an exciting adventure, good old Matilda took the bit firmly between her teeth and my arms were nearly pulled from their sockets trying to keep her in check. Of course all this effort on my part was entirely unnecessary, but that I was to learn very much later. It was a grand day, I was dog tired at the end of it but supremely happy.

Since starting to ride I had been to a number of horsy events, Show Jumping, Horse Trials, Arabs, the Metropolitan Police Show at Imber Court, but what really caught my imagination had been Polo. The last match I had witnessed had been at Ham House near Richmond, and I racked my brains how I might participate in this sport of princes and millionaires. One day in early April 1959, on the principle that if you don’t ask you don’t get, I took myself off to the Ham Polo Club to pop what wiser men considered a very silly question. The manager and leading light of the club was Billy Walsh, a bluff, stocky and jovial Irishman who had been instrumental in getting polo going again after the war. My question turned out to be not so silly after all, for the price of seven shillings and six pence, the usual cost of an hour’s riding, he would be pleased to give me lessons. Once I had reached sufficient competence I would be able to hire club ponies for practice games at a charge of three pounds. This was a lot of money for an hour’s play, but considering how these sixty minutes would be packed with flat-out effort and excitement it would be more than worth it. The cost was the same as I paid for a day’s hunting which, however gloriously spent, never guaranteed a really good run.

In August I played my first full game of polo. I had thought that I was pretty fit, but by the end of the final chukka I knew better. I eased my stiff limbs out of the saddle, gave my pony an affectionate pat and gently dragged my aching body over to my car, where for about twenty minutes I just sat. Then slowly, very slowly, I started the engine and sedately drove over to the New Inn on Ham Common where we were wont to foregather after a game. As I sipped at my pint of beer, one player after another came up and asked whether I had enjoyed the game, and for the best part of half an hour all I was capable of was an exhausted and whispered reply of “Yes”. As is usual with tyro’s, I had been placed as number one in my team and I particularly recall my opposite number four, none other than Jimmy Edwards,

and whenever I attempted to ride him off he would encourage me with shouts of “that’s it, go to it lad”. I was utterly done physically, but supremely happy. By the end of the season I took four chukkas in my stride and could have started all over again without batting an eyelid; I have never been so fit in all of my life.

A couple of years later circumstances made it necessary for me to economise and this, among other measures, sadly put a curb on my riding. Also, there was quite a severe downturn in civil aviation with some companies going out of business and unless one was well established, which I was not, it was increasingly difficult to find or keep a job. Then, at the end of 1964, I received an offer from Austrian Airlines and in January 1965 I moved to Vienna to take up my new job.

In June 1979 Sissy and I were in London on business and we extended our stay over the weekend for a visit to the Polo Club. My wife, an Austrian, or rather Austro-Hungarian lady, had never seen polo and, like most people in Central Europe, laboured under the misapprehension that it was a brutal sport where the treatment of the animals was concerned.

She had listened with a degree of scepticism to my explanations but her curiosity had been aroused and she was looking forward to seeing for herself.

We got a most hearty welcome from Billy Walsh, Peggy and others and spent a most enjoyable afternoon. Sissy was fascinated. She’d never seen riding like this and when we visited the pony lines she was impressed by the contented look of the horses. “I would never have believed it”, she said, “they even seem to enjoy it.”

To round off the experience for Sissy’s benefit, to say nothing of the mutual pleasure of it, I had booked a ride in Richmond Park for the following morning. Now Sissy was a very experienced horsewoman, in fact she had ridden almost before she could walk, but of course she had been brought up on the usual Austrian dressage principles. When I tried to explain that riding a polo pony was a bit different to what she had been used to she all but told me not to try to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs. Ah well, I thought, we shall see.

As usual, no sooner had we crossed the road just inside the park, we broke into a steady canter and we had not gone far when I realised that Sissy was not with us. I stopped and turned and there she was, frantically trying the get her mount to move

faster than at a walk but as far as the pony was concerned, her firm dressage grip on the reins meant that the parking brake was on. In the end she threw away the reins in sheer desperation and she was off – and nearly out by the back door!

We caught up with the rest of the ride and, having settled to a steady pace, she began to relax. Then her eyes opened wide and a contented smile spread across her face. And later on she admitted that, apart from some fraught beginnings, it had been one of the most delightful rides she had ever had. I refrained from suggesting that perhaps there is more than one way to suck eggs after all. When we got back to the stables she did a round of the boxes, feeling the mouths of the animals. “They’re soft as velvet, I’ve never seen the like, now I’m convinced that polo is not a brutal sport.”

In May 1997 Sissy and I again visited the Ham Polo Club. I had phoned the club secretary, who turned out to be a most attractive and charming lady and a player herself, and on mentioning that I had been a member in the dim and distant past she had assured me that we would be most welcome to use the club pavilion. What a welcome we received. There were only two people I had known, Billy Walsh’s daughter Peggy who managed the club, and another lady. But we quickly made new friends and it was a real homecoming. Billy Walsh’ widow, Ivy, presented the prizes for the first match, then it was announced that a former member had come on a visit and I was invited to present the prizes for the second game. I was quite touched by this gesture. A most memorable and pleasurable day. A couple of weeks later I received a letter from Pam, informing me that we had both been made honorary members of the Ham Polo Club. What a wonderful gesture, my cup was full.

We have returned to the Club a number of times but these visits are not always easy to fit in with our other activities when over in England. But it is a place full of happy memories and you have not seen the last of us if we can help it.

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