black hole. [distorted:] This much you can see.

[distorted voice:] Number twenty-three. [horse whinny]

[no music; the void is loud]

What do you remember? How did you get here? Remember that horses smell fear. Remember that you must get back on your horse. Remember that you cannot lie. [distorting:] Are you safe? What about now, are you safe now? [so close to your ear:] What about now? 

[distorted voice:] Number twenty-four. [horse whinny]

[interference, like you’re hearing a speech through a busted speaker, music cutting in and out] Perhaps the most intriguing image in the New Testament's only book of prophecy is that of the four horsemen—white, red, black, and pale. Taken as a whole, the Four Horsemen stand as judgment upon mankind. They descend upon humanity at the direct command of Christ the Judge, and He gives them free rein (get it, rein?) to do their worst upon the Earth's inhabitants. According to Revelation 6:8, the Four Horsemen kill up to a quarter of the planet's population! [chord intensifying] In today's terms, that comes to about a billion-and-a-half people. 

Try and think about that number…except you can’t. You fundamentally lack the mental capacity to even begin to imagine something on that scale. It’s not like trying to imagine an abstract concept like “funky” or “gorgeousness.” [chord continues intensifying] It’s a real, actual number. And yet it still exists so far beyond the horizon of your perception that it becomes absolutely meaningless. Try to imagine a billion and a half Horse Facts. What if there were a billion and a half Horse Facts? [chord about to burst] You would literally… [too distorted to hear]—

[silence]

[calm female voice:] Congratulations! You have now reached the half-way point of your first session. [serene music begins]

Please raise your hand clear above your head. One of our centre specialists will be over in a second to give you your first chip! Keep your hand raised until the specialist arrives. Do not remove your blindfold. Do not try to sit up. Remember you are surrounded on all sides by carefully calibrated equipment. When the centre specialist puts the chip into your hand, close your fist, lower your arm, and place the chip in your pocket. Try not to have an emotional reaction to the chip. Smiling may cause an unexpected reading in the equipment. 

Nevertheless, you should be proud of yourself for completing the first half of the first session of your treatment. This is the first step to wellness and recovery. With each step you are stronger. With each step you are more resilient to temptation. Picture yourself strong and powerful like a statue carved in marble. Soon this will be you. You only have [male voice:] ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE [female voice continues:] more steps to go. Please do not react to this exciting information. The equipment that surrounds you is trained to record the slightest emotional reaction. 

[galloping sound] It is important that you do not react to provocation, as the machine does not differentiate between positive and negative reactions. [galloping gets louder, overtaking the voice] Repeat after me: [whinny in the distance] “I will not let myself be ruled by my base instincts.” [galloping and whinnying] “The monster within me will not win.” 

[galloping subsides, void echoes for a moment]

“The monster within me will not win.”

Well done. Please stand by for the commencement of session one part two: Gordon Ramseys’ History of Burglar Alarms. [beep beep beep]

_______________________________

[synth music cuts in]

[IMAGINARY ADVICE]

Thanks to Lizzy Dening for providing the additional voice in that first piece. I’d like to thank a couple of resources too: there’s an essay film by Jack Nugent AKA Now You See It called What Riding a Horse Really Means. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube. Also, the book Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History by Ulrich Raulff. I’m indebted to both those sources. 

Thanks also to you for listening to the Imaginary Advice podcast. My name is Ross Sutherland. Gimme a high five! Ok, now on the side…Now up top…And we’re not going to do the final trick part because I don’t believe in hurting people’s feelings. 

In a minute, we’re going to round off this episode with a live recording, something I recorded with an improvisational jazz band earlier this month in London. Before we get to that, let me say a quick thanks to my Patreon supporters. Thank you for helping make this show possible. I love making Imaginary Advice. It’s uh, it’s pretty much my favourite thing to do in the world. But because every episode takes weeks to write—I write and edit and record it all myself—I’m yet to manage to balance the books. One day, I hope to get to a point where I can pay myself for my time, and through Patreon support I’m getting there. So, if you’re interested, it’s basically a small monthly donation to help me keep the lights on. 

Earlier this month, I uploaded a bunch of Patreon-only material to the Patreon website. For those people who donate $5 a month or more I made a three-part miniseries about the 2011 England Riots. There’s also a story from Joe Dunthorne in there. Also, I go through some of the process that goes into making an episode of Imaginary Advice, so if you’re interested in the back end of this show, there’s some stuff on that. 

Here’s a little extract from that:

[Ross:] Aa—

Also, for people who donate $15 a month or more I’ve just released a new film, which is also up on the Patreon website. It’s a work-in-progress of an audioguide for a London trainline. The idea being that you will eventually be able to sit on that train, hit play, and have me narrate the journey, through a mixture of poetry, history, stories, and anecdotes. The trainline in question is the District Light Railway, which connects the two financial districts of London, plus it moves through areas associated with alchemy, piracy, opium addiction, and, er, the bassist from Public Image Limited. So, if you’re interested, that’s also on the Patreon website.

Here’s a little bit from that as well:

[Someone:] Eh—

If you don’t yet support the show but would like to, if you sign up now, you can still get access to all that material. If you would like to help the show but can’t spare any money, which I totally understand, you can still help the show, if you’d like, by leaving a review on iTunes or by talking about the show online. All that makes a huge difference to me. It really helps spread the word and thanks to everyone who’s ever done that in the past. I’m really grateful. 

[music stops]

So…into the final section of this month’s episode. This piece was recorded at a night in London called Tongue Fu, which is one of my favourite places to perform in London. Tongue Fu has a live band onstage. Each guest gets to work with the band. You don’t get to prepare anything beforehand. You just go on and you kind of work it out in the moment. The band are incredible, the night is fantastic. Go to tonguefu.co.uk to find out when the next event is. Their London base is usually Rich Mix Cinema in the East End. 

Ok, well, that’s-that’s all from me. I think I’ll hand over to…me. 

___________________________________

[seventies gameshow music]

[Ross onstage:] One day I was in a pub in Liverpool with uh my friend uh, Tom Brooks and uh, Tom and I came up with a-and idea for a new uh, a new genre of poetry, a new form of poetry, um, which we called uh, broochism. The idea behind broochism was to take like a-a quality normally associated with bad poetry and exaggerate it to a point where it becomes something else. Now the-the bad quality in general was kind of like over-labouring adjectives. Uh, you know, like “my dark, feeble, uh, uh, haunted, empty heart.” That kind of thing, right? So we would-we took that idea and then we just like cranked it up about another like 99%. And this is the one poem that I ever wrote uh, in-in the style of broochism. It’s about a horse. [laughter from the audience]

Are you-are you f-you know horses. [one particularly deranged laugh]

So, um…that’s really where the poem begins and ends, so uh, I don’t know if you fancy something a little bit horsey…[giggles] and then, as I describe the horse to you…[organ music begins quietly] maybe we can adapt the horse a little bit as it comes more into focus. 

Maybe the horse, to begin with, is very, very far away. [music turns shier; laughter] 

I don’t even know if that is… [music repeats, sounding a little bit closer; the bass joins in]

Oh! What? [music continues its trot]

Oh.

Here comes a horse. [music develops a little]

[louder:] Here comes a horse. A tremendous, perfect horse. Look at it!

Sequinned with rain. Iridescent, almost. So noble. Practically aristocracy. Some deep heir to the throne, no doubt. 

[in an awed whisper:] Here it comes. 

Here comes a horse! A financially comfortable horse. Oh, yeah! It’s so generous and approachable. 

Not even a little bit ticklish! So-fuck-ing-un-flap-pable. Almost suspicious.

[far away from mic, yelling:] Here comes a horse! 

My God, is she…she is. Bespectacled. Bearded. Slightly Russian-looking.

Professional. Yes, very much incognito, but without a doubt: a horse. [music continues, jaunty and horsey]

A Machiavellian horse. Yeah, that is pretty Machiavellian, I agree. 

Yes. Slightly clumsy. Yes. Over-exaggerated for comic effect. Some might even describe it as…chaplinesque. 

[yelling, now:] Here comes a horse!! A pissed horse! Oh, my God, it’s…fucking paralytic! A laughing, deranged horse! 

Oh, God, it’s naked! [screams in terror]

[music getting wilder]

That horse is so scary. The horse is so sporty. That horse is so…that horse is so posh. That horse is so ginger. That horse is so…the other one.

Here comes a horse. Yes, a junglist horse.

A little bit speckly. A little by skaggy. But ah [sighs, takes a deep breath]…really fucking good. 

Here comes a horse!! A horsey horse! Something indisputably horse-shaped alright! 

[screaming:] It’s Bible-black. Yeah, holier than thou! [organ joins music]

Defenestrated! And yet somehow, un-putdownable! 

[yelling wildly:] If I had to describe this horse in one word…in one word…oh, fuck, it’s dead!! [music cuts out]

Oh my God, no-no-no-no-no. Oh, my God. [sniffs]

What a sad…but perfectly poetic development. [audience laughs]

Well. [sad voice:] There goes a horse. A beautiful, grey-haired, thirty-nine-year-old, [bass starts back up shyly] badly-shaven, horse. Still quite attractive in a trampy kind of way. [audience laughs; organ joins] A bit cheeky. 

But, you know, knows their shortcomings, so it’s, so it’s alright, really. That’s gotta count for something. 

There goes a horse.

A very clever, metaphorical horse. [audience laughs]

Dead in a field. With flies in his visage. [band slowly getting back to a groove]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for having me. Cheers, thank you very much. [audience clapping and whooping] Enjoy the rest of your night! Thank you.

[band continues]

[presenter:] Ross Sutherland! [audience continues clapping and cheering] Ross Sutherland! Riding off…riding off into the sunset…