A Horse in the House

Blossom is visibly an old horse.  (She's been living with us in one cottage and then another for over 20 years).  I rescued her from the barn eventually, where she'd been put 'temporarily' at some point) and fetched her down to Ludlow.

I need to find a very large hook and hang her up again on the wall.

She was built by artist and musician Kate Howden for a community play in South Somerset.  A little craquelure, barn-dust and paint-peel (and the deep snow lying outside) has only enhanced Blossom's affinity to Ted Hughes' poem 'Horses'...

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird-
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline – blackening dregs of the brightening grey –

Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey –ten together –

Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

...