At the age of eleven I was living on an RAF base in Germany. Normally I enjoyed the relocation to a new country every three years or so, but the move from England a couple of months earlier had been more traumatic than normal.
I had fallen in love and had to leave the object of my affections behind. He had large brown eyes, lashes to die for and a wonderful glossy sheen to his body.
I had succumbed to that girlhood passion which afflicts so many prepubescent females. Horses.
In the overly dramatic manner perfected by girls of this age I’d declared that my heart, broken by having to abandon the four-legged love of my life, would never heal.
Then I got my first job. As a Saturday stable-hand in a Stud.
I hardly slept the night before, so excited was I to be almost back amongst the creatures of my obsession.
I walked in and there they were. Magnificent. Powerful. Arrogant. Beautiful to my eleven-year-old eyes. And I was to help care for them. Indeed I was to have a specific, exclusive role in catering to the needs of these fabulous animals.
It was my sole responsibility to clean that part for which the stallions were prized.
I was a willy washer.