Going On the Bit (or not)

Making tea for RPD to take to the opening Sunday of his bowls season would have been a soothing and relaxing task, had it not been for RPD’s anxious hovering and handwringing, and his pleas ‘not to make too much!’. It is very disheartening to hear that there might be such a thing as too much of one’s cakes.

It’s not only the Bowls Season that’s gearing up: leaflets and flyers for the summer’s local pony-shows have been fluttering down around us from all sides. So exciting! Pony-girl and I pour over them for hours, selecting all the classes where ancient, mediocre pony with nervy third-rate rider might be in with a chance. We would happily enter everything, but there is no point until we get some hint of any forthcoming trailer-space for Clyde, and I am frankly tired of dropping hints. It’s not dignified and it doesn’t win you friends. But! the schedule for Sudeley Show is out, the local event we went to last year when we were wistful onlookers with no hope of a pony, and we have always held that up as the focus of the year, the pinnacle of our showing dreams. And we are certain to go, since it's close enough to the stables to hack there. Mind you, PG is already working herself into a nervous fit at the thought of weaving Clyde in and out of the heavy traffic zooming down the main Cheltenham-Stratford Road. Since NagsR’Us has had its share of disasters lately with horses out on the roads spooking, bolting and engaging in various hair-raising encounters with cars, I am also not happy about this whole horses-in-traffic concept – why, we can be terrified of a giant bucking beast safely confined in a rubber-padded arena, no need to factor in speeding metal death machines! I can already picture me plodding alongside the intrepid pair for 5 miles carrying a distress beacon and a resuscitation kit, but nothing can really dent our insouciance, this is spring and it’s Show Time and it really is Where the Fun Starts.

Before Sudeley Show we have Pat’s own Dressage Gala on May 1st. PG is working hard to improve Clydey’s suppleness and submission, and it involves something mysterious called ‘going on the bit’. A clueless non-horsy person such as myself can only dimly grasp the concept of this, but it’s something to do with the horse’s outline and its head carriage. Clyde doesn’t get it any better than I do and has his head how he feels like it from one moment to the next – this can be poking vaguely in the direction he’s going, or, on days when he’s wearing his grumpy hat, glowering darkly down at the floor. We have begged Pat for half an hour of emergency private tuition, but with a mere 10 days to go, even a miracle worker like Pat has little chance of turning Clyde into a dressage horse and unkinking pony-girl’s shoulders from their Quasimodo-like hunch. But we'll be there no matter what!