A very ordinary day.

I try a slight new routine, moving my blocks of work around. This seems to be a faint success. I put on 2277 words of book. We are at that stage. I’m just typing my head off. This is not ideal practice, but deadlines must.

Today, I had to do some exposition. I hate it. I’m bad at it. But sometimes it must be done. Sometimes you can’t do fireworks and sparkling prose and look at me doing a bloody tap dance; sometimes you just have to move the story forward.

The mare is still a little sore in her shoulder, so she gets the day off. She is funny and clever this morning and makes me laugh. She has learnt what the word breakfast means. I let her out into the set-aside for her morning free graze as the feed is mixed. Then, when it is all soaked and done and ready, I go out and yell ‘breakfast is ready’, and she lifts her head, looks at me as if to say ‘do you mean it?’, and lopes up from the far corner, bringing her little Paint with her.

She sticks her head in the shed to check the food has been properly prepared, with her best duchess face on, rather like Debo Devonshire being shown the new asparagus at Claridge’s. (I have no idea whether the D of D actually eats asparagus at Claridge’s, but this is the state of my loon brain at the moment.) I look at the mare, and point and click, and she walks kindly in through the gate and takes her position by the fence.

You’re not really supposed to do this with a thoroughbred. It’s not BHS-approved. You’re supposed to take them out in a rope and halter for their pick and then lead them back to the field. A chestnut mare descended from a Derby winner is not supposed to go gently in the direction indicated from a mere twitch of one human finger. But then, Red the Mare is one of the cleverest people I ever met.

Stanley the Dog gets to have a mighty rumble with Edward the Puppy, in the autumn leaves. I go to do my HorseBack work. I eat a ham sandwich for lunch. I do not seem to be furious any more. Just a little overwhelmed with work and wishing it were slightly less muddy and a bit jangly round the edges. About par for the course, as I rush towards deadline.

Or, in other words, a very ordinary day.

 

Today’s pictures:

Interestingly, even though Edward is a quarter Stanley’s size, and very much the junior dog, he gives as good as he gets. Mostly mornings, he stands on his hind legs and boxes Stan the Man in the face with his front paws. Mr Stanley takes it all with amazing grace.

Did not take the camera to the paddock today, so these are from a couple of days ago. We haven’t had Myfanwy the Pony for a while, because she has been taking the opportunity afforded by the change in the weather to COVER HERSELF IN MUD, no doubt as some kind of health cure. I finally managed to catch her on a faintly clean day:

Appreciating the silver service:

‘I think I would prefer the French dressing to the melted butter….’ (Sorry, still on asparagus at Claridge’s theme.)

Rather serene hill:

Almost sure this shall be filled with typos and howlers. Brain gone phut. So bear with me.