CarHorseCarHorseCarHorse?

2011-09-25, 11:54 p.m.
When did cars become more important than horses, when it comes to �being on the road�?

There must have been a time when there were shitloads of horses being ridden around on the roads of Great Britain, and almost no cars. Im guessing around the turn of the 20th century that was pretty much deffo the case. If you needed to get somewhere quickly, you galloped up the road, with a swish of the crop and didn�t really take too much mind to a feller with a red flag walking slowly infront of a horseless carriage.

Nowadays, the opposite is true. There�s loads of cars and you pretty much never see a horse. If you do see a horse, its being ridden very sedately and all the cars are slowing down to a crawl and giving it a wide berth.

So, my question is, at what point did we switch over? 1930? 1920? When?

Im vaguely irritated when I see a horse and Im in my car, but I also would so very much like to see someone cantering up the road with a couple of Sainsbury�s bags in each hand, gripping the flanks with thighs of steel.

If anyone can give me a PROPER answer (Ruby? Joisty? You guys are sufficiently nerdy, in a rather lovely way, to be able to give me a sensible approximation), as I have exhausted the powers of google this afternoon and spent FAR too much time reading the first edition of The Highway Code (from 1934) which wasn�t really any help at all but did tell me that �the horn is not to be used to express irritation or annoyance�, which Im pretty sure comes as a surprise to plenty of people. Mostly BMW drivers.

Tomorrow night L is judging another bloody talent contest, so I should be able to do a proper update, with real news and everything.

Until then, my lovelies, my dear friend Mr Glen Fiddich is requiring my urgent attention.

Later
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