Shattered again
I have no idea why. Let me see.
I started off well by oversleeping. I set an alarm on Sunday mornings because service ringing is service ringing but generally I object to using an alarm clock and don’t. I got to bed . . . okay, I didn’t get to bed early but I got to bed in time that I should have woken up when I should have woken up, but I didn’t.
So we did two-thirds of the hellhounds’ usual Connie-mornings walk in half the time. They were panting but peeved. I flung myself into my riding clothes and roared off to the barn. Where Roland had just been sensational in a cavesson–because he’s just had a wolf tooth out*–and Jenny said she’d free-jumped him yesterday and that all she’d done is set the jumps up at the edge of the little indoor schooling ring but she hadn’t tried to fence them in or funnel or chivvy him and he’d gone over everything, including a few enormous leaps just for the hell of it and Jenny had found herself getting a little excited. Wouldn’t it be great if Roland turned out to be brilliant? That’s me speaking, not Jenny, but I’m sure she doesn’t really want to retire.
Thanks to the hellhounds’ and my super-hurtle I was now early, so I got to try not to look secretly gratified and comprehensively wonderful when Jenny told me, somewhat between clenched teeth, that Connie was a little short of exercise because her Other Rider had disappeared off the planet again, which Other Rider is inclined to do. So we went out with me about one-quarter ready (which is as ready as I ever am) for her to be a trifle loaded for bear, although Connie doesn’t really do Loaded for Bear, to my eternal gratitude. She wasn’t as easy to put together today as she’d been on Tuesday but we did get our Good Working Trot. There was another horse in the ring with us–a very pretty** warmblood*** mare practising her dressage test–but it’s a big ring and staying out of each other’s way is not a problem.† There were, however, distractions: the pushing-30-year-old cob gelding who has fallen in love with a young mare . . . well, it’s this young mare, and he was in the field next to the ring (he’s usually across the road), so he was trotting up and down†† the fence line whickering urgently. The mare could not care less and went on making her careful changes of direction and nice steady transitions.†††
The drama began when the mare left. The lovelorn swain went nuts, tearing around his (large) field in a manner not at all appropriate to his age and station, bucking, kicking, and screaming his head off–which set off the large dog in one of the back gardens of one of the cottages that line the road between the riding ring and the barn. So we had a large barking dog throwing himself (or possibly herself, although this kind of territoriality is more a guy thing) with increasing frenzy against his fence–the fence is solid, so you couldn’t see the large dog, which I’m not sure is better or worse, especially when you can see the fence starting to lean and bulge–and a hormone-mad horse who is using the barking dog as an excuse to lather himself up into further mania–he was taking wild additional swoops so that he’d brush right past the wobbling fence and then capriole and squeal when the dog thudded against the other side.
And Connie and I were trying to work on our canter transitions. Um. Connie was certainly aware of all of this going on–displayed, one might almost feel, for our personal delectation–but other than a slight rigidity of ears and a slightly greater need to keep the bit ‘live’ in her mouth, she was a perfect lady.‡ And by the time Jenny came out with her 11:30 lesson it was all over. The mare had been turned out with her light o’ love‡‡–although she had told him in No Uncertain Terms that she was Not Interested, he merely sighed in a fond and indulgent way and followed her around just out of reach of her heels–and the dog had subsided once the cob did, and before the fence fell over.
(Note that Roland has begun answering Connie when she murmurs to him deep in her throat. I feel he’s only looking for a friend, however. And for those of you who think it’s funny that a mare wets herself when she’s horny: her pee is full of smelly, stallion-arousing hormones. One of the ways you can find out if your mare is ‘ready’ or not is to lead her past the stallion. Breeding stallions are usually up for it, so he’ll probably be inviting her to look at his etchings. If she squats and pees, her answer is ‘yes’.)
Then I roared home again and harried hellhounds out for another hurtle in a different direction so as not to encourage them to brood on their wrongs, took the fastest bath possible in three dimensions, and then to their shocked and profound disapprobation I locked hellhounds up in the kitchen again and Left. Them. For the second time. In a morning. The World Is Coming to An End.
Actually it wasn’t still morning, except that morning got started kind of late. But I was now racing off toward the wedding ring. In moments when I wasn’t admiring the cob’s form or trying to adjust rein length and seat depth to produce the perfect canter transition or shouting STOP THAT to an errant hellhound, I’d spent the morning worrying about the wedding. I am not, as I keep reminding you, a great ringer. I am a mediocre ringer and a nervous, twitchy mediocre ringer at that, which means basic bell handling is always more or less of a problem. I’m okay on bells I know but strange bells are scary and intimidating. And these were going to be strange bells. Furthermore I knew I’d rung on them once in my previous life, at my old tower, ten years and pre-ME ago, and I was afraid I was remembering them as being reluctant and cranky and having waaaay long draught, which is to say very long ropes and a very high ceiling, and no rope-guides‡‡‡, and I further remembered that those of us who were beginners had had a rather bad time with a lot of diving across the room after your rope and some very erratic ringing. You really really do not want (a) to mess up at a WEDDING (b) to mess up out of your own district and (c) furthermore in the presence of two of your home tower ringers so you’re going to embarrass yourself twice, both because you’re out of your district and because you’ve brought some of your district with you. Sigh.
I had asked Colin Thursday night when he’d asked Niall and me to ring what the bells were like and he’d looked at me blankly and said they were fine. Now, Colin is an extremely nice kind patient ringer–he conducted my first triples§ quarter peal–but he’s also a very very experienced ringer and you can never quite trust these bozos to know a cranky bell when he (or she) meets one. Here now, none of that, they say and the bell rings perfectly. For them.
Furthermore it’s a ground floor ring. I hate ground floor rings. If you’re going to ring bells you do have to come to terms with the fact that it makes a lot of noise but you who are doing it are all hidden away in a tower, up a ladder or a twisty witch’s stair§§. In ground floor rings you are usually visible.§§§ Aaaaaaugh. And furthermore, what do you wear?¤ No, no! said Colin. No, don’t worry! The ringing chamber is at one end of the church and is a proper room with a DOOR. He was however unable to dissemble the fact that you have to walk through the congregation to get to the ringing chamber . . . but we could still wear jeans.¤¤
It was a beautiful day¤¤¤ so at least the rest of us could enjoy ourselves while we took turns pressing our ears to the door for the last hymn, which would be our signal to creep in. The final hymn came and . . . Moments like these you kind of want a sharp uniform. Something with creases and gold braid. Ah well. So we got ourselves into the ringing chamber and I was immediately relieved to see that it was not the ringing chamber of my nightmare~ and we sorted ourselves out onto our ropes and poised ourselves to ring and. . . .
THEY LEFT THE MMPHRRRRHHHHNNNNGGG DOOR OPEN. SO PEOPLE COULD COME STAND IN IT AND WATCH.
Anyway. I had a nice bell. And I don’t have to fall on my sword or anything. Vicky and Niall are still speaking to me.
And then I came home and plunged into PEGASUS.
And I’m shattered, which is where we came in. . . .
* * *
* Cavesson: heavy bitless bridle made to have a lunge line attached to it. Lunge line: long single rein that the horse (in theory) moves around you in a circle on the end of. You can also lunge in an ordinary bridle. Oh, and wolf tooth: a funny little leftover tooth that pops up more or less in the middle of the toothless area where the bit goes. Only some horses have them, and often they fall out on their own. I was taught that if there are wolf teeth present when you start putting a bit in your young horse’s mouth, you’d better have it or them out, but I believe that’s now controversial, and some people leave them alone.
** Not as pretty as Connie, but nobody is as pretty as Connie. Although Jenny clipped her Monday^ which first makes her look a bit like an escapee from a barber practising his buzz cut–all horses look a little flayed right after a clip^^–and second makes the scars on her neck stand out really badly. It’s just as well I’ll never know what happened but I can’t help wondering. And third it makes the elegance of her general shape and deportment much sharper. At least by five days after the buzz cut.
^ Jenny doesn’t seem to think anybody’s unusually a hairball so I’m just doing my well known trouble-borrowing trick about six feet of snow, etc.
^^ All right, if you’re going to show him or her tomorrow, you set the blades a little higher. But then you have to clip them again really soon, and clipping takes time and is boring. Very boring.
*** A little one. She’s not even close to 16 hands. And she looks like a warmblood cross, not a purebred, although she is one. She looks like a cross with something like thoroughbred, which is of course why I think she’s pretty.
† Also, Connie steers. The young Irish Draught mare I had a part-share in the last time I rode at Jenny’s yard did not steer.
†† Quite a good working trot there too. Probably the best he’s displayed in about ten years.
††† Yes, yes, of course she had a rider.
‡ Our canter transitions still need work, but that’s me. Although I’m not sure that I wasn’t as distracted as she was, watching that toppling fence.
‡‡ I’m not sure how this arrangement came about in the first place, because Jenny usually sticks to the gelding with gelding and mare with mare system. But I also know because I’ve heard her thinking out loud about it that when you’ve got (approximately) twenty two horses with a certain amount of regular turnover and (I think) seven fields the long division never quite works, not in terms of acreage–all but the laminitic pony field are huge–but in terms of personalities. I also know she’s got at least one long term boarder who is a major pill.
‡‡‡ Which is a metal frame suspended some way down from the ceiling punctuated by little round wooden doughnuts that the ropes are then fed through
§ On the treble! Just the treble!
§§ I’ve told you, this is one of the attractions: Going Up the Witch’s Stair and Through the Ancient Secret Door into . . .
§§§ Ground floor rings can be every ringer’s nightmare. The worst are where you’re in the middle of the public part of the church itself, so everyone streams past you, or, worse, through you . . . WHICH IS BLOODY FLIPPING DANGEROUS, OKAY??? Even if you’re the best ringer that ever lived, it’s dangerous. One of the best ringers who has ever lived told me that he was ringing in such a situation once when someone drove a pushchair with a baby in it through the circle of ropes. Ropes sweeping down and flying up, you know? Loops of rope. Moving at speed. With hundreds of pounds of metal hanging off the top ends of them.
¤ I have, of course, just been through this, a few weeks ago, and I am not going to wear bicycle clips in public to hold my skirt.
¤¤ I even wore clean jeans. I know how to behave.
¤¤¤ And I should have been in the garden planting bulbs
~ Although this doesn’t necessarily mean good bells, merely not those bad bells.
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