One morning in her home near Inverurie, Lesley Down woke up with a poem about a little boy and some ponies stuck inside in the snow rattling around her head.
She wrote it down, but like her half-written stories over the years, she thought that would be it.
However, after reading the poem, her husband encouraged her to try to get it published.
At the time, the early years practitioner said: “I thought no one would ever be interested in it. And then one day, I just thought, ‘Well, you never know, do you?’ I sent it off.”
To her surprise, Austin Macauley Publishers loved the animals and the informative side of the poem and said they wanted to do something with it.
The now-published story called Jimmy and His Ponies, complete with colourful illustrations, depicts a wee boy wanting to learn how to look after his ponies and keep them fit and healthy.
While young Jimmy is loosely inspired by her horse-loving and former groom son, the ponies are based on their four-legged family members. One of whom is no longer with them.
Jimmy and His Ponies based on family rescue ponies
Around seven years ago, Lesley’s family adopted a couple of foals, Lily and Verde, from the Blue Cross after a big rescue of 80 ponies in a field in Wales.
The organisation named all those rescued after cupboard condiments.
Lesley explained: “Lily’s mum was called Pickle so it was piccalilli, and Verde’s mum was called Salsa, salsa verde, that was where the names came from.
“When Lily was born her mum was very young, three at most. Pickle didn’t recognise the fact that she’d had a foal at all and she didn’t know how to suckle her so Lily got used to a lot of human contact and human handling.
“She’d just come over and hang out with us and want tickles and fuss.
“Verde is more shy but she loves a good tickle on the tummy, she’s very motivated by food. She’ll always try and get some extra hay or carrots out of us.”
The book ‘keeps Lily alive’
Sadly, due to having bad feet, a condition called equine metabolic syndrome, as Lily grew she was in a lot of pain. So much so that when she was six years old, the family had to put her down.
However, Lesley said the book had become a lovely way of remembering their beloved pony.
The mum-of-three said: “We’ve only got Verde left now but that’s what makes it extra special because Lily’s very much in this book and in the pictures.
“There’s a couple of things that are special to me about the book. One thing, which no one else would particularly know about, is that some of the pictures are based on photographs of the actual ponies.
“It’s really nice because it keeps Lily very much alive and it’s got the two ponies in it together.”
Also popping up on every page is their seven-year-old ginger cat Bob, who for some is the real star of the show.
Taking the book into her work one day and showing the children the story, Lesley said: “They particularly liked hunting out the cat in the pictures.
“There’s one picture where the cat is sitting on top of one of the ponies and they thought that was really funny.”
Used to have an imaginary pony as a child
Looking back at her own school days, Lesley said the book and who it is based on is really a meeting of two dreams.
“I always have liked writing, even from a young age,” she said. “I was a really imaginative child but I suppose I played out my stories, I didn’t write them down.
“In fact, when I was little, my imaginary friend was a horse called Tiffany Tornado. I used to gallop to school on this horse.
“Normally we’d walk to school, but if my dad drove us – this was in the days before seatbelts – I would kneel up in the backseat and watch my imaginary horse galloping down the road behind us.
“So I’ve always been very imaginative and made up stories in my mind.”
Every year, Lesley admitted she would enter WH Smith’s Win a Pony Competition hoping to one day have a pony in her garden.
She said: “Every year, I would send off the application knowing absolutely that I would have this pony in my garden in a few weeks’ time and of course I never did.
“I’ve always wanted to have a pony and I never thought we would have ponies in real life, so it’s the different aspects coming together somehow.”
Jimmy and His Ponies by Lesley Down
For those picking up a copy of Jimmy and His Ponies, the Aberdeenshire resident said she hopes the main themes come through: “Hopefully they’ll learn a little bit about how to look after horses, and also just about doing your best.
“That’s the thing, Jimmy just wants to do his best by them.
“It’s a bit of a dream to have a book. It’s something I never thought I’d be able to actually do.
“The book has got little personal touches in it for me, and I hope that other people will like it, too.”
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