It had been ages since Andrea had done any archery on horseback, but she got an invitation to join a group of friends and she immediately accepted. Whilst she was hunting through all of her horse equipment, looking for her bow and other stuff she needed, she found a pair of black rubberised chaps that she had only ever worn briefly once before, at a local show. The chaps had been very expensive they were made in the US, from thick elasticated waterproof fabric and with soft kid leather wear patches sewn onto them. It was a shame, she thought, that she hadn't made more use of them. Well, there was one sure way to change that!

White waterproof show jodhpurs, tall black leather competition boots, an Ariat competition shirt, a short waterproof tweed jacket and the newly discovered chaps perfect! Perfect for a trip down to the river, that is

Splashing through the ankle-deep shallows of the river she got little trickles of cold water through the zips on the backs of her boots; her toes squelched deliciously in her expensive leather footwear. Knee deep and the chaps came into their own in conjunction with the fully waterproof jodhpurs she could wade up to her hips and still stay dry from the ankles upwards. Of course, the fly-zip in the front of the jods was not waterproof, and that made for a very interesting sensation when she ventured up to her waist in the river! She continued to walk through the deeper parts of the river as her jods slowly filled with the cold water. Once she was properly wet, she took to swimming and floating, enjoying the tight-fitting clothing and the surprisingly heavy weight of her waterlogged jacket. After stripping-off the chaps, she drained some of the water from her boots and smiled to herself when she saw that it was decidedly muddy. Given that the river was really clean, there was only one place that the mud could have come from: she must have brought it with her, dried inside her boots!

Having been for one final swim she once again emptied her boots on the riverbank; this time the water coming from then was clean. She then headed for home, through the slanting Autumn sunshine, with her dripping chaps over her shoulder. There you go, you could no longer say that the chaps had not been properly used, nor that her boots hadn't been properly cleaned, inside as well as out.