Come ride with me
AS John Keats’s words suggest, of all toys, a rocking horse lends wings to a child’s imagination and inspires nostalgia in adults. When I told people at an Easter lunch I was writing about rocking horses, several pairs of eyes misted over. ‘Ours is still in the old family home,’ said one. ‘Mine was piebald,’ said another. ‘I rode him like a jockey.’
My youngest sister died in a car crash at the age of 17. We older children had left home, so her beloved hunter, Hugo, was sold and my mother divided the proceeds among the four of us. I used my share to buy a rocking horse for my small daughter; we named him Hugo, of course. He stood in an upstairs window at our London home, which was referred to by
