endlessrarities | In The Bleak Early Winter...

Things are getting pretty serious in Wild Bird Land. The fieldfare arrived today, and started throwing his/her weight around. It kept harassing the blackbirds, then if that wasn't sufficiently bad news for our resident blackbirds, the thrush, who's normally very meek and timid decided it would join in the fun and start harassing the blackbirds, too. The poor blackbirds just can't win...

As for the robins... They spend more time chasing each other and fighting than they do in eating the food that's been put out for them.

All this drama serves to demonstrate how desperate their situation is just now, though we haven't yet had any of the 'garden rarities' that appear when things get really bad. Though J did report a sighting of a bird 'with a long tail' at the feeder in the front garden. I'd guess it was a long-tailed tit, though I haven't yet been able to confirm its identity.

We have another tame blackbird. He's displaying all the traits that 'Fruity McNibble' was renowned for. When I opened the back door this morning, he flew down onto the fence to meet me. When I went back into the house to fetch the Fruity Nibbles, he followed me up the path. And when I started throwing Fruity Nibbles out to him, he hopped up almost to my feet so he could get his share, then flew off across the road. Is it the same blackbird? I'd like to think so, but the chances of this particular bird going missing for four months or so then suddenly making a reappearance seem slim to negligible. And besides, this bird is very dapper. Fruity McNibble was anything but...

Unless he's had a makeover...

We had a very hard frost last night, so going out for a walk was out of the question (Note to self: buy crampons for fitting over hiking boots). The multi-million question was: do I do a workout, or turbo-train?? Since turbo-training is hell on wheels at the best of times, I was all set for doing Yet Another Workout when I suddenly had a brilliant idea. I'd arranged a horse-riding lesson for my step-granddaughter this afternoon, but hadn't managed to confirm the slot with her mother, so I'd been all set to cancel. But why didn't I try and get her lesson slot instead??

That's exactly what I did. Instead of getting bored out my skull on the turbo at home, I had half-an-hour with Molly in the school. It was a bit more expensive, but it certainly did the trick. It wasn't my usual teacher, but the alternative instructor was equally keen to pursue the 'Classical Dream'. And she's the kind of girl that when you say, "I want to work on turns', she does exactly that. Endless turns down the centre line in walk, and then in trot, working to attain a perfect leg position and perfect balance. If I had a pound for every time she said, 'Toes!' (my major fault at the moment is that I keep turning my toes out and letting my toes sink down) then I'd have enough to pay for my next three lessons.

And oh, boy, did it hurt!

But... Once again, by the time I'd been working intensively on keeping straight and tall for half an hour, there were major improvements in both myself, and Molly. The trot was active, and Molly, once again, was asking me to take a contact so she could go down onto the bit. It was tempting. I was longing to say 'sod it!' and turn my attention fully onto the horse, and work on her, but self-discipline prevailed, and I kept my mind firmly on what I was doing. I was getting snatches of something special, but to be honest, things are progressing so well as far as I'm concerned that I'm quite prepared to wait a bit longer before I turn my attention to her. The main thing is that she's bouncing along at a very sprightly trot, and she's not putting in those silly little hops that she used to be prone to. Which makes me wonder if the hops are all part and parcel of a horse being forced onto its forehand and therefore getting unbalanced by a rider who's not sitting properly.

My instructor asked me ten minutes in if I was feeling it. Of course I was feeling it! My thighs and calves were burning! "Good!" said she. But when she asked me the same question twenty minutes later, when I'd been trotting without stirrups and working exhaustively on the turns for what felt like hours, I had to say 'No.' And it was true. I was in The Zone. Everything was perfectly in tune and in balance, and nothing hurt!!!

This feeling didn't last very long. Before long, I'd collapsed in an exhausted heap. But it was great while it lasted.

It's moments like that, ladies and gentlemen, that make me realise why I throw away my hard-earned cash trying to improve in a sport that I've been hopeless at for decades. After thirty years or more, I've reached the radical conclusion that my place is not to tell the horse what to do, but to be more sympathetic to its needs. The poor beasts need all the help that they can get: they're forced to try and function as an athlete while lugging about a hefty, unsympathetic weight that's more of a hindrance than a help half the time.

It's been a real epiphany, and now I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere! Is it worth it? Oh, yes. Undoubtedly!