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HORSESHIT In the long ago people needing to get from one place to another by the quickest means possible would go by horse. Then the motor car was invented, rendering the horse redundant as a mode of transport. Not only was the motor car quicker and more comfortable whilst travelling the country's roads but it had the added benefit that it didn't shit on them whilst it was doing so. This happened about a century ago, yet people today still feel the need to ride their horses on our roads and their horses still feel the need to shit on them.      Living in a small town with open countryside all around has a lot going for it. One of the things not going for it is having horses shit on the street where you live. If I take a mile-long circular walk of the countryside surrounding the small estate where I live I can count upwards of fifty horses grazing in the fields. Every day some of these horses are saddled up by their owners and ridden down my street. At weekends all the horses are ridden down my street. All of them shit in my street. And there the shit lies, in a big heap. Until such time as a car drives over it and bonds it to the road in a bigger, flatter, heap. And there it stays, until the rain eventually washes it away. One day I counted fifty eight heaps, some newly dumped and still steaming, some by now flattened, in the hundred yards length of my street. The situation is getting so bad that a week or so ago I sent a letter to the local council suggesting that they alter the name of my street from Hillside View to Shit View. They said that they have noted my comments and that it would be discussed at the next council meeting. (As if!)      Sometimes the people who own the horses don't ride them down the road. They put the horses in the back of a van and drive the van down the road. Absolutely barmy. Someone invents the motor vehicle so that people no longer have to ride a horse to get from one place to another so the people then put their horses in a van and drive it from one place to another. At about ten miles an hour. And you drive behind it at ten miles an hour. Seething. But at least the horse isn't shitting in the road. It's shitting in the van. And you can smell it. Until such time as the van turns off, about twenty miles up the road.      You might gather that I don't like horses. Wrong. I don't mind horses at all, especially when one of them has won me a tenner at Haydock Park; it's their shit I don't like, especially when it's in the road outside my house.      When responsible dog owners walk their dogs nowadays they carry with them a poop scoop and a plastic bag, and when their dog shits they put the offending turd in the plastic bag and take it home with them. There is no reason why horse owners shouldn't do the same. They would probably need a couple of bags, granted, and the filled bags would be quite heavy, but so what, they could hang them either side of their horse like saddlebags. I am thinking of starting a national campaign to implement this idea.