This Reality Podcast show #110 – which includes a live phone call with singer/songwriter Jessie Grace, a pre-recorded interview with singer/songwriter Ben Walker, four tracks of musical goodness and a bit of rabbiting about any old thing – hit the world last night.
It’s funny how everything seems so fast and frenetic (and just a little bit frantic?) in the studio, yet suddenly, a whole hour has gone by. Weird.
Anyway, it’s 7.30am Saturday, the sky is blue and clear, the sun has been doing its best to warm the planet for an hour.
This afternoon I’ll drive down to Larkhill, on Salisbury Plain, to walk the cross-country course (twice!) for tomorrow’s BE one-day Event.
And drink hot chocolate. And eat a home-made chocolate brownie.
I believe that walking the cross-country course twice is more than equal to a hot chocolate and a home-made chocolate brownie.
They must, surely, balance each other out?
Before I head southwards I’ll ride Tom this morning. I also need to check the lorry over, make sure that everything I need is stored away in its proper place, and rinse out and refill the water containers
I’m taking a proper groom with me tomorrow. This will be the first time I’ve ever used help in this way.
This could be an interesting experience, having professional help, but I hope that having someone there – to do the grooming, tacking-up, studding-up, lunging, tack-changing between the phases and wash-down afterwards – will reduce my stress levels and allow me to concentrate on the riding.
I just hope that Tom concentrates as much as I will!
Up early because of the time difference; Tea and toast were taken back to bed and the Melbourne Grand Prix was (mostly) watched.
Dozeage may have occurred.
Ablutions and a second breakfast were satisfactorily completed, a trip to Gatcombe Horse Trials followed.
Hot chocolate was partaken, a brisk walk around the mile-and-a-quarter Intermediate cross-country course followed.
A fried egg bap with lashings of brown sauce may have occurred.
Another hot chocolate and a chocolate fudge brownie vanished from one of the trade stands.
Show-jumping was watched from the ring-side seat of the car.
Satisfied, slightly tired and a little drowsy we headed home where I changed and made for the yard.
Tom was quickly groomed, tacked up and heading up the track where we rode the gallops twice.
While Tom cooled off I had a brief chat with Sammi to plan our erm, plan of action (cross-country tomorrow, schooling Tuesday and Wednesday, show-jumping at Cooksons on Thursday, schooling Friday and Saturday, show-jumping at Allenshill on Sunday, cross-country on Monday).
Groomed Tom, rugged him up and let him have tea.
Home.
The evening stretches before us with perhaps a film or a couple of episodes of Buffy and a bite to eat on the menu.
Saturday’s BE went according to plan. Except for the dressage, the show-jumping and the cross-country.
The weather broke on Friday and the sky began throwing heavy rain down while I was walking the show-jumping and cross-country tracks in the afternoon.
The rain continued overnight and in to Saturday morning.
We arrived at the venue at 6.20am, I got changed in to dressage clothes, went off to find the secretary to get my hat tagged and pick up my numbers. Then, in the still pouring rain, I unloaded Tom, tacked up, put studs in his hind shoes, mounted up and hacked over to the dressage ‘working in’ area.
We warmed up for an hour in the pouring rain, Tom became more fractious with every minute, but I don’t think that was weather-related.
By the time we were called in for our test it felt as if I was sitting on a bomb.
‘Argumentative’ would be a good word to describe how things went. Tom gawped at everything, lacked attention, offered the movements no significant or consistent concentration and, as a result, we failed to achieve any of the softness and suppleness we have built up over the last four or five months.
In fact we bronked our way around the arena in the pouring rain, it was very exciting. I thought our first canter transition was going to be acceptable, based on the previous movement, but Tom had other ideas. On the canter transition he fired in a really big buck and pinged me so far in to the air that when I looked down I could see his whole shape beneath me – I must have been a good two feet out of the saddle.
And that sums up our dressage test, it was all pretty much like that. Argumentative.
Back at the lorry I switched Tom’s saddle from dressage to jumping, changed his Bit, put his martingale, brushing and over-reach boots on and hacked up to the show-jumping warming up.
Actually, we worked in nicely; I didn’t over-jump him, it was still pouring with rain and although the ground in the show-jumping warming up was holding up, I didn’t want to risk slipping or skidding. We jumped just enough to make sure that we were forward-going, had a nice jumping rhythm and a set of brakes.
The minute we rode in to the arena though, all this changed.
Tom wouldn’t go near the sponsor’s banner that we had to pass, so I leg-yielded him forward until we were clear and he would go in a straight line.
We transitioned to canter, pushed on forwards and turned to fence 1.
Tom stopped.
Three strides out he started slowing to a halt and that was us with a refusal at the first fence. He stopped because he just wasn’t looking, didn’t have his mind on the job at all and was gawping at the fences, the decorations and the flags.
I wheeled him away, represented and we zipped over and then we hit our stride. Our ’stride’ though, felt much too quick, Tom was in the driving seat and he wouldn’t give me the soft bouncing show-jumping canter that we’ve achieved in recent months. No matter how much weight I put in to the saddle and tried to collect his front end, he wouldn’t hear of it.
After fence 8 we had another issue where he spooked and stopped because we had to pass close to a petrol generator that one of the catering tradestands was using. I was able to re-collect, get our pace together again and we flew over 9 and 10.
Unfortunately I was defensive at fence 10 because a) it was an enormous spread and b) we were flying at it. But we finished the show-jumping with 10 time and 12 show-jumping penalties.
The time penalties were to be expected after the refusal at fence 1 and the dicking around after fence 8. The jumping penalties we picked up were because he wouldn’t give me the show-jumping canter, so instead, we flew over everything too fast and too flat and, inevitably when going like that, we hit a few fences down.
Back at the lorry I changed out of my soaking show-jumping jacket and in to cross-country colours.
The cross-country working-in area was wet and boggy. We were held in the collecting ring for 45 minutes while we waited for the Air Ambulance to arrive, pick up a poor, unfortunate casualty and medevac them to hospital.
Because of the ‘hold’ on the course our start times didn’t apply so we had to rely on the good will of the cross-country stewards to let us go asap. Unfortunately asap didn’t happen and we were told that we could go ‘in 4 horses time’.
We were told that three times, with five minutes between each telling. I’m not whining about this. The accident happened and, as a result, the organised system of times gets thrown out.
But, unfortunately, when we were called out to the start box the persistent rain and the seeping cold had even worked their way through my body protector and Tom had gone off the boil.
I hadn’t wanted to keep working in over the cross-country practice fences because the take-off and landing surfaces had, by now, been well dug up!
When the starter said ‘Go’ we rode out of the start box but Tom didn’t have the customary forward-doing keenness about him, showed a hitherto unexplored ability to go sideways and he refused at fence 1.
We represented and cleared it and went on to fence 2 where, despite me riding him quite hard, he stopped again. We represented and cleared it but as soon as we rode down the long, steep hill to fence 3 I could feel him backing off again.
So I took the pragmatic approach, I called it a day and we retired from the competition at that point.
Yesterday, over tea and biscuits in the tack-room, we had an inquest over the performances of all four of the horses from our yard that had competed on Saturday. The fifth horse had been due to compete on Sunday, but the organisers had abandoned the event due to flooding on Saturday evening which had made the course unsafe.
Our dressage sheet will make interesting reading when it arrives, but it won’t tell me anything that I don’t already know: Tom went in to hyperdrive, wouldn’t listen and was disobedient for almost the entire test.
The show-jumping could have been better, but we have a cunning plan to help sharpen Tom’s concentration. We’re going to adopt French Blinkers, a device that Tom’s previous owner, James, used. Hopefully the French Blinkers will sharpen Tom’s concentration on what’s in front of him and reduce the opportunity for him to spook at things.
The cross-country was nothing more than unfortunate. Being held in the collecting ring for such a long period of time could not have been avoided, and the very soft going that made me not want to risk jumping the cross-country practice fences too much, was just one of those things.
However, the use of French Blinkers for the cross-country phase will also help sharpen Tom’s concentration and focus his mind on the job in hand.
We’re also going to change Tom’s feed. Normally I can get inside his head without any difficulty, but on Saturday the atmosphere at the One Day Event scrambled his brain and all I could get from him was static. Reducing some of the more ‘active’ components in his feed will hopefully help him to calm down.
And we’re considering swapping his nosesband from a ‘flash’ to a ‘grackle’.
Yes, I’m disappointed at our performance. The dressage was dire (50.5 penalties, when I’d been expecting – based on our recent performances – something in the 29-33 range).
The show-jumping could be improved, but there actually weren’t too many things wrong with how we went.
The cross-country was the biggest disappointment, knowing Tom’s enjoyment for cross-country fences.
I could say all kinds of things in mitigation: our first One Day Event together, the first One Day Event of the season, the weather was awful, the ground was unpleasant, we were cold, we were wet…
But the truth is I do have higher expectations of us than the performance we turned in on Saturday.
In a few weeks time we go all the way down to Wiltshire to do it all over again.
Saturday’s pony party British Eventing One Day Event calls us for:
Dressage
08.18
Show jumping
09.09
Cross country
09.58
This means a horribly early start.
Allow an hour for travel to the ODE = 07.18
Allow another hour for working-in = 06.18
Allow another hour for putting travel boots/bandages on, loading up. And then at the other end, checking in, tacking up, getting changed = 05.30 leave the yard.
Allow another 45 minutes to get up, eat, shower, dress and drive to the yard = 04.45.
So that’s a 4am alarm then.
I’ve told Soph that she can stay in bed, I wouldn’t expect her to turn out for all that – although she has said she’d like to be there for all three phases.
Memo to self: get the camera tripod out and put it with the video camera.
Today we schooled on grass – for the first time this year – and schooled around white dressage markers, to simulate the first phase.
Tomorrow morning we’ll pop around an eight-element show-jumping track in the outdoor arena and then go for a hack.
In the afternoon Tom’s being prettied up (again!) and having his mane plaited.
While that’s going on I will drive up to the Event venue to walk the show-jumping and cross-country tracks; as you can see from my times, I won’t have time to do these things on Saturday!
How was your show-jumping session with Owen today?
Well friend, I’m not terribly glad that you asked.
We worked in the outdoor arena. The session started with Tom spooking at a flock of killer equine-dissolving vampire pigeons (the kind that can come out in daylight) that were lurking with murderous intent beneath one of the boundary trees.
It took almost 20 minutes of working-in before Tom had forgotten them, had jammed his eyes back in to his head and his pulse had dropped back to somewhere near normal. But I couldn’t get his canter back; he was on his forehand and keen to gallop strongly, not particularly interested in achieving the collected, bouncy, off-the-forehand show-jumping canter I was asking for.
Anyway, we worked through it and, with some fine-tuning from Owen, we jumped a challenging track that he’d built to test us in preparation for Saturday.
However, on a pass over an altered track (because Owen does like to keep us on our toes), we were in the air over a skinny (a very narrow fence) which we’d reached off a very nicely collected, forward-going canter, when a person with two dogs on leads walked around the corner a couple of metres in front of where we were going to land (but they were outside the arena, obv).
Tom has obviously not seen people and/or dogs before. He did a massive spook.
Except we were in mid-air.
So as his left forefoot touched the ground, he wheeled around (yes, he actually did a 180-degree turn with just one foot on the ground. Owen later said he’d never seen that done before!), and then flashed off in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately I was still in the air and, equally unfortunately, unlike Tom, I was still subject to the immutable laws of gravity and physics.
So as Tom vanished from underneath me I found myself rapidly approaching the ground at a speed of around 25 mph and from a height of around 17-hands – plus the 4′3″ we were off the ground.
And believe me, that’s not only a long way to fall, it’s a fair old speed to be doing the falling at.
Anyway, it took four or five minutes before I’d got my breath back, I hopped back on and we rode the track three times. Owen changed it once more and we rode that once before calling it a day.
So now I’m back home.
The stiffness from the fall is beginning to set in; back, shoulders, neck, head, arms – all of these have been compromised in some way and suffering reduced mobility and a fair old amount of pain. I also had a biggish nose-bleed and bit my tongue, in to the bargain.
Tom, it must be said, was a total star. We jumped his little (big!) brown bottom off today; Owen threw everything at us – incorrectly-distanced related fences, spooky fillers, skinnies, severe angles and sharp corners.
I feel we’re just about perfectly prepared for Saturday’s one-day event. I’m under strict instructions to work Tom to the same high standard as one of Owen’s lessons, every day for the rest of the week – which could be tricky if I’m as stiff as an ironing-board for the next few days.
Allegedly I swore at Soph at 4.15am. This doesn’t sound like me at all, does it?
DOES IT??
Good, I knew we’d get the right answer eventually.
I spent all day standing on top of a very high hill on a common in Hampshire, eyeing up clever horses.
It is Tweseldown Horse Trials this weekend (it runs from Thursday to Sunday), and Sammi was competing today.
The girl did good. Actually, she did very good. The show-jumping was a bit of a mire after persistent rain and the cross-country was a little ‘deep’ in places, but she rode very tactfully and kept the lid on a supercharged horse with great skill.
A week tomorrow it’s our turn at OX15 5EX.
We’re going cross-country schooling tomorrow afternoon; Owen’s taking two, Sam is taking hers and there’ll be me and Tom.
The next day I have a show-jumping session with Owen. And another show-jumping session with him on Tuesday.
Monday we’ll school flatwork.
I could do with another cross-country session towards the end of the week but I have to be in Leeds on Wednesday and in Oxford on Thursday, and that wipes those two days out for travelling to another track.
Maybe go cross-country schooling at home on Thursday, if I can squeeze in the time?
Friday I’ll pop Tom around the gallops for a couple of laps.
And that brings us to Saturday, when we do it for real.
I’ve seen the section lists and thankfully none of the five horses from my yard are in the same sections, but it does seem as if most of us will have early start times.
Bummer.
This means that we could all, in theory, be doing our dressage, show-jumping and cross-country at more-or-less the same time.
Oh well.
In other news…
We bumbled our way through another podcast this evening.
Soph makes an unfounded malicious accusation that I swore at her at 4.15 this morning.
Fresh from our awful appearance at Hartpury’s JAS (show-jumping and simulated cross-country) competition last Saturday, and fully recovered from all of the aches and pains that go with being soundly dumped (though, since the bang, I have been farting up a storm on an all too regular basis!), the weekend is almost upon us, when we try it all again.
On Saturday Tom and I are off to William’s for some additional show-jumping practice.
On Sunday we’ll trundle up to Solihull for a crack at another of British Eventing’s JAS competitions.
And, at this stage, if not as confident of success as I was before Hartpury, at least I’m not thinking this could be another disaster.
So what’s changed to instil the confidence?
The Bit.
I’ve reconfigured Tom’s bridle with the Snaffle piece, removing the nathe French Gag I tried at Hartpury.
I might be proved wrong in my logic, but after thinking long and hard about what went wrong, and after talking to a couple of very learned people, it’s entirely possible that Tom is such a sensitive soul (!) that the way the French Gag works could have upset him, even a Happy Mouth nathe gag.
The change back to the Snaffle will sacrifice a large portion of braking for forward-goingness, but at this stage of the game I want Tom jumping forward and freely and without being sensitive in his mouth.
I want to educate Tom not to tank off with me, rather than muck about with gadgets. I realise that education is a longer-term objective, but I think implementing a quick fix will only bring more problems, not fewer. Although I will add in mitigation, I do know I need to use a Bit with a little more edge for the cross-country phase – a Snaffle isn’t going to cut it!
Anyway, Saturday is the ideal time to try my ‘back to square one’ plan and see how it pans out, William will, I know, test the pair of us quite hard.
Sunday is the time to make it all work ‘on the day’. At least we’ll be well ‘jumped in’ after Saturday!
We schooled on Tuesday evening and Tom felt fine; a little forward (keen!) but nicely balanced on his turns and working really well in to his transitions.
Didn’t ride last night, by the time I got home from work I was so ridiculously tired that we had a quick tea and were in bed by 9pm.
I’m going to make every effort to ride today. I would like a crack over the show-jumps in the outdoor arena if I can get my act together, otherwise we’ll have to jump indoors – though going by the weather forecast, jumping indoors might keep our bottoms dry; jumping outdoors probably won’t!
So that’s this weekend.
Next weekend we’re back at Allenshill for another Eventer Challenge; the following weekend we’re cross-country schooling at home.
On Saturday I’ll be loading Tom in to the lorry and we’ll be trundling out of the yard at about 06.30, and heading westwards into darkest Gloucestershire for the first of our JAS competitions.
I’ve put Tom on to full livery for tomorrow, so the girls will bath him and trim and groom and generally tart him up and do all the really top stuff that I cut down on because I like to get home before 21.00 most nights.
I’ve put the lorry ‘on charge’ as an insurance policy; there’s nowt worse than turning up at some horrible hour of the morning, all ready to rock and roll, only to have the bloody thing refuse to start. It’s not temperamental really, it just hates very cold and very wet mornings. Unfortunately those things are a regular feature of this time of the year so, just in case, the battery is on charge.
We had a good workout this evening, JP had us testing ourselves through lots of half-circle jumping around a track indoors. I feel well ‘jumped-in’.
Tomorrow I’ll give Tom a relatively easy night just so that I can spend some time cleaning tack and loading the lorry in preparation for Saturday’s early start.
1. I ache still, every joint. I might resort to painkillers today.
2. We did the studio thing again last night and recorded the 100th show of This Reality Podcast. Old age might be creeping up on it because there’s no swearing, neither of us killed anyone this week and the ranting is kept to a minimum. But we do bring you some top work from very talented musicians. You can sample the listening experience on the website here http://thisrealitypodcast.com/?p=669 or pick it up in iTunes here: http://bit.ly/25zMa8
3. I took Tom to Allenshill yesterday and we came joint 4th in our class. We got 40.5 for the dressage which I’m unhappy with (I thought we should have been in the low-to-mid 30s), we were clear in the show-jumping but had issues in the simulated cross-country section. Tom stopped at fence 1 and 4a and if I’m honest I had relaxed after the show-jumping and eased back to riding him 60% instead of 100%. Ironically, I was so bloody furious at the stops that I really got on the case and fired him round the rest of the track; the three problem fences that I thought we’d have real issues with (the water tray, the corner and the skinny) we flew over. So it was good but also not good because it should have been so much better. Also, the weather was complete and utter piss. By the end of the day I couldn’t have got any wetter if I’d stood, fully clothed, in the shower at home for two hours. I had puddles inside my riding boots, no shit.
4. It’s 1pm and neither of us are up yet, in the accepted definition of being up (showered, shaved – me, obv, dressed). We were up really early but we went back to bed with mugs of tea and fell asleep.
5. As soon as we’re up we’re going out, otherwise we won’t get any fresh air today. I’m taking Soph to a place as a surprise. And later we’ll have a bite to eat somewhere. And maybe a visit to the cinema? Up in the Air is on in Witney and there’s an 18.30 showing. We’re so rock-n-roll.
6. I see that Microsoft have released yet another security patch for Internet Explorer v6 because that’s how various cyber attacks against Google, Adobe and other organisations were carried out. Microsoft advises its users to download the patch to close the security vulnerability. I can think of another way of closing the vulnerability – use Firefox or Safari.
