I'm glad we had our lazy day yesterday as today certainly made up for it. I rode Q this morning who was much better in terms of settling for grooming and preps; just did a little milling in hand before clambering on. He was in good form and we did loads of transitions, working up to "touch and go". I was keen to revisit the collected canter work from yesterday, not least to see if the developments I'd felt had been some sort of fluke. It turns out that no, it was no fluke and he was apt to sit more on the right rein from walk-canter and reinback-canter. As is his tendency he is a master at making it easier for himself and will take a quarters-in approach if he even whiffs an opportunity so I shall have to guard for that but even so he's not going against the hand as he was so there is definite progress. Maybe it's all that standing on his hind legs battling with T over the fence.

Went back to the farm shop afterwards to advertise the kittens. Wahhhhh I don't WANNA. Am having to exercise full mind control over this but really we can't keep all those cats however sweet they are. Meanwhile they are galloping around the place making a suprising amount of noise for such little bodies, and the rescue kitten is going great guns too by not allowing the mere fact of her roughly third of the bodyweight of the others to stop her from participating fully in the rough and tumble of daily play. Ballsy little thing she is. So just for the record Sid says we are going to keep the tabby, the tortie and the rescue. That's Sid's decision and not mine. Should there later be French strops (as I fully expect that there will) about all those bloody cats I shall remind him of this.

I lunged T in the field (a) while I still can, and (b) to give us extra space, and he enjoyed the opportunity to really move out. Wish I'd ridden him but there were so many things crowding around in my head to do I felt the best course would be to lunge him and crack on with it. Must note to self how much better it is to get them both done in the morning to give me the rest of the day for other doings; it's so much better. As it was I could put them out in the summer paddocks and crack on, first of all by finishing the weeding of the front garden - which sounds easy when you say it quick but in fact was the work of a couple of hours involving me pitting my wits and increasingly puny muscles against a series of partiularly determined grasses, brambles and those sticky climbing things that get into everything and are a bugger to shift. Now I look like I've been dragged through a hedge of hawthorn at speed.

I've also poo picked four paddocks (6 barrows) in lieu of the fact that Pheeel has not turned up with our sodding chain harrow and helped Sid finish off the electric fencing, which he spent all day doing. We've added another strand along the top of the adjoining paddocks in the hope that it will cut down on those 5.30am fence repairs, and also in preparation for when the boys have free access to their summer grazing. I'm going to start putting them out there overnight from Monday evening, which will work out better in terms of getting them worked in the evening and so far so good in terms of their coping with the grazing.

So here I sit. completely farked and contemplating, as I often do on a Sunday evening, just how it is I'm going to drg myself through another week of full on work, with so many projects on the go that sometimes I find myself in the office staring into space wondering what the hell I'm going to do next out of a wealth of Things To Do. Sometimes I'm not sure that making a list is all that constructive a thing to do.

At least I've remembered to charge up my nanod, which is good, as sometimes it's the only thing that keeps me sane on a daily commute awash with petty irritations for the terminally fatigued.