Isolation, Lock-down 2 , Tier 2 & Christmas Cancelled!

Askeaton - Photo: Elli Birch, Boots & Hooves Photography

The six weeks since I came home from Portugal have been filled with so many emotional ups and downs, hopes and hairdo’s suspended, then back on and now suspended again. I sit here today struggling a fair bit, and feeling so glad that we live an outdoor life with horses and other animals, and also so sad that the only family members we will see this Christmas are Sophie and Alex. We missed out on Rory’s first birthday in May and now we will miss watching him wreak havoc on Christmas Day. Other families are so much worse off than us, and let’s hope that the vaccine roll-out will be swift and effective so that by summer we can set about life with some view to the future.

April and I arrived home to two weeks of self-isolation which segued straight into Boris’ Circuit Breaker Month. Week 1 went fairly easily as my day for the first week consisted of mucking out, putting the horses in the field, and then carting stuff from the lorry to the washing machine, drying it all and then putting it all back into the lorry or wherever else it lived, by which time it was time to get the horses all back in again. Luckily the rug washers and repairers and the boot menders were among the randomly assigned essential businesses, so Mark was able to run those errands as well, so that by the time April came back to work the lorry was completely cleaned out and repacked. Having far too much free time in the second week of isolation means that it’s all been steam cleaned as well.

We had so much rain while we were away we couldn’t turn the horses out day and night, so the three that went to Vilamoura were out by day and came in in time for tea. Because the fields had got so wet, so early, we also brought Emma and Culana in at night. This gave me the opportunity to get Culana back into work properly. April had done her initial walking work before we went to Vilamoura, and with nothing better to do it was lovely for me to wander quietly round the woods on her. She has had two and a half years off after having a Deep Digital Flexor Tendon injury at the beginning of her seven year old year. She has been so good, and seems to be so happy to be doing a little bit of work. She is the best hack ever, quiet but very forward going, and I had forgotten what a lovely ride she is. Fingers crossed she has found a new home for the New Year, but otherwise we are happy to keep her ticking over here - she feels amazingly sound at the moment, and we are working on building up the muscle she has lost with slow work and feeding her Saracen Releve (which has lots of calories), Stamm 30 feed balancer and Equi-jewel, which is stabilised Rice Bran in pellet form which is very high in oil.

Pakkse has also come back to livery with us, because we have such lovely hacking, and are lucky enough to have fairly dry land so we can turn the horses out most days. So by the time April came back to work after two weeks it was fairly full speed ahead. We gave Askeaton, Heidi and Khalissy a quick lunge before climbing back aboard, but actually they were very good. They have come out of the tour extremely well, and after three weeks of just gentle hacking, which extended their easy time to five weeks, they have been ready for some flat work and getting back to jumping.

While I was away Sophie and Alex moved into their lovely house in the Elm Grove area of Brighton, so once I was allowed to leave the house I met up with Sophie and went for a lovely walk round the area. It’s absolutely lovely, compared to London everything is so close by, a park at the end of the road, schools round the corner, bakeries, cafes, pubs etc all within 5 minutes walk and only 15 minutes walk to the North Laines.

Then on Friday I went for a walk with Anna, Rory and Twiglet in Bushey Park, which is very close to Anna’s house in Teddington. It was just so lovely in the Park, and Twiglet is so well behaved that Rory could lead her by himself, which was very exciting for him. Bushey Park is an amazing and very wild green space full of extremely tame deer, swans and an amazingly relaxed looking heron.

I am really pleased that my teaching has picked up a bit during the Autumn, I really enjoy helping people acheive their aims with their horses and am thoroughly enjoying helping Jemima Kingdon Jones with her lovely little horse, and riding Carla Dellow’s horse for her while she is expecting a baby. Hopefully Jet will be perfectly tuned for Carla when she returns to the ring in the summer. Among my lovely regular pupils I am thrilled to be teaching Kayleigh Grant and the lovely Lulu again, and looking forward to seeing Claudia Savage with her new horse. Hopefully we will stay in Tier 2 for long enough to actually get some benefit from the work everyone puts in.

Very sadly Penny Richardson, show jumping correspondent for the Horse and Hound and a lovely friend, died just as we came home. Her clever family managed to arrange for us to join her beautiful funeral service on line, but many of us have lost a very valued friend who was the most brilliant company - someone I really looked forward to spending time with at shows. A few of us are working to keep her FaceBook page Jump British going and I think she would be very pleased to see how many new members we have.

It’s been a useful time to catch up with maintenance jobs like clipping, horse dentist, vaccinations and physiotherapy, and finally we were ready to have a little jump. We set off for Hascombe Farm which is now run by the SFB Equestrian. All the horses were very excited to be out and about, and the indoor school was lovely with a very good course already up for us. It’s always very interesting to see how the young horses come out of an international tour, and it was very pleasing that all three horses seemed on fabulous form, and Askeaton in particular felt very sophisticated. We were joined for the day by Elli Birch from Boots & Hooves Photography who took some great photos both at Hascombe and at home.

I managed to have a very good training session with Trevor Breen, Khalissy was rather overtaken by the excitement of it all, but the other girls jumped very well, particularly Heidi who is feeling really fantastic. They have come out of Vilamoura very fit, and very confident and I feel very happy with them.

We managed to fit in one show, the Pyecombe Christmas show. I just took Khalissy and Heidi, as Askeaton had been a little bit sore. We had a lovely day. April plaited and decorated Heidi and Mark’s precious, and very little worn, Christmas jumper had its longest ever outing. It was a really happy, safe and well organised day, and both the horses jumped really well, they both feel ready to step up a level now. Many, many thanks to the Light family who work so hard to provide exactly what the clientele want. Safe, well run shows, with excellent courses built by Ben Townley.

We are now facing a very gloomy Christmas and an uncertain New Year. Already our first show of 2021 at Bury Farm is probably cancelled, and everyone’s stables are bursting with fit horses with not enough to do. But hopefully the end is nearly in sight and we can all manage to stay safe until the New Year.

I hope everyone has the happiest, healthiest Christmas possible, and here’s to better times in 2021.