Riders (San Storms plus other cliches)

Things I have learnt from Jilly Cooper

• If you lose weight, your husband will come back to you (suiciding helps also but only if the attempt is unsuccessful, obviously, and causes one to lose weight through the long road to recovery)

• You level of attractiveness is directly linked to your loss of weight where “you” is understood to mean “female” and “attractiveness” is understood to mean “to the male of the species”

• If you are a woman, you really shouldn’t sleep with men who aren’t your husband – that’s a man’s job, obvs.

• People who don’t like horses are neurotic home wreckers who have no sense of timing because they do not understand the magic bond between Englishman and beast

• A side point/open letter to Jilly C - wtf with Billy and Janey? Moral of that story – earn money, keep money and make sure one’s house is in order? Or, perhaps, an affair can really bring the problems of a couple into focus? Was that whole plot written whilst JC was drunk on gin or what?

• Whiskey or brandy should be drunk whenever one is feeling emotional as this will both keep emotions at bay and, if they do fall out, allow one to take recourse in the line “I was drunk”

• Jilly Cooper doesn’t really like other women writers, even fictional ones that she has actually created herself, in her own stories

• If you are a groom you must be pretty, sexually available and utterly unambitious because you will never be promoted, ever (promotions are only for family)

• Nepotism is not a dirty word (it’s the English way)

• Even though half of them have never even finished school and cannot do maths, all English riders know poetry (English poetry only, of course) and can quote, passionately, whenever a moment seems too significant or possibly emotional (at the start/end of races, after meeting prospective partners etc)