Good evening Blighty,

A thoroughly relaxing day today.

Began with a trip into Matamata, feel very smug as I have bought my Christmas cards. Not a patch on Angie, I know,
who will have no doubt bought all her presents as well as cards by now.

Spent far too much on stationery in general & spoiled myself with this month’s ‘Horse & Pony’

Also bought some baking goodies to do some more muffins tomorrow.

The family went shopping & to the cinema this afternoon & evening so I had the place to myself.
Caught up on some washing on what was in my Gran’s words ‘a good drying day’.

Pottered around doing some chores, wrote to my Gran & didn’t manage to do any of the change of address letters I was supposed to do this evening.

Macaroni cheese for dinner (home-made, not even tinned) & then several episodes of The Archers as a lovely treat.

I can’t believe Jennifer hasn’t discovered Siobhan was in the car with Brian yet. And who would have thought weedy Nigel would have the guts to stand up to Siobhan & tell her to sod off ?

I forgot to tell you yesterday about an incident on Friday. We were transferring a mob of flighty fillies from a small addock to a larger one.
As a result of my dragging my heels, I found that when I arrived at the paddock, the 3 ‘normal’ fillies had been claimed. Only Star remained.

She is easily distinguishable by her wild, long mane & permanently ‘scalded cat’ appearance.

Telling her to be good, I clipped a lead-rope on her & we, all four, set off.

As we reached the new paddock, Natasha who was leading in front of me, dropped her stick on the floor, directly in the entrance to the paddock.

When leading the yearlings, we all carry these sticks. They are orange or yellow, slim, made of lightweight plastic & about 3 or 4 feet in length. They are held in the left hand whilst the lead rope is in the right.
The horses are always led on the right.

The sticks are for 2 reasons. Firstly, if a horse is not stepping out properly & dawdling, the stick is to be tapped lightly on their quarters without moving it from your left hand. The horse should not see the movement so they do not associate the tapping with the handler.

Secondly, sometimes the horses will try & barge to their left & push the handler out of the way.
If this occurs & the horse is leaning heavily, you are encouraged to raise the stick to head height & hold it to the left hand side of the horses head to discourage them from barging & leaning.

The sticks are not to be used to punish the horses & the biggest no-no is to hit them on the face.
These horses are supposed to go on to earn their living from being saddled, bridled, ridden & raced. If Trelawney sent youngsters to be broken who were too scared to have their heads touched then they would be doing them a huge disservice.

Racehorses who are too frightened to be handled do not have a bright future.

Natasha didn’t realise the implications of dropping her stick where she did but Star refused point-blank to step over this very scary object. Had it been any other horse I would have kicked the stick out of the way but this was not an option with Star.
I encouraged her to step over it which she accomplished with a mighty leap which lifted me clear off my feet.

As we landed over the stick, the next obstacle was a large puddle. Without much time to gather my thoughts I was lifted clear again as she leapt the puddle. As we landed again, she decided she didn’t want to stick around any longer & set
off for the far end of the paddock.

I dug my heels in & managed to jerk her head around so that she was facing me.

Now began just about the longest 30 seconds I can remember. She combined rearing with running backwards dragging me in her wake like a flag.
Each time I thought she was tiring she would be newly spooked & set off again.

At the point that I finally stopped her she commenced running around me in circles. The only thing I could do was try & make them smaller. I was feeling quite nauseous by the time she finally stopped. Huge, quivering nostrils, wild eyes lots of bodily expulsions. She looked quite spooked too.

I had forgotten anyone else was there until I heard Trina ask if my hands hurt.

I realised everyone was there, still watching & holding onto their horses. The idea is that everyone holds onto their neddies until each of them is calm so that the whole lot don’t charge off madly en masse & hurt themselves.

It was very nice to have the guys congratulate me for hanging onto the filly. They all thought I was desperate not to have to buy a 6-pack which is the punishment for letting a horse get away from you. In reality, I was eyeing the ankle-deep mud & not relishing the idea of being dragged face-first through it.

I was not aware even, that I shouted my catch-phrase during our contre-temps.

All together now …’PACK IT IIIIIIIN !’

Off to bed now, the clocks go forward tonight so I lose an hour’s kip,

Good-night all,

Cx