When I was a young lad, if ever I got a little too ambitious, my mother would say to me.
“You need to come back down to earth.”
Sometimes, when I was being far too ambitious.
“You need to get off your high horse.”
Meaning — stop acting as if you think you are better than others.
An idiom.
I grew up in a time when idioms were popular.
But I had no idea what an idiom was. I was probably not paying attention to the teacher at school.
I think it was my mother’s way of letting me down gently.
Life was regularly a letdown.
I did wonder about the high horse, though.
I lived in an inner city in middle England, so the only time we ever saw a horse was on television. The racing from Newmarket, Chepstow, or some other place that I would only ever see on the magical television screen.
The
television also bought us a popular series for children about a horse
called Black Beauty. It was based on an original story by the writer Anna Sewell. It was published in 1877, and she was paid a grand total of £40.
£40 is not much for writing a book, when you consider all the time and effort. In part because of ill health, it took her several years to write it.
But it was in 1877, and back then it might have been a lot of money.
I had to find out.
