03.12.2006
So I complain about getting older. Each time autumn comes around I start worrying about my lost youth or whatever. Last year I narrowly avoided a crisis by buying the shortest skirt in the shop to make myself feel better. This year I decided that that was a very immature way to deal with it, so didn’t in the end. Besides I was skint and as I have never been able to pull of wearing cheap looking miniskirts I figured it was better to leave it. But September turned October and my favorite club was still a dump, I was still far too drunk and my friend Tanya was still a great laugh. So despite my fear of the opposite the world kept turning and nothing changed really.
So I complain about getting older. Each time autumn comes around I start worrying about my lost youth or whatever. Last year I narrowly avoided a crisis by buying the shortest skirt in the shop to make myself feel better. This year I decided that that was a very immature way to deal with it, so didn’t in the end. Besides I was skint and as I have never been able to pull of wearing cheap looking miniskirts I figured it was better to leave it. But September turned October and my favorite club was still a dump, I was still far too drunk and my friend Tanya was still a great laugh. So despite my fear of the opposite the world kept turning and nothing changed really.
Come to think of it what I should be complaining about is why I never learn. Why I never change a sure to fail formula. I should know by now that it is not a good idea for me to drink a bottle of wine after having skipped dinner, never mind two, not have any water the whole evening and then turn the heater on full before I go to bed - still wearing a jumper and my boots. What is an even worse idea is to then have booked in five riding lessons from midday on Sunday and have left the car the other side of town. Still I do it again and again.
But to my defence at least I always make it there more or less on time and teach to the best of my ability, although the quality might be slightly reduced by the fact that it hurts to speak. And despite my dislike towards people who teach whilst sitting on the fence I have got to admit that on rare occasions I find myself doing exactly that. It might look unprofessional, but it is a lot better that passing out in the middle of the school.
On these occasions I always find myself thinking about that time Petchie and Adam where teaching a kiddies group lesson each in the big indoor school at Welly. Halfway through the lesson when Petchie looked over to the other side of the school, probably to check Adam’s ass out, he realised that all he could see was Adam’s legs sticking up in the air from behind the mounting block where he had been sat nursing his hangover and calling out the odd “change the rein” and “heels down” a few minutes earlier. Whilst the ride kept trotting around the track and the parents were still smiling at their young hopefuls from the grandstand seemingly unaware of the half dead instructor in the corner, Petchie managed to as discreetly as possible make it to the other side of the school and fish his sleeping drinking buddy up into a vertical position so he could continue the lesson.
As I was having an on-the-fence-Sunday I should also have known that riding would not be a very good idea. But then the girl was terrified and the damn thing about to launch her off quite spectacularly. So when she nearly fell off for the second time and started crying only five minutes into the lesson I felt like it was the easiest option after all. It was her first lesson with me and in my experience the ones who fall off in the first lesson rarely come back. Besides, telling her to be firm and consequent with it really wasn’t getting us anywhere. So I laced my big winter boots up and mounted this particularly vile version of a warmblood trotter now turned riding horse. Or actually I take that back, there is no way you could call it a riding horse.
Having forced my boots into the far too small stirrups I asked it to walk forwards on a half long rein. This quite modest request in my opinion resulted in it reversing 50 metres whilst kicking out at my leg and then at my stick as I got my wits back and started beating it. The more I beat it, the faster we went –backwards. Then when we finally hit the fence and it was forced to go forwards, it started bucking. It has been a while since the last time I sat on something so intent to dump me and it was certainly a long time since someone who wasn’t going to give in had sat on Trotting Bitch from Hell. It took me about 20 minutes of rodeo performance to convince it that when I asked it to go forwards - I really meant it! Then I spent another 20 minutes on it -mainly trying to figure out the nicest possible way to tell the girl to shoot it.
In the end I told her it was not the horse for her, in fact not for anyone, and that her suggestion of giving it away to some horse-huggers who are stupid enough to spend their time retraining trotters was the best idea I had ever heard. Despite the hang-over I refrained from saying that personally I would have shot it and spent the meat money on something nice. She had already cried once that day.
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