Hacking, and hewing
. . . to an assortment of lines. Or not, as the case may be. Mostly not in my case.
Connie was a pill this morning. Saturday mornings are a little complex when you can’t use the outdoor arena–and the outdoor arena is likely to be a no-go area now till spring–because the indoor school is small. Today was due to be (and, in fact, for a wonder, was) a very soft, mild day, the sort of autumn day that could almost be spring.* And Liz was looking for someone to hack out with. Caprice apparently had a serious meltdown a few weeks ago and Liz has been having trouble getting her nerve back.** I’ve been in the situation of having a horse who is a pretty fair nightmare to hack out alone*** so although I’ve come to dislike Caprice I still like Liz, so I agreed.
I think it’s quite possible that Caprice was winding Connie up–or maybe it was I Caprice was winding up and I was transmitting this information to Connie. We were in a big field at one point–a biiiig field–with the little road between Jenny’s town and mine on one side, and a small stand of maize on the other. We were going down pretty much the middle of it, and Liz was saying, oh, sweetheart, I know you don’t like lorries . . . What? What lorry? If the QE II was ploughing down the road† you might have been able to see her. And you’d need a pheasant the size of a helicopter flying out of the maize to cause reasonable alarm.
After most of an hour of this I guess both Connie and I were starting to climb out of our respective skins. But we reached a new low when she took exception to a man, a girl and a dog walking together–who had got off the path, very reasonably, seeing the Ride of the Valkyries passing a little too near and not wishing to be carried off to Valhalla quite yet–and having booted her past this manifestation of the reopening of the Hellmouth in southern Hampshire, we caromed the rest of the way down that last bit of bridleway, shying at large metal field watering tanks, cows–cows! Aaaaaaugh!–geese, farmhouses, mud, goblins and simurghs. We finally got back down to the road again–this is the one-lane lane that runs past Jenny’s farm–and when I asked her to trot past a car that had politely stopped for us to squeeze by, she climbed the bank to get away from it–not, I might add, that this was a climbable bank; we sort of levitated at an angle–and then about fifty feet from the yard turn-off there was a Mini†† that had been parked end on into the hedge with its nose just poking out, Minis not being a great deal bigger than SmartCars, and Connie was not going to go past the awful thing. –You’re almost home, stupid!
And in fact we’re still out there, facing down a grey Mini in the dark. Oh, okay, no we’re not. I whispered in her Connemara ear and told her to get her thoroughbred side under control. Horses, like dogs, are shameless: the fact that I wanted her hide for a hearthrug after all this had no impact whatsoever on her clear noisy assumption that I would give her her carrots and apple as usual after I’d cleaned her up and put her away. They are, after all, her just tribute. Feh. And–of course–I did give them to her. I know all the books that say that reward and punishment must be immediate in the critter world, and that withholding something later because you’re in a snit won’t do anything but confuse and dishearten your critter. I can also hear the sniggers behind my back: heh, heh, heh, heh, don’t anybody let on that we can remember: just stare ‘em in the face and look earnest and a bit dim. . . .
We were out a bit longer than I meant††† which then inevitably meant the rest of the day seemed to be happening about an hour later than planned. I walk hellhounds in the dark often enough during this unfriendly end of the year but on riding days when the morning hurtle is curtailed I try to get them out both in daylight and out into the countryside in the afternoon. Today this meant the second half of the walk was in the dark, pretty serious dark with a heavy cloud cover and no streetlamps. We didn’t get lost–this is a piece of ground I know extremely well, although we kept being not quite where I thought we were on it. Which included discovering rather too late that we were walking up the wrong side of a hedge: one lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction look very much like another lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction. Oh well, I thought. Tractor ruts along the side of a field usually mean there’s space for a tractor to get out at the top (or bottom) of the field when another hedgerow runs in from somewhere and produces a corner. Not this time. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
I thought I’d seen a good gap on the way up that we could probably all fit through, although it would involve me lifting hellhounds over a barbed wire fence and climbing after them. We’ve done it before. Fortunately slightly before I had a hellhound in my arms I realised that the strange shadows I was looking at were a WHACKING GREAT HOLE on the far side of the fence, the sort of hole where Mr and Mrs Badger could hold a patio party. Chastened, then, we went back aaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom and turned up again into the right set of tractor ruts. Darkness was by now absolute, and my Darkness was only tangible by his spring-loaded extending lead taking in and letting out nylon tape, and the occasional dark flicker passing over stubble-field straw or a bit of path that has worn to white chalk,‡ and Chaos, were I of a nervous turn of mind, looked a lot like one of those pale things in an MR James story that paces you as you grope your way through mysterious woodland, and you’re pretty sure it does not have your best interests at heart.
But we got back eventually, in time for me rush off to ring handbells. How do I get into these things?‡‡ Six of us are learning to ring handbell carols so we can ring a Christmas party at a local old folks’ home. I hope we’re all fast learners . . . I’ve never been a fast learner in my life. . . .
* * *
* My Souvenir de la Malmaison is still flowering. Old Blush–AKA Parson’s Monthly Rose for good reason–keeps throwing out flowers and Sombreuil is too, but Malmaison? If the rain doesn’t spoil her^ you get a very spectacular midsummer flush out of her, but in England she does not repeat. The odd flower just to torture you with, but not a proper repeat. I hear rumours, not to say fairy tales, of repeating Souvenirs, and despite that brand-name commercial roses are all little clones, the same rose can be remarkably individual from bush to bush in the same five-mile stretch of Hampshire: I have several roses behaving differently here than they did at the old house. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if I had one of those legendary repeating Souvenirs? Then I could be driven mad by rose-ruining rainfall more extensively.
^ See previous entries. . . .
** Pollyanna as this blog’s presiding spirit or not, I am not the only person at Jenny’s yard who thinks Caprice would make better dog food than he does a riding horse, and he’s getting worse.
*** However my old horse had some counteringbalancing virtues.
† Instead of running into sandbars off Southampton
†† http://damox.com/cars/thumbs/Mini/2005_Mini_Cooper_John_Cooper_Works_kit.jpg only this one was grey
††† Because the footing was so lousy that there wasn’t even much trotting, let alone cantering. Although given the mood Connie was in this was possibly a good thing.
‡ And there were bats. Yaaaay. Bats are endangered.
‡‡ I am a schmuck.
Another miscellaneous
Blackbear says:
Orange horse is fabulous. I am a little bit in love.
It’s funny that so many of you like him, because these photos are not good. He really didn’t have any butt when he came, although he’s beginning to grow one now, but he has a perfectly nice neck and a nice clean throat latch, and you’d never know it here. And of course he’s half asleep. I keep thinking that I hope that people who know what they’re looking at when they’re looking at a horse can see the potential there and I haven’t totally disguised it.
Particularly like the one where he’s got one leg delicately back, gives him a rather insouciant look… Is the dog on the left the terrier you’ve mentioned? He’s pretty charming too.
She. Yes, that’s Clover. Clover is a fruit loop, as terriers so often are*, although she is a very nice fruit loop**. I don’t think I’ve told you the Car Story? She has me pegged as a soft touch, so when she’s been let out of durance vile in the tack room*** she tends to follow me around, flinging herself on her back at intervals so that I can rub her tummy.† It didn’t take long for her to start following me back to my car. One day, when I opened the door, she jumped in. I laughed appreciatively, picked her up, and put her back on the ground. She immediately jumped back in the car again. I tried getting in the car before I put her out and she could still get back in before I could close the door: I swear she turns in midair, like a boomerang. So I thought okay, fine, started the car, and rolled downhill to the gate: Clover sat happily in the passenger seat: Great! Where are we going? Is it fun? Does it involve food?†† I left the door open while I opened the gate. Clover waved her tail madly when I got back in the car. I left the door open when I went back to close the gate. . . . Clover was still sitting in the passenger seat waiting for her next adventure. At this point I fished her out, grasped her firmly, and went in search of Jenny. . . . Clover still follows me out to my car pretty often, and has a nice little ride down to the gate, but she usually then gets out of her own accord. Usually. Sometimes I still have to go find Jenny.
Clover’s mum, Sparkle, has her own variation on a theme of human interaction, hijacking, and tummy rubbing. She likes to lie down in the road in front of the gate and roll over on her back. She rolls over on her back for cars, because she has figured out that cars have people in them, and when they get, crossly, out of their cars to move her, chances are they will relent when she waves her paws madly, wags her tail like sixty and flattens her ears at them. There are days that between the two of them–since chances are I have Clover in the passenger seat while I’m moving her mum–I wonder if I’m going to get home at all.
Vikkik says:
And he looks a lovely horse, but surely he’s chestnut rather than orange?
Mmrmph. Er, yes. I’m afraid I’m having my little joke about his colour because I do not like chestnuts. I didn’t like Palominos even when I was a little girl. I think it’s against the law for horse-mad girls not to like Palominos.
(Of course, I have practically zero experience of horses…) Any way, I think he’s a gorgeous colour.
Many people like chestnuts. There is no accounting for these things.
*pets Roland cautiously*
He’s a very sweet horse. He will put his head in your chest so you can rub his ears better. That is, in fact, what he’s trying to do in those pictures, and why he won’t stand still. He thinks there’s a perfectly good human on the other end of the lead rope and he doesn’t want to stand over here when she could be making herself useful by petting him.
R and B says:
He’s lovely–looks built uphill even at this age! How old is he–did I miss that? He looks to be about 16h?
He looks extremely nice going under saddle–there’s enough in the front and enough in the rear to balance. He’ll be four in March, and he’s 16.3. That’s another case of the camera lying–Jenny’s quite small, but I must be shooting them at more of an angle than I realise, because if she’s small he must be about 15 hands and I can say, having stood in his shadow, that he’s large.
But he really is a chestnut, right??
Snork! No, he’s ORANGE! Diane in MN says that horse people call her fawn Danes ‘golden chestnut’ which I find peculiar–dog fawn ought to be dun or buckskin in horse terms, which would then say certain things about its breeding.†††
Lucy Coats says:
But maybe orange only in the way that turning beech leaves in autumn are orange.
Oooh. Imagine a copper-beech-coloured horse. (Note to those of you who have never seen a copper beech: they’re, um, purple. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqamoe/166343428/ )
I am looking out at a magnificent tree in our field as I type–and it seems like exactly his colour. He looks as if he has what is known up here as ‘a kind eye’.
Yes, he does. They’re a little small–mind you, I’m spoiled, Connie has those enormous deer eyes that Connemaras are prone to–which is one of the things I didn’t like about him when I went with Jenny to look for a horse, but as soon as he turns it on you you change your mind. Especially after he’s craned over his stable door to put his head in your chest and say ‘pet me’.
Diane in MN says:
Am I right in thinking that mares come in season quite frequently until they’re bred?
Yikes, no. Well, sort of. They’re like a lot of other critters in that they tend not to come in season during the winter, and lengthening days bring them back into their fertile cycles–racehorse breeding mares live in barns with sunlamps so they can get them cycling early in the year, for example–and the cycle is usually around three weeks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_reproduction And there are certainly people who won’t touch mares because mares can be moody on account of fluctuating hormones. Well, yes. And there are certainly mares who are a real pain to have around when they’re fertile–and if you were sensible you would not breed them so as not to produce more mares like that. I mean, they do come into season if they aren’t bred and pregnant, but most working mares are fairly low key about it, or at worst are only a bit twitchy a day or two per cycle during high summer. Jenny is extremely cross about Connie because she says she’s never been ‘mare-ish’ before, and she’s had her three years or so–and that furthermore it’s spreading and here it is November when the estrous cycle should be closing down for the winter and there are several mares on the yard who are prancing around and whinnying and peeing. Roland is a gelding. Get a grip, girls.
Judith says:
Puppies are adorable — and puppyhood is also hell, and when I’m going through it with one I can’t wait for it to be over! I really don’t understand people who keep puppies until they grow up and then want to give them to the pound; they’ve paid their dues and are about to get their reward, for heaven’s sake! Old dogs just get richer with age.
The people I totally take my hat off to are the ones that raise seeing-eye puppies. Year after year after year of puppy–as you might say ‘hay fever’ or ‘foot rot’–as soon as it’s old enough to start proper training, it’s gone, and they have another wretched puppy peeing on the floor and eating their shoes. I repeat: puppies are darling, but puppyhood is still something you get through to have dogs. But some of the idiots who take their post-puppies to the pound are in shock from adolescence. You hear a lot about puppyhood but the facts of adolescence are downplayed. She says feelingly, her aging adolescents being fast asleep about three feet away. But people forget that brains take longer to grow up than bodies do and foolishly despair.
Diane in MN says:
This puppy is obviously very good at looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It would be interesting to know how long it takes, after he settles in, for the halo to slip. Of course, he may be like MY puppy, whose halo has barely budged.
He arrived halo-free: don’t let that face mislead you. Look at those calculating little eyes. This is not a hearts-and-flowers puppy but a right little bruiser. I understand that the sock population in that house has already dropped dramatically. However given that he’s still about three inches square and has been pitched into a family of about fifteen (technically it’s only Daisy and Roy, but in practise it’s also three kids, three spouses/spouse equivalents, eight grandchildren, and the odd in law) this is exactly what he should be.
You want to encourage your perfect puppy to eat the occasional small noncrucial piece of furniture or when he hits adolescence he’ll suddenly think, yeep, what am I missing, and start staying out all night and coming home drunk and disorderly in the company of girls of dubious virtue.
Southdowner says:
Some people think that having more than one pet makes you love them all less
Pet [sic] peeve alert. This philosophy–and I get it too, although I only have two critters instead of eleven‡–makes me nuts. What is the matter with these people? Hearts are infinitely expandable. There are critters, just like there are people, which are easier and harder to love, but the more people of all ages, sexes, species, etc you have in your life, the more room(s) in your heart you have. The end of a well-lived life your heart is going to look like Gormenghast Castle, only cheerfuller.
- no! it just means there is fur to bawl into when the time comes…
That too of course. Sigh.
Mrs Redboots says:
Having a new puppy is like having a new baby – thankfully, though, the “must-be-aware-of-what-she’s-doing-every-second” phase only lasts about six months, compared with about five years in humans!
Six months! You have had much mellower, more amenable puppies than I have! (However, all mine have thrown up in the car on the drive home from the breeder, so obviously I’m doing something wrong!) The saving grace of puppies over human children, if you’re asking me, who never raised any of the human variety, is that you can lock them up in their crate and run away for a few hours if you have to.
Skating librarian says
| Can anybody tell me enough about the taste [of chestnuts] so that I’d know whether I should give them another try? Thanks! |
Susan from Athens says:
Well it’s a very nutty taste. In purree form it is very thick and sticky in mouth – somewhat like peanut butter (the smooth kind, obviously – but I don’t particularly like peanut butter).
Ewwwww! I love peanut butter and I love chestnuts, glaceed, pureed, or any thing else, but I deny that chestnut puree is anything like peanut butter. It’s much lighter and airier than any nut butter, smooth, barely sticky, and while chestnuts are nutty, they always taste to me like a near relative of a real nut rather than like a nut themselves. Chestnut puree tastes to me like something with nuts in it, not like nut puree.
Melissa Mead says:
I’ve always thought they taste vaguely maple-y. Sort of like a rich smoked maple hazelnut? I didn’t like them as a kid, either, but I’m slowly coming to. Roasted, they have an almost soft texture.
Soft and a bit crumbly, yes. And yes . . . almost mapley. And yes, a bit more hazelnutty than . . . well, than peanuts, or cashews or something. Mapley hadn’t occurred to me (although crumbled chestnuts are good in waffles. . . . But then since I like chestnuts I’m liable to throw them experimentally into all kinds of things) but I think you’re right. They aren’t themselves sweet but they taste like they might be somehow.
Rachel says:
My mother had a version of this recipe , known as Slut’s chocolate chestnut log because it was so quick and easy. She used icing sugar and rum instead of caster and orange juice. And wrapped the whole thing in silver foil instead of putting it in a tin.
I don’t myself use tin foil–it’s also implicated in those of us with auto-immune problems–but icing sugar works fine, and rum is excellent. My original recipe called for orange liqueur rather than orange essence, but I prefer the essence if you’re going for orange.
Southdowner says:
We ARE a cult! Yaay! Robin has a cult following!!!
I’m still worrying about this. . . . Following me where . . . .
* * *
* All right, name me a dog family that doesn’t have serious fruit loop tendencies. But they do vary. Terrier fruitloopery is significantly different from hellhound fruitloopery for example.
** And my Exhibit A when the hellhounds and I have just been jumped by another nasty, aggressive little, or, worse, not-so-little s.o.b. of a terrier and I’m shouting that I hate terriers
*** Or when she escapes, which also happens. It is very difficult to get into a tack room carrying a saddle and not let a terrier bent on freedom out. Then you rack the saddle hastily and go in pursuit. I’ve chased her into the schooling ring where Jenny is giving a lesson more than once. Generally speaking it’s very nice using Jenny’s tack room instead of one of the two bigger ones for the boarders, but the terrier situation is problematic.
† I’m with Jodi about fuzzy tummies. I’d be an instant ferret slave too.
†† Clover, unlike other dogs we could mention, has a positive attitude toward food.
††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_coat_color This is not really satisfactory and only barely scratches the surface. But there’s a lot out there about colour types and genetics . . . which I’ve just wasted most of half an hour on and I still have to play the piano tonight. . . .
‡ Or is it fifteen now, and you’re just afraid to tell us?
Orange Horse
I’m extremely relieved . . . I mean I’m really sorry to report that this morning went smoothly. There’s hardly even a story in it. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning* which provides that extra little frisson of something-or-other when you may be about to die any moment, specifically when that pheasant/rabbit/deer explodes out of the shruuuuuuuuuuaaaarrrrghhhh—–
But you kind of had to be there to enjoy that aspect.
I got up terrifyingly early** to give hellhounds a brief hurtle before I went*** off to frolic with hellcolts and nightmares, and arrived in such good time I had to bring Connie in myself. You realise just how large Jenny’s fields are when the horse you want is standing at the far end of one. Connie turned around when she heard the gate† and then turned back again. No help there. I toiled up the hill toward her and after she’d enjoyed her joke she did turn again and walk to me with her ears up and a faint whinny, although that may be because I had a bucket with a handful of horse nuts†† in it.
I said gaily to Jenny that Connie would probably behave worse than Roland and she said grimly, she’d better not, that’s exactly the sort of thing that would set him off. Whereupon I instantly changed horses midstream and said that Connie would probably go all nursemaidy, as she’d done when Miles rode her a few weeks ago. Mmmmm, said Jenny.
At least they didn’t insist on billing and cooing, although they’d discussed world politics at length while we tacked up. Jenny had told me to keep our distance, as Roland’s legs all grow to twice their length when he cavorts, not to mention being young enough still that he loses track of one or another of them occasionally†††, and we wanted as many of us to come home again undamaged and in one piece as possible.
Most of the local countryside is stubble fields at the moment–muddy stubble field–so we were spoilt for choice about where we could go. And there were a few pheasants–and a few deer–and a few madly waving fronds and heavy low rustlings which were obviously alligators, and Connie did take mild exception to these on one occasion. And Roland couldn’t bear all that lovely open space once or twice–Connie meanwhile was expressing deep displeasure at this nonsense of staying trotting‡–but us humourless humans prevailed. And indeed the ground is so deep and soggy that a long uphill slope at the trot is quite enough, and poor Roland had his tongue hanging down to his knees, and Connie’s blood vessels were all standing out like a racehorse’s which I always thinks looks so cool.‡‡
But the point is we all came home in the same state of cohesion as we’d left. This is good. We might even do it again some time I suppose.
Now, these photos fail miserably to do our orange horse justice. I told you at the time that he had no clue about standing up for the camera and wasn’t interested, and he had also just been worked‡‡‡ and that was before he had any stamina whatsoever and he was tired. He’s put on weight and muscle in the last few weeks and has begun to look like a genuine horse rather than a gawky baby. But these are the photos I’ve got, and it would be a pity to waste them, you can at least admire his colour.§
* * *
* Therefore, because I’m like this, I felt guilty about not being out there with hellhounds. But by heroic self 
discipline I got them out before dark for their afternoon walk.
** Before 8 am is sufficiently terrifying to anyone who seems to have become incapable of turning her light out before 2:30
*** cruelly
† The now-famous Giraffe Gate after Roland jumped it in its pre-giraffe condition a fortnight or so ago. Jenny shot awake to the pitter-patter of little feet on the lane outside her bedroom window.
†† Thirty years ago in America I would’ve called these ‘pellets’. I am not up on modern lingo.
††† And a loose unsupervised almost-four-year-old colt leg can get into all kinds of mischief.
‡ And. I. Was. Riding. Her. In. The. Milder. Bit. She. Likes. Never occurred to me not to. Well, as I’m fond of saying, nobody died.
‡‡ So were mine. It doesn’t look nearly so cool on me.
‡‡‡ Note saddlemark
§ Ewwwwwww. 
( . . . Pardon me, but don’t tell me this insert-multiple-photos-into-your-entry thing worked. Yeep. I’m almost afraid to hit the ‘publish’ button . . . )
Edible chestnuts
It’s way over time for a recipe.* Also, I’m hungry.** And this time of year I always think of chestnuts. I love chestnuts. Although you can perfectly well get tinned chestnut puree all year round, and this is a chilly thing so not really suitable to November.*** Never mind. The point is there is a world beyond crumbled whole chestnuts in your Brussels sprouts.†
Chestnut and chocolate pudding††
Yes, it’s in horrible metric. But 300g chocolate is merely 3 100g bars of Green and Black’s, and over here anyway 435g is a standard size of chestnut puree tin. Also I have a kitchen scales which is in fact very sleek and pretty and a pleasure to use and it converts.
Oh, and this freezes beautifully. You might consider if it’s worth pre-slicing it, so you can just crack off a slab or two at a time: there’s a lot of good group food out there which you can’t do this to, so it’s very useful for those of us with small households and waistline problems. The original recipe says you can slice it frozen, with a knife dipped in hot water. Maybe they used a different kind of knife and a different kind of water. My experience is that this doesn’t work and makes a nasty smeary mess.
300g plain (dark) chocolate (semi-sweet cooking chocolate, approximately. Do I have to remind you you want good quality chocolate?)
435g can unsweetened chestnut puree
175g/6 oz slightly salted butter (call it 12 T: http://www.ez-calculators.com/measurement-conversion-calculator.htm )
175g/6 oz caster/superfine sugar (call it ¾ c). I made it with granulated once and it was not crunchy.
¼ c orange juice
1 tsp orange essence
You can use an ordinary big (9″) loaf tin, but if you have a drop-sided one, use it.††† Grease it, whatever it is.
You’re supposed to beat the puree on its own till it’s light and fluffy but my experience is that chestnut puree on its own does not get light and fluffy. I melt the butter and chocolate (gently‡) together and then pour it slowly into the puree, and beat like mad–use your electric mixer. Then beat in sugar. Then add orange juice and essence and beat again.
Pour and scrape the result into your loaf tin. Smooth the top [duh], cover with greaseproof paper and chill overnight at least, and in the cold part of your refrigerator. Then let the sides down and pluck it out. I find that in an ordinary loaf tin you can slice it in the tin and ease the individual slices out.
* * *
* Also, I have to get up at what passes in my case for the crack of dawn tomorrow morning–Connie and I are going to baby-sit young Roland and Jenny on a nice hack over the beautiful Hampshire countryside, which we have to get in before Jenny’s first lesson of the day. This could be extremely amusing in several different directions. In the first place, while Connie is a perfectly good trail horse, she is far from what you could call bombproof, and I think I told you that I was delighted when Jenny told me a few weeks ago that she’d taken her out on a hack and she had been shying constantly in every direction^ at shadows, falling leaves, imaginary pheasants^^ and so on: I mean, she does it to Jenny too. My guess would be that Roland will be better-mannered than she is. However the second gremlin in the soup is that Connie and Roland are seriously sweet on each other–Connie, drat her, has come back into season again, and they spend a lot of time murmuring fondly to each other through the bit of grating at Connie’s end of Roland’s stall. I have no idea how this is going to translate riding out together–in the usual run of things they both have a good attitude toward their work–but I’m sure it’s going to make some variation on a theme of oops, wheee and arrrrrgh.
Meanwhile it’s already late in the evening because I’ve been ringing handbells. . . .
^ Simultaneously.
^^ She is, in the curious way of horses, usually rather good about real pheasants.+ The answer to this would be that it’s not an imaginary pheasant, she wouldn’t be frightened of a pheasant, it’s an imaginary tiger. This would make a certain amount of sense if she didn’t also shy dramatically at butterflies and dandelion clocks and so on. Okay, wait, the butterflies are the eyelashes of the blinking dragon++ who is invisible except for his eyelashes–this is a story passed down through thousands of years of domestic horse life from mare to foal. And the dandelion clocks are the subterranean goblin outpost antennae. Okay. Got it now.
+ I said usually
++ Not the friendly kind of dragon
** But then, I usually am hungry. Sigh. Menopause. Lose Your Interest in Food or Gain a Whole New Wardrobe.
*** Unless you’re in Oz, of course, or some other place down there.
† I also love crumbled whole chestnuts in my Brussels sprouts.
†† No, not an ideal recipe for a crabby menopausal woman who suddenly finds herself gaining weight by profligate breathing. I’m sure typing the dadblatted recipe is going to cost me a pound or two. At the signing last week I ate two tiny brownie-y things, one spider^, and a glass of hot chocolate. And I had carrots and hummous for supper, going home on the train. And I was almost two pounds up next day. Arrrrgh.
^ No, no–it’s a kind of butter cookie
††† I only have one–cupboard space is limited–and it’s too small. After agonies of custard cups for the overflow I just used an ordinary loaf tin which works fine, although you have to be a little careful. You’ll feel safer using drop-sided.
‡ Chocolate does burn easily, and it will taste scorched before it burns. But it doesn’t burn or taste scorched as easily as its reputation says it does, and melting it with butter gives you a much better quality of barrel to roll over Niagara in.
Rainy Saturday. Make that very rainy.
Make that very very rainy. Hellhounds are not amused.
So, last night, during the quarter peal*, on the three, which is a perfectly nice easy cooperative bell but it does weigh a bit, especially when you’re frantically overringing (which I usually am anyway and then octuple that or so for fear of quarters) and especially after your conductor has yelled at you that you need to get your backstrokes in–which is the latest variation on a backstroke theme that is going to be engraved on my tombstone**–especially on the up dodge so after that I was REALLY overringing every time I came to the up dodge which meant that I was producing about 1,000,000 pounds of bell every pull. And about half an hour in–a quarter usually takes forty, forty-five minutes–my shoulder started going twinge. Twinge. Um. Twinge. This is the original ringing-down-in-peal shoulder, speaking of producing 1,000,000 pounds of swing by pulling too hard, not the Exciting Hellhound Thing shoulder. And I ignored it, which is the first line of defense against stupid injury, as many of you other klutzim out there will know. If I Ignore It It Isn’t Happening/It Didn’t Happen/It Doesn’t Hurt/I’m Fine/That’s Not Blood There’s Something Wrong with Your Eyes/ and Don’t Mention It On The Blog Because That Counts As Paying Attention. For any clever, careful, adept, talented, thoughtful, responsible people out there who are going, WTF?, hey, sometimes it works. You use what you’ve got available.***
But I did come home last night thinking warily about riding Connie this morning, and about the bit she likes as opposed to the bit she tolerates. But when I got to the yard this morning I was almost late and it was already starting to rain, which meant I had to get in and out of the indoor school before Jenny’s lesson† because there was no way the much bigger outdoor ring was an option. Even the indoor school is big enough for two horses, for pity’s sake, although I speak from the smug consciousness of riding a horse that steers, but an awful lot of Jenny’s pupils are paralytically polite and feel that if you got there first they don’t deserve to live, let alone occupy riding ring space.†† Thus I picked up tack and cleaning gear and bolted for Connie’s stall without thinking about which bridle. I’d snatched the one she likes, of course.
Jenny told me afterward that Connie hadn’t been ridden in a couple of days††† which may explain why she came out ready to do something. There was no need for stirring her up to get her moving today. She was, however, hanging on that right rein like an overrung bell–like a horse who is normally stiff to the right and hasn’t been ridden in a couple of days. So I went into Shoulder Ignoring Mode again and worked on getting her up and . . . I don’t know exactly what either of us did, except that Connie and I are learning to deal with each other, and ‘holding her up’ is a knack as well as brute strength, and for the first ten minutes or so my shoulder was saying Twinge. I mean it, stupid. And then it stopped. And Connie was well under me with her shoulders moving freely and her butt doing the work, and she wasn’t what you’d want to call light in the hand, but she was no longer an anvil falling downhill. Hey, how did that happen? If we’d been having a lesson, Jenny could have made us do it better, but the point is we were doing it at all.
And as I wrote to Merrilee a little later that morning,‡ I rang a quarter peal last night and had a lovely ride on Connie this morning, and I’m so swollen with self-satisfaction that I’d better get to work fast before I explode. Writing will fetch me up against my limitations fast enough. . . .
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* I think I’ve told you I subscribe to The Ringing World, AKA Bell Geek Weekly^. One of the articles in this week’s issue is entitled ‘It’s music, but not as we know it, Jim’, which only goes to prove that bell ringers may be geeks but they don’t keep up on their STAR TREK reruns, and it’s about someone who was invited to talk about bell ringing to a professional group of serious musicians: ‘To put the audience in a “music but not as we know it” frame of mind, I began, “Can you imagine: an instrument whose moving parts weigh a ton or so, an instrument with a delay of over a second between your action and its sound, playing an ensemble of such instruments to a precision of a few hundredths of a second, a form of music constrained to play every note before repeating any of them, composing a piece to last several hours in which no bar must be the same as any other, performing such a piece without any music? If you can, then you can begin to imagine change ringing on tower bells.”‘
Yes. It’s hard, okay? It’s brilliant, but it’s hard. It’s not only that I’m a klutz with jello for brains.
^ Okay, an example of extreme bell geekery: another story in this week’s issue is about a long weekend–Friday to Monday–a band of Brits spent on the east coast of America. In five days these bozos–all guys, just by the way–drove nine hundred miles and rang six peals. Peals are three and a half or so hours of standing up pulling on a bell rope, yes? Not to mention keeping your mind on your business. And I think perhaps I’ve told you 1,000,000,000 times or so how hard the brain work of ringing is?? And with jet lag-?
**She was slow at backstroke
*** Which is probably how you got in this fix in the first place. Klutzim should not ride horses, ring bells, walk hellhounds, etc.^ But I don’t want to spend all my life in a small padded room.^^
^ The only reason I don’t shut the piano lid on my hands is because the music stand folds down over it. I am waiting to find out how to have a sudden incomprehensible spasm which will lift the music stand off its hooks, fling it at myself in a flurry of sheet music and manuscript pages, and drop the piano lid, all in one never-to-be-forgotten manoeuvre.
^^ I admit there are days when this sounds rather restful.
†Which is another of these Rather Tall Girl on Rather Small Pony situations. There are several of them at Jenny’s yard.
†† This one in fact had been hanging around outside in the rain rather than disturb us at our haute ecole. I’d thought I heard someone fumbling at the door, so I organized us perhaps a tiny bit too quickly for our attempt at half pass–we’d mostly been doing rather well so I needed the discouragement of fouling something up before we called it a day–and as is, I fear, our wont, we started going sideways a trifle too dramatically–this is classic Connie: you ask for something and you get it, so you’d better want it–and didn’t quite run into the jump standards halfway down the long side but we might have. Which drove the thought of paralytically polite wet people out of my mind, or I’d've told them–Girl, Pony, and Mum–to come in.
††† So, what was Other Rider doing this week? Climbing Everest? Running for president?
‡ We’ve been having a little light banter about a review of CHALICE that has it listed as for ‘grades 7 to 10′. Yo! You out there! If you’re over 16, put that book down!