Riding for a fall

"I'm beginning to see why you won't film me when I'm riding," says Beth. She's on a bed in a side ward in children's A&E, arm loosely bandaged, the grey look beginning to fade from her face as the painkillers she's been given kick in.

"This'll be the matching injury," says the nurse, watching as the ambulance wheels in the next trolley.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Once we've got a riding fracture, we always get a rugby one to go with it," she says. "I think there's probably some NHS quota."

She's right. A small boy in a sports shirt and shorts appears, with a heavily bandaged leg.

There's nothing like riding for extracting maximum maternal anguish once a week for an hour, though I dare say bear-wrestling and sword-swallowing come close. If possible, I leave and come back later. When compelled to stay, I will resort to almost any means to block out the sound I know is coming - the thud of body on loose sand, including.

Once, in desperation, I played recorder scales very loudly with all the car windows closed. I'd like to say I got sympathetic looks from the other parents but as they stared at me, open-mouthed, before hurrying past, it was clear that they were hoping that somebody would get me back into that straightjacket before the lesson ended.

We've enveloped Beth in body proctectors and hats, swathed her hands in gloves and her mind in warnings but she remains horribly keen.

I don't want her confidence to be destroyed but, as we sit together, I can't help hoping that doing a Thelwell and taking the jump beautifully, but without the horse, and making a heavy landing on her elbow might make her consider the allure of a less active hobby, such as crochet work or rug-making.

"It wasn't Hero's fault," she says. Hero? Huh. Some hero, I think. "It was me. I knew he had a tendency to stop suddenly and I just didn't push him on."

The only place I'd like to push Hero at this precise moment would be into the knacker's yard, along with all his equine colleagues and probably the riding school owners, too - not because I blame them, merely for acting as a spur to my daughter's enthusiasm.

After the break has been X-rayed, confirmed and plastered - choice of six colours and a glitter option for the party babes among the casualties; Beth settles for light blue - we make an appointment with the physiotherapy department.

"You'll need to come back the day after going to fracture clinic," says the senior receptionist, "we don't like to book physiotherapy on the same day in case they run late."

When I ask for a spot of leniency, pointing out that the logistics of arranging a teaching job and three different sets of school finishing times for two consecutive days will require a certain amount of juggling she says, 'Well, we'll see what we can do," rolls up her sleeves and sets to work at the computer.

As far as I can tell, she presses every single button, including the funny F ones at the top, and takes so long that she appears to be wrestling time itself, stretching and twisting it so she can manhandle in another hour that will allow us all to honour our commitments.

"Done it," she says, triumphantly, returning from whatever parallel universe she and her computer simultaneously inhabit.

"Mu-um," says Beth. "While I'm not riding, will you drive me to the stable so I can film my friends riding?"

There's really only one answer to that, and it's one I give without hesitation.