Category Archives: Postcards 2023

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We met some horses in the woods today

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“When a horse offers their face to you, they’re interested in what you are, what you’re doing. They’re paying attention.” Brady Jandreau, former rodeo rider

It felt like time stopped for a few minutes today as we chatted to the horses in the woods. The morning was wet, and our coats damp with rain, but there was still time to swap news before we ambled on, each in our own direction.

So now, with this muzzle on my computer screen, I thought I’d look up some more about horses.

First thing to say is that as far as horse ownership goes the United States is the clear winner. According to the World Population Review they have over 10.5 million horses. Next comes Mexico with over 6.5 million, and then, not that far behind, Brazil and behind that Mongolia, which apparently has more horses than people.

The most expensive horse ever sold – a title that still stands as far as I can make out – was a racehorse called Fusachi Pegasus who went for $72 million in the year 2000, the year the horse became the first favourite to win the Kentucky Derby since 1979.

The tallest horse in the world, measured in 2010, was Big Jake, a Belgian Draft horse who lived on a farm in Wisconsin, America. He was 20 hands 2.75 inches or 210.19cm to his withers – head held high he was taller still. Big Jake died at the end of June 2021.

The biggest, and heaviest horse ever, was a Shire Horse called Sampson (born in 1846) who was said to be 21 hands and 2.5 inches high, and weighed 3,360lb or 1,524kg (860lbs more than Big Jake).

And finally, if you have the time and love horses, here’s a link that will tell you more about twelve that are amongst the best known. I’d never heard of Sergeant Reckless. I’m glad I have now.

PS: I have received a note from the World Animal Foundation to say that according to their latest statistics there are 10.31 million horses in the United States of America.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The limbo land between Christmas and New Year

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It’s that time between Christmas and New Year when it’s hard to figure out what’s happening when, or if you’re supposed to be doing it. One theory is that, if you lie still long enough the answers might come to you.

The best news for us in this part of the world is that the daylight hours are getting longer. The weather might be cartwheeling in new directions, but so far the world is still turning as it always has. I typed that last sentence full of confidence … and then I began to wonder. Is Earth turning as it always has? And if so, why is it turning? And the biggest question, will it keep turning?

I am no scientist but it seems that the answer to the first question is yes. The Earth is turning as it always has, and the reason why it continues to spin as it does is apparently something to do with the explosions that formed it initially, and sent it spinning … on and on and on. The only force that seems to be slowing this spin down at all is the Moon’s gravity which is pulling on it very slightly, slowing the planet’s spin, shaving tiny, tiny percentages of merest milliseconds off its rotations over the centuries since it formed.

I shall now abandon this topic as it is outside any of the orbits I normally fly around in, but here, in case you’re interested are two articles I found online when checking my easy assumption about the Earth spinning. This article by NASA’s Jet Propulasion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology was written in 1990 and describes how they measured the slowing of Earth’s spin, and this news story on the CNN site was written in January of this year, and talks about how Earth’s inner core may be about to start spinning in the opposite direction.

I’m not sure what they’ve discovered since, but it’s definitely time to lie down for me.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The Theory of Flight – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

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This book was a birthday gift. I’d never heard of the title before I received it, nor of the Zimbabwean author. I finished the book a few days ago, and have been thinking of it ever since.

One point to make right at the start is that I almost put the book down when I read the prologue, and realised that one of the story’s foundation stones is the shooting down of a passenger plane.

However … I read on, and I was fascinated. The writing is beautiful.

At the heart of the story is Genie – beautiful and defiant, and profoundly giving. She knows love and gentleness, and always holds true to those, despite the dislocation, disloyalty, and disease that follow her into adulthood. It is her life that links together the many other characters in the book who surround her, some intersecting with her only briefly or indirectly but each of them adding their own flawed humanity to the context through which Genie evolves.

That, for me, is the chewy soul of this book – the way it gives villains and heroes alike, lives and hopes and dreams. No person is right or wrong, regardless of whether they are navigating or inflicting trauma. They are simply revealed, their day to day sharply focused, but their roles smudged around the edges with magic realism. There is real trauma, but it is blurred in a way that spares the reader.

The impression I’ve been left with is of a book that is gentle, but also devastatingly powerful. I loved the writing, and would rate it as one of the most striking novels I’ve read by a Zimbabwean author.

(The copy I have is published by Catalyst Press. The novel was originally published by Penguin Books in South Africa in 2018. It won the Barry Ronge Prize for Debut Fiction in South Africa.)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023