But she leant over, through the open window of the Forester. ‘Don’t any of them ride?’ she blared, as if she was inviting me to join some strange cult (which I suppose she was). Then she said something like, ‘You should join gug,’ chirruped, ‘Trot on, trot on!’ and I watched her neat rear end bob up and down as she went off in a rising trot with her brood.

In London, parenting is a competitive sport – but here, competitive sports are a competitive sport, and there is nothing more highly prized than physical stamina, guts and strength, and a mother who jumps eight hedges before breakfast out hunting has a lot more street cred than one who jumps through all the hoops to make sure Poppy gets into Ponsonby Prep. (Found out later who Trot On was: Biddy Pike, District Commissioner of Pony Club, mainstay of Pony Camp, married to Henry, referred to as ‘the Master‘; she was doing the school run to Chesilborne First School, which gives days off for meets, on horseback. I was also told, in tones of amazement that I wasn’t a founder member myself, that ‘gug’ is Biddy’s own one-woman campaign to get Dorset in the saddle, and is short for Giddy Up Godminster.)

Then I felt my mobile vibrate as I was pulling up at the school. A text. It was from Mirabel. ‘I h8t u pls take off the puffy thing.’

I first looked down to see whether I had my Husky on. I didn’t think I was wearing it. But I was. It’s become a second skin. I took my glasses off and sought Mirabel’s eyes in the rear-view mirror to signal apology, but my eldest daughter was staring flintily out of the window, refusing to meet my gaze.

So. ‘Don’t any of them ride?’ Well, I suppose that question sums up why I’ve been to the stables with Rose all morning instead of working on my new idea.

My new idea is to write a total holistic handbook – i.e. it’ll cover everything from exercise to household tips to menus – to help weedy and wet townie women like me survive the bracing transition to rural bliss. It’ll be a brilliant mix of the Low Carbon Diet, all those recycle-your-own-compost, hip-to-be-squire books, combined with Scheherazade Goldsmith’s slice-of-organic-life handbook, plus recipes and many lush colour photos of gorgeous slinky Lulu Bryanston (the only babe in the village) in a bikini and wellies, i.e. a guaranteed mega-seller in this market, for the zillions of people who don’t just want the Good Life, they want it to be cutting edge too.

I’m keeping it under wraps for the moment, just working out themes but, mainly, I’m thinking about riding.

And, actually, I don’t think that I’m up for it. Horses frighten me, with their rolling eyeballs and flaring nostrils and lashing hooves and that alarming sense they convey, with a twitch of a hindquarter, of extreme violence held in check, that twelve hours of neurosurgery and months in rehab are a mere flick away.