Two 'Gs' In Biggest....

...Few will recall a highly successful television advertisement that featured a man diligently painting a slogan - the length of the pitch - at a football ground. As he beavered away to put the last letters in place a voice off could be heard crying plaintively "two Gs in Biggest."

Catching the sound, our hero glances back at his carefully scribed words only to read something like: 'Smetherswicke Tailors - the Bigest [sic] Tailors in Town'.

How quite the story ended - apart from his banging his head in frustration - or indeed what was precisely the product - an example, among many, in which the clever medium utterly over-powers the paid-for message - I cannot now recall.

Suffice to say it has remained as an exemplum of how wretchedly easy it is to forget the big things when one is so terribly focused on the small. A woods to trees thing altogether.

Came across one such today when out with E at a horse show. Glancing up at a leaving horse lorry, one could not help but notice that they had plain overlooked about the largest - one nearly said the biggest - of Double-Gs in the book.

For the rear tail end of the box was not secured as should be - must be, has to be the case - but was open and trailing on the ground as they drove! Poor horse was peering out the back as if to say 'Hmmmm, this is unusual to be able to see the road behind me as I travel. What should I do? Panic or continue munching hay?'

Well, the horse may not have panicked, but I as sure as heck did. For some odd reason one reached by instinct for one's mobile phone. To call the Police? To tell them there was a horse box travelling due East, that said horse box was in imminent peril of discharging its load from the rear? You can see the problem of explanation let alone effective response.

Mercifully, a proper reaction then set in and one leaped in one's new [more on that later] jalopy and set off in hot horn-honking pursuit. A jogging horse box being no match for a speeding car - albeit a diesel estate - I was able to flag them down by only the second turning.

Poor woman driver - mother I am sure of the equally shocked daughter rider - they could only gaze amazed and appalled when they stopped, looked and realised just what they had done - or rather had failed to do.

There is a routine one goes through for these horse show occasions - a doing and a checking to ensure that each and every last item of equipment is successfully stowed on board. It is an absolute beast - as has happened to us - to arrive at some show venue only to find the passport (horse not human) is still at home or else the new and necessary bit remains safe within the tack room at the yard.

A routine is required, but to date the confirmation that the back of the box has been raised prior to departure has not been one of them. From, however, now on it shall be.

As they say at all the best poker tables: "If it can happen, it just did."