One day last week I drove up to the English Midlands and got on a horse. By my reckoning it had been about thirty years since I was last in the saddle, and to be perfectly honest I was more nervous this time. When you’re a child you tend to be unaware of how easy and inconvenient it would be to break your collarbone. Also, on this occasion I had sort of exaggerated how good I was at riding horses.
Producer Tom had texted me: “How’s your riding?”
“About as good as my stage combat,” I’d replied.
Not quite a lie. But definitely a dubplate remix of the truth.
And as it turned out, rather a challenge to have set myself. Tom had booked a short winter’s day of filming, and by the end of it I was expected to prove myself competent enough on horseback to canter one-handed in full armour with a lance couched and someone else hurtling along the lists in the opposite direction.
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