But no.
The air has been so cold that it has consistently turned my
fingers white and then numb even when they were encased in my thickest gloves. Last
Thursday Kamikaze Girl and I enjoyed a bit of fast work on Giant Horse and Anxious
Horse along the beach and ended up with hypothermia.
There was not a breath of wind that day and we were able to
canter side by side and actually have a conversation instead of just shouting
“What?” at each other for 10 solid minutes. This was nice, but the air
temperature wasn’t and it took another 20 minutes for my features to return to
normal. I should really apologise to all the people we passed as we cantered back along the beach, as they must have
assumed that I had taken advantage of a half price Botox offer.
The rain that we have had of late has turned my postage
stamp of a paddock into a water feature and even Wet Dishcloth Horse who is
usually eager to go out and play in the mud, has been quite reluctant to leave
his stable.
On Saturday afternoon I put him out in the field as he had
been in the stable all Friday night and all Saturday morning. It’s unnatural
for a horse to be stabled and although it was chucking it down with rain, Wet
Dishcloth Horse needed to go out and stretch his legs. He quite literally
glowered at me as I turned him loose in the mud pit and promptly marched across
the field, into his shed and refused to leave it until I went to get him in 3
hours later.
Although this winter has been a good lot easier than last
year, as usual I had my rose tinted binoculars strapped to my face until November.
I was dreaming of cosy afternoons tucked up in front of the log burner,
conveniently forgetting that I am unable to put my pyjamas on before 6pm
because I have a horse standing out in a muddy paddock waiting to be brought
inside. I have tried putting my wellies and waterproof trousers on over my
pyjamas but I just felt as though I was about to take part in an episode of My
Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. I’m not the sort of person who would venture into Tesco’s
at 11pm in my dressing gown, so I don’t go outside in my pyjamas.
Unless it’s
Sunday morning. Then I think that it is perfectly acceptable to run from my
back door to the stable, give the Wet Dishcloth some chaff and a haynet before running back into the
house for a leisurely coffee.
Up until January, there had been a lot less rain than last
year and this made me fairly cheerful. Although mud is an excellent exfoliant scrub
for your hands, it makes your horse look very messy and brushing off dried mud
creates gritty dust all over your face which in turn, makes the black
semi-circles under your eyes look even darker.
Thankfully we are past the worst part of winter, when it is dark by 4pm
and still dark at 8 in the morning. because there is nothing worse than going to work
in the dark and returning home again in the dark.
I like to have all my outside jobs for the week completed by
a Sunday evening. I fill 10 haynets to save me having to do them each working
morning, a whole bale of wood shavings is put in the stable to last the week
and I like to see my washing basket is empty before the working week begins.
In fact I have been known to have a builder’s dumpy bag
containing 1 and a half tonnes of split logs in the corner of my lounge on a
Sunday night, to save having to bring logs in during the week in the dark.
Okay, okay, you got me, that was a total exaggeration. There was only about 3
quarters of a ton of logs in the dumpy bag in the lounge that time.
Although the glossy magazines that I have become addicted to, depict winter as a wonderful time, I can assure you that it's not all cashmere socks, cosy fires, soup and hot chocolate.
But sometimes in the dark of winter we are blessed with days like this.
And that's when you forget the biting winds, the numb fingers and the rain. You even forget about the way that the skin on your hands splits open with exposure to the cold and the waterproof trousers that are still damp when you put them on the next day.
For a while, at least.
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