Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you up into the saddle, and the patient pony would trudge up and down while you clung to its mane, before it was the turn of the next child in the queue. No one ever plonked a hard hat on your head. There were certainly none of those restrictive body protectors that children are encased in now, bundled up like scarab beetles.

These days, I am that horsey mother. When we moved to the country from London after the lockdowns, ponies were top of my shopping list – above a replacement for the wheezy boiler and a fancy range cooker. We now have a miniature Shetland pony called Ollie and a donkey called Mouse.

Buying a house near the church came with certain responsibilities, we discovered. Could you, the vicar asked, bring the donkey to the village Nativity? Of course. Mouse has now starred in a few events at the church, including the Palm Sunday procession – where he delighted younger members of the congregation by leaving his own tribute to Our Lord in the porch.

So providing pony rides for the church fête seemed at first like just another formality we were very happy to fulfil. My sons were excited about leading Ollie and Mouse around. They made signs and squabbled about how much to charge (more than a pound, but less than a fiver, they decided).

Then the rumblings started. ‘We need to do a risk assessment,’ the churchwarden emailed. ‘Can you check with your insurers that you are covered?’ I quietly suggested that we leave insurers out of it. As a sop, I could bring a selection of crash hats for the children to wear. And even that, I felt, was a bit ridiculous for a beach donkey and a pony the size of a large Labrador.

But it wouldn’t do. ‘The PCC [parochial church council] is concerned that insurance should be in place,’ came the reply. ‘Could you check your policy?’ We have public liability insurance through the Pony Club, but I thought it unlikely this would cover taking money for rides – even for the worthy cause of the St Michael and All Angels’ roof.

I sought advice from a thread on an equestrian forum. The responses were unequivocal. ‘DON’T TOUCH WITH A BARGEPOLE!’ and ‘PUBLIC LIABILITY NIGHTMARE!!!’ were typical. One advised: ‘Be aware you MUST have a riding school licence, even if only for one day or for charity.’ ‘I was asked to do rides at our primary school,’ said another, ‘and used insurance as a get-out.’

By now this looked increasingly appealing, but was also a sad development. I was that child once, stroking noses and longing for a pony of my own. Pocket-money rides at the village fête were the start of a lifelong love affair. It was Winston Churchill who noted that: ‘There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.’

‘Couldn’t the church council just extend their cover?’ I asked. I received a stern and lengthy response from Ecclesiastical, the church insurers. They explained that they would indemnify the PCC if a member of the public were to be scalded or get food poisoning from refreshments at the fête – but not in the case of ‘accidental bodily injury’ caused by our pony or donkey.

I argued that neither of them would hurt a fly, let alone a small child. Ollie comes into the kitchen on birthdays and eats cake off the table. He was dressed up as a bat for Halloween. Both he and Mouse have delivered Christmas cards to neighbours. The worst the donkey has done is to lock me in the feed shed for two hours while my husband was on a Zoom call. But all this was to no avail.

Wearily, I rang round brokers. The cheapest cover I could find under a ‘Pony Party Policy’ was £680 – and that was dependent on a full risk assessment of the animals’ temperaments and experience. It is also considerably more than I paid for the donkey. At £3 a go, Mouse would need to give 227 rides just to earn the insurance money back. Oh – and had we checked if we needed a licence with the local council?

At this point I admitted defeat. If the PCC could get hold of some sheep hurdles, I said, then we could at least do a pony petting corner. But the PCC felt this still posed ‘a risk to children’, so without appropriate insurance it was a no-go. Thanks to some grey, faceless underwriters, the ponies stayed in the field and local children missed out on their rides.

I started to understand why, according to the British Horse Society, 250 riding schools have closed since 2018 due to punitive insurance and business rates. If parents can find a riding school – and the British Equestrian Federation has just issued a warning that the industry is on ‘the brink of disaster’ – they can expect to pay at least £40 for a plod around a sand school. The riding school we found on first moving to the countryside was so risk-averse that they wouldn’t let the boys groom or tack up their ponies, or even touch them before they got on. It’s what spurred me on to horse ownership.

As for Mouse making an appearance at this year’s Nativity, I’m not feeling optimistic now that insurance must be factored in. Mary may have to travel to Bethlehem on a micro scooter.