The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons. And the unfulfilled pony dreams of the mothers shall be visited upon the daughters. At least, this is how divine will plays out in my house.

I was a tragically pony-mad child. I can still recall the decade of birthday lists headed by the single word "Pony"; the long car drives during which I imagined the putative pony and I jumping every obstacle we passed; the endless re-readings of my favourite pony novel, by English equine-adventure-book machine Josephine Pullein-Thompson. "The worst thing in the world is to have unhorsey parents," begins Prince Among Ponies (tragically, I still remember whole pages of it by heart). "Patrick, my elder brother, says that is a sweeping statement, but I think it is a great truth."

My poor parents were not unhorsey. But neither were they millionaires, so there was nothing they could do about those birthday lists. They tried their best, paying for riding lessons all through school and tolerating International Velvet being played on a continuous VHS loop. But they could never afford to buy me a pony. And later, due to my inexplicable failure to become a merchant banker, neither could I. So eventually I gave up riding, and in most ways forgot all about it for 20 years.

Then I had a child, and now she is six, and lo and behold, she is learning to ride. Was it her idea? Who can remember? And more importantly, what does it matter? That is completely beside the point. The point is that every time I take her into the dim warmth of the stables and smell that lovely smell and look into those dark, reflective eyes and stroke those velvet noses, some small thwarted part of me expands.