The end is neigh: Blood-covered horses storm through London

Conquest, War, Famine, and Death – the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or are we missing one? Earlier today (April 24) five horses were seen bolting through central London, one covered in blood. Bystanders have interpreted this as an omen of the End Times, although to be honest the signs have been around for a while now.

The horses belonged to the Household Cavalry, and were apparently spooked during their morning exercise near Hyde Park Barracks, where they threw their riders and made a run for it. Running west to east through the city (including past the Dazed offices on the Strand), at least one made it all the way to Limehouse, some five miles from where it started.

Witnesses describe the horses running into cars and shattering the front window of a bus. Video filmed by ITV appears to show one colliding with a black cab. According to the BBC, four people have been taken to hospital from three separate locations. Thankfully, Westminster Police have announced that all of the horses are now accounted for, and will be transported to a vet. In other words, the situation is now stable.

What it says about the coming weeks or months is less certain. Generally speaking, bloodsoaked horses running loose through the nation’s capital isn’t a herald of brighter days to come, and the sense of doom and dread on the TL is even stronger than usual. “End of days stuff,” reads one comment, while others scramble to Wikipedia to interpret the possible symbolism.

For the record, most videos contain two horses, one white and one black, so that’s the first and third Horsemen’s steeds – Conquest and Famine – respectively. The lingering presence of War, which is represented by a red horse, is already self-evident, so now we just need a pale horse ridden by Death for the full set. (Yes, I can use Wikipedia too.)

Only adding to the ominous arrival of London’s end-time harbingers is the fact that time has literally stopped moving. Well, Big Ben’s clock briefly ceased ticking at least, pausing at 9am and sounding the wrong number of bongs. The clock has since been fixed, and a spokesperson for the House of Commons says “no risks to the integrity of the mechanism have been identified”. Not that keeping time will be much use to us in the divine end-times.

All doomsday conspiracies and jokes aside, though: the use of horses by military officials and police, whether it’s for crowd control or swanning around in fancy outfits, is fucked up, especially in the middle of a city. Stop it. Those big weird creatures deserve to trot around and graze the fields in peace.