’Contaminated?’ If I were a horse, I’d be offended

I HANG out with a lot of horsey people.

Not the kind you’re thinking of — nothing to do with gymkhanas or hunting or heated horse boxes attached to four wheel drives — but more your impoverished hippie types who rescue needy horses the way old ladies adopt stray cats.

There is a very jolly collection of them — horses, I mean — in a field at the top of my road, where they live out all year round, hardy natives who grow fur coats in winter and are the opposite of shivery thin-skinned race horses and posh show ponies.