Rug Battles.

Today has been cold and wet and did I mention that it was cold?

Ever since missing the black rubbish bag collection the time the bin men turned up at 8.30 I make sure on those weeks to get everything out in good time. Of course since then the bin men haven't arrived until 10.30. As was the case today but at least that meant I was up reasonably early. I even got ten minutes outside with my coffee between showers.

With no riding on Friday as it's Good Friday I booked myself on a lesson this afternoon. Being someone who is happiest when life runs to a routine it was quite disconcerting to have not only a change of day but a change of time for my riding lesson. Doing a one-off activity like the long ride is different but it felt very odd to be doing my Friday routine of; riding, industrial estate, Morrison's, town and Lidl three hours later than usual. It was hard to know what to do with the time at home beforehand but I did the initial cutting and pinning of Peter's Viking armour. He gets a bit fidgety at having to keep trying it on but I've got as far as the basic shape with a generous allowance so that I can pin and trim it while he's wearing it. (He's going to love that.)

 

When I got to the stables there was a group of youngsters going out for a two and a half hour hack in this horrible weather. I was much happier with an hour's lesson inside the school. There were only four of us and I was riding my lovely head tossing Hazel again. It was a different person teaching but I enjoyed the lesson. The main exercise was to leg yield to the side in trot and then canter straight away which was fun. Hazel is pretty good at leg yielding but not so good at cantering when asked. It gave me something to work on. Afterwards I offered to put Hazel's rug on after taking her tack off. I'm sure these rugs have got it in for me. I got the rug on and then spent ages trying to find where to stick the Velcro ends of the straps holding the neck cover in place. (They had to tuck into a little pocket.) That finally done I looked at the rug and thought it looked too clean to be the right way up. Undid everything, turned the rug over, saw that it was dirty on both sides and thought I'd got it right in the first place. Repeated the process, saw a label and realise that I hadn't got it right in the first place and had to turn the rug one last time. Poor old Hazel must have been wondering what was going on. 

Afterwards I bought a replacement hinge for the small garden gate to replace the one that got bent in the storm and did my usual shopping rushing around town to get out of the bitterly cold rain. No choir tonight so I can have a relaxing evening.