About 3 years ago, I had my riding lesson on a Sunday as normal, and I was put on the cheeky pony (every riding school has one!). I was actually doing quite well on him to start off with and was fairly pleased with myself. However, a few minutes later, my friend from primary school turned up unexpectedly. At that point, the pony would not co-operate full stop. He dug his heels in the ground, threw his head in the air and no matter how hard I kicked, would not go forward. It got so bad that I had to get off him and let the instructor ride him for a while! And the friend, who I had often spun a great many stories of horse-riding glory to, saw it all.

Another more recent story happened to my friends, although I was there to witness it. On the school Paris trip, our room was right next to the stairs of the hotel, so people would pass it all the time. One boy (who we speculated might have had a thang for my friend ) would come sometimes and knock on the door, then leg it up the stairs. We just yelled from inside the door at first because he could actually run pretty fast and by the time we'd opened the door, he'd be halfway up the hotel.

Anyway, we planned a surprise attack for him one day. Katherine and Victoria waited behind the door (I was sat on the bed massaging my poor painful feet from all the walking!) and sure enough, the knock came, quickly followed by gallumphing footsteps as he made his way up the stairs. Katherine grinned and swung open the door, yelling when she caught sight of the figure on the stairs, "Aha, caught you, *boy's name*!

The figure turned around, who looked exactly like the boy from behind, blinked in confusion and said,

"Quoi?"

It wasn't the boy, but a French man! The boy had evidently evaded us again, and Victoria immediately ran inside out of view. Katherine was left to flurry up an apology of mixed French and English, before slamming the door and scurrying inside also. Then we just fell about laughing, and the joke hasn't lost any of its appeal today!