Grand developments

After quite a shitty and stressy weekend I felt quite perky on Monday; got quite a lot done at work and bounced (ok fell asleep, missed Tonbridge, snored and most likely dribbled) my way home and decided to ride Q. Work on the arena is going very well and we've had cause to reconsider our surface, so a bit of research to be done there. And, needless to say, a bit more money.

Q was on very good form and blissful to ride; I love him when he's like that. Not that I don't always love him, of course. It's just that on occasion the depth and breadth of my love for him might lurk a little further below the surface when, for example, he's trashed the fence again for the 40th time in a week, or when he's charging around high on spring grass not wanting me to catch him. It was still pretty warm so we interspersed a lot of lateral work with stretchy trot and finished up with piaffe. I wish it was as established in hand as I'd enjoy working him in hand with it too to help him get stronger, but I feel Rui's expertise will be needed to assist us with that. What's great though is all I have to do by way of aids is "assume the position" and he knows exactly what's being asked. Bless his beautiful big Portuguese heart. I love Lusos I do. Which, on balance, is just as well.

Speaking of Portugal, we've been on tenterhooks this week waiting for news on the grading of the mares. I was staggered, quite literally, to learn that Alfama got 73.5 points and Xacra 75.5! This is momentous news for us and all we now have to hope is that Xacra can join Alfama in uptheduffness and they can both come home to Blighty as soon as it is safe for them to travel. Once we've dispensed with the top soil from the arena by flattening, rolling and reseeding, and getting rid of that remaining rubble once and for all. Oh, and arranged some sort of field shelter. It's all actually starting to become a reality, the concept of having all the horses together on our own place so that we may begin our breeding plans.I must confess that I was nervous about the grading as Xacra is not a big mare and we haven't seen Alfama since she was two years old, so this is really excellent news.

I've pretty much decided on a Flexiride surface for the arena. We are looking at it being finished on Saturday and then there's the small matter of having to sit and look at it for TWO WEEKS while it settles. Nobody mentioned the need to sit and look at it for two weeks.