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.