And then we cantered

It starts with a few signs. The petrol pump attendant calls you mama instead of sissie, and you become a regular Cape Talk caller. Hangovers take three days to fade, and you no longer drink anything that can be set alight.

You think Mxit is a new type of baking appliance, and that all teenagers are cretins. You spend your annual jaunt to a nightclub worrying about how the lady clearing the glasses is going to get home, and your idea of hard drugs is three vitamin B tablets and a Supradyn.

But the real signs of getting older lie deep in the bones, in hidden caverns of crumbling calcium that creak and leak and smell of dust. And you only become aware of these when you do silly things.

Like lifting concrete umbrella stands, hanging curtains, climbing trees, taking salsa lessons. And riding horses.

As I lie in bed writing this, the soft fleece blanket feels too heavy on my legs and my ankles are tumescent with bruises. If I breathe too deeply, my spine groans and turns over, and I'm convinced the bones in my butt have been allocated a panic button which goes off every time I move.

My cat thinks it's very funny, and insists on squashing my knees, which by now should have been removed and replaced with plastic.

But what my cat doesn't know is that I'm not even the silliest.

My work colleague and riding companion is at least a decade older than me, and in a few weeks' time will be abusing her body atop a horse. For nine days. In the Namib Desert.

Now, that's hilarious.

Saturday's equestrian adventure was a test ride for her, so she could gauge her preparedness and make the necessary adjustments.

Right now, I wouldn't be surprised if she were making plans with a Windhoek furniture store to custom-make a Lazy Boy that can be installed on a saddle.

We both had horses when we were younger. I had one, aptly called Playboy, who insisted on giving me a mastectomy with his teeth before I even had cause for a bra.

I sold him, and bought a nag called Dancer, who had rotting hooves and a nasty habit of throwing me off in front of Vaughan Gillespie, the cutest boy at the riding school.

Before our ride this weekend, my colleague and I spent hours in the office reminiscing about how we would lie on our horses' backs at night, watching for satellites. How we galloped bareback for miles and miles, and swam with our mares in dams.

We were familiar with the warm, waxy smell of dubbin. We remembered the terms: numbnas and curry combs, snaffles and martingales.

It was all daisy chains and freckles and youth and sunlight. It was hay and muzzles and clicking insects. Nostalgia, by nature, is always fit and flexible. Reality is a stiff old bird.

The first hour of the trail was a breeze. The horses took us on a gentle stroll past gnarly vineyards and sodden fields - past a mop of ostriches and through buzzing fynbos. The sky was dry and bright with sun. Near a dam, a heron took flight. At a farmhouse, sheep complained.

In our takkies and jeans, we performed a rising trot like Constantia pros, and cantered easily - albeit slightly warily - up a dirt road.

I was happy as a pig in poo. It had all come back to me. I hadn't lost my touch. But by midway, I lost my knees. They disappeared into a black hole of pain, never to be seen again. After four hours, I lost my ankles to the stirrups. I found them later with my feet - bruised, battered and swollen. By the final canter, I had lost my butt.

When I look back now from my aching bed, it's possible I had lost my mind long before this weekend's decimation.

And, actually, I'm okay with that. It explains why I once endeavoured to paddle a sea kayak down a raging river, and why I shacked up with a family in Patagonia for a year. Any why I tore my knee apart sledding on a tea tray. And why I let spotty 15-year-olds ramp over me on scramblers.

Hopefully this mental deterioration will continue. Because while I am in pain today, I know I will be at peace tomorrow.

And in a few weeks' time, I will be filled with envy when my colleague heads to Windhoek with her new jodhpurs and chaps, and her enormous first-aid kit.

And when she gets back, I will listen with awe and wonder to her tales of broken bums and blisters, dunes and dung. And then, being of unsound mind, I will start plotting my own gallop into bone-rattling oblivion, because that cliché is true: what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.

Apparently there's an awesome butt-guzzling, hand-munching, knee-hobbling, ankle-biting horse trail through outer Mongolia. Any takers?