A BIG competition

We didn't have a good start today. The lorry wouldn't start and Superhubby had to get the superbooster machine out and fiddle for five minutes. Unfortunately he'd forgotten his shut-down routine last time we used it, and left the water pump switched on (not water again!!) and it had completely deadened the batteries. We've had the superbooster since we had a very unreliable old Bedford. We hardly use it, but when you need it it's a godsend.

Anyway, we get underway and are swinging along around the bends when ....... a cupboard door bangs and our portable TV nearly falls out and smashes on the floor. I shot through from the front into the living like a rat up a drainpipe I can tell you! Another legacy of Superhubby shut-down failure - he hadn't put the pins in to lock the doors. Yes, yes, I could have checked , I know!!

So it didn't seem like we were really destined to do well today, but we have got to the bottom of Tia's issues showjumping I think. And of course it was the rider, as it so often is :- ) When I face a really big course, I use NLP (neurolinguistic programming - talking yourself into it!!) I imagine that I jump a fence before the first fence, to get me started, and then one after the last fence, to stop that common fault of knocking the last one down. Well, I went into the ring and imagined going for my "first" fence - and she was not with me. She was hanging back and unsure what I really wanted. So it was me at Draycott, remembering Rodbaston (which may or may not have been me - do I sound like Jack Sparrow here :-)?

So I sent her strongly forward, "jumped" my fence, and then flew around the rest of the clear round course. The same happened in the competition - and we WON! Now, please calm down. Do not excite yourselves unduly. There were three in the class and the other two knocked down two and we only knocked down one. I told you it was a tiny show!!! But it did the job as a training exercise.

Something funny happened on the way home! Just half a mile from home we were stopped by a Department of Transport Vehicle Checkpoint. This as we are trying to get back for the kick-off of "that game". (In case you don't know over the pond there, there's a football (that's soccer to you, REAL football :-) World Cup on. He crawled all over the lorry looking for things wrong. Didn't find any (thanks to Superhubby) and as a last thing, asked us to use the window washers. Now lorry windows are big things, and lorry wash-wipes on old vehicles are pathetic when you have a window full of bugsplats on teh motorway. So Superhubby had changed the washwater delivery so it gushes out directly onto the blade. So when the blade wipes, it pushes a jet of water straight off the windscreen and fountains it directly over the head of the man from the Department of Transport ....... thankfully he saw the funny side!

Tetley is lovely but needs some sharp work tomorrow for his waistline. I'll get up early before it roasts like today. Caddy is going in the other direction from Tetley, reducing in fitness and his chest is getting deeper as a result. He's wolfing food too, and looking good.

Tia is such a horse. You should see her at a showground. She is just so calm and quiet and easy to manage. She's looking a picture, performing brilliantly and it is going to be a challenge at the end of the season to decide whether she should be sold to try to recover the money I lost on Smartie, or whether to keep her for another season. The weather closing in for winter might help me make up my mind on that. Meanwhile, she has been the best thing horse-wise to have happened to me this year. (Though I hope Caddy might overtake her in that in time.) Oh blimey, I can hear the chorus of "keep her"'s from here!

C