Hunny Bunny!

On Wednesday, it was time to refresh an old acquaintance as I was assigned Honey as my horse for the evening. It’s been close to three years since I last rode her, and then it was for the jumping class. I remember she could get quite spry and even frisky when the fences reached 80, 90 centimetres, but that she’d be quite, quite lazy as long as it was dressage or lower jumps.

Honey

I watched her in the beginner’s class before us, and she did look rather lazy (though the rider did make brave attempts at getting her more alert), so I started my riding off with … making her stand still, natch. :p

Later, after having managed to get her moving forwards, she turned her tactics 180 degrees and started running away from doing any work – nose up, no reactions to half halts, etc. Smart of her, I have a much harder time getting around that than I have with getting a horse to go forwards. Ah well. Occasionally we had really good moments with proper hind action and she seemed to enjoy leg yielding and working with the pre-stages to the schools, so all in all we had a good lesson!

Quinny

Bouquet

The first week or riding school meant a good start of the semester. I got to ride Quinny on Wednesday and Bouquet (Mrs. Bucket(?)) on Friday – quite different as horses go, but both of them are good for me. Not saying that I think I ride them well, but I do manage to keep a decent seat on both of them, and we have some form of communication going on throughout the hour, which is nice.

Hoo kaers bout spelin an gramer an shyt!?!?!?!

Spending time on Internet fora introduces me to a plethora of bad spellers and posters with barely even a touch of grammar, much less a grasp.

Sometimes I complain.

That doesn’t go down well. (Complaints rarely do – isn’t that strange!?)

The main argument for not bothering with such mundane and 20th century shit as spelling, grammar or style (for the advanced culprits) is, in my experience:
“Who cares if it’s perfect as long as everyone understands what I mean?” (or rather along the lines of “Who cares if its perfic aslong evr1 no wha I meen?”)

Well… I just recently thought of an analogy that might explain why I think everyone should be more careful with their language and their expression.

If I am sitting at a table with a 1-and-a-bit-year old kid, I sure as hell will understand both “Wanna go potty”, “Gotta go potty” and even just “Pottyyyyyyy!” Fine.

If I am sitting at a table with a 32/42/52-year old who goes “Me too gotta go potty!!! I wanna, I wanna, I wanna!!!” I still will understand it, but … Yeah. Point made, I think.

The occasional mistake and typo will not make you look like an arse. Expressing yourself on the level of a pre-school kid and claiming that it’s not your problem, but the receiver’s … well – it just makes you look like wanker.

My, how time flies!

I’ve been quite busy preparing for the trip to London, looking for jobs and attending my riding classes, and in an instant the blog goes silent for almost a month. Sad, I am.

Toulouse or not tou louse…

Three more lessons on neurotic, nervous nerve wreck – last week Wednesday and Friday, and this week’s Wednesday.

Nothing much happened. We did make some progress, but because of the spookiness, kept returning to zero to start over again. While I really love this silly beast, she sure as hell ain’t helpin’ mah ridin’ improvement.

And this last Wednesday the lesson itself was a nightmare for anyone on Toulouse’s back – exercises that often ended up in facing other horses coming the “wrong” way. Anything that’s out of the ordinary helps making her more tense. Probably a lot of it has to do with the fact that it’s making me tense as hell too. I am not really scared of hurting myself, but I really, really, REALLY don’t want to be involved in a collision between horses in the arena because I fear the horses wouldn’t come out of it in tip-top shape.

So, riding her is a feckin’ chore, but when it’s good, it’s gooooood.