Batten Down The Hatches.

Last night's fierce winds were only a foretaste of Storm Darragh the worst of which is due to hit us around 3.00 tomorrow morning. The official advice is not to go out at all tomorrow morning as there may be gusts of up to 80mph. Football matches and other events have been cancelled including sadly the Charities Christmas Fair which was due to be held in the Hall. Even M&S in town won't be opening until the afternoon. We've made our preparations here, bringing in the aluminium garden chairs (don't want those being flung through the windows) and moving anything else that might get blown around. Apart from structural damage my biggest concern is that the power will go off so we've made sure that phones, Kindles and the laptop are fully charged. Before we turn in for the night we'll push the sofa against the French doors and the table against the single door to stop them blowing in. Not much else we can do. Peter and others from the rowing club spent the afternoon moving the club's three boats from the boat park next to the beach to the back of the public car park on the other side of the road which is well away from the beach. Because the beach has so much shingle, whenever we have high tides/storms the stones get flung off the beach onto the road and can cause a lot of damage.

This morning everything looked relatively calm as I sat outside with my coffee. 

A bit later on I wondered if the large amount of gulls and jackdaws wheeling around my neighbour's drive were there because he'd been throwing bread for them again. (Not a good idea.)

When I got to the stables I found that I was going to be riding Meg one of the new horses. She's 16hh, a little less than Hazel the other new horse who is 16.3hh. Due to sad circumstances (not mine to divulge) she hasn't been ridden much for quite a while and is consequentially carrying a bit of extra weight. This makes her rounder and the saddle wobbly which in turn made it harder for me to check my stirrups and to sit straight. I had to start by putting the stirrups down 10 holes as she had been ridden by a youngster in a jumping lesson yesterday. Even then the stirrups were too short and as one of them was on the last hole I had to dismount while a new pair was put on. She's not very forward going at the moment but the biggest issue was her anticipating leg yielding. In order to get her to listen to me I changed the exercise to going straight and boy we went all over the place to start with. One interesting thing was that when I went to tack her up I found her bridle very different to a standard bridle with a cheek lash rather than a throat lash. I had a look on-line and see that it is a Barefoot Contour Physio 2 in 1 bridle which is good for sensitive horses and can be adapted to being used as a bitless bridle. I would love to ride bitless but I think you would need to be a very good rider and have a rapport with the horse something that isn't going to happen with a general purpose riding school horse. 

Photo from the web. This horse looks a lot like Meg though she is all brown without any markings on her face.

After riding I did my usual shopping and as it wasn't raining I called in at the framers and found the Bryan Pearce picture ready to collect. I also did my bit to support local businesses and bought one of Pwdin's brownies from the vending machine. Peter was out doing the boats when I got home so by the time I had unpacked the shopping and put the washing in the machine I was ready to collapse into the armchair with the brownie and a large mug of tea.

A photo from disco aerobics last night. A bit blurry as we dance with the hall lights off. I'm kneeling in the front row with my glowing green dog collar. There were less of us than usual due to the already poor weather.

Gosh - We just had the Red weather warning come through on our phones. Things are getting serious. Stay safe everyone.