Acting As If: Lady Of Livery

I knew something was up, that something was out of joint: I have been out of ‘real’ time for the last while, between bereavement and jet lag — a lethal combo, do try to avoid it as best you can, is my advice to you — so I knew I was in trouble the moment I opened my eyes Tuesday morning.

I woke up, and immediately began worrying about how I was going to get to the yard later than day.

I had a launch to attend in town and I knew I’d have to do a drive-by as it was far enough away from the LUAS to be an issue; but the 44 bus has a stop near the hotel in which the launch was being held, so maybe I could grab the bus there and then get a taxi? But that was a total waste of money, even if it was going to save me a few steps. ‘Steps’ entered into it, as I am back on shanks mare {ha, ha} and walking up the laneway again; ugh, but having to walk alllll the way from the LUAS? That’s like 20 minutes, up a gradual incline of despair, which I was not in the mood for; if I skipped the launch, I could just get the bus to the end of the lane; but I said I would meet some pals at said launch; but; but; but —

Then I considered skipping the horses altogether, but I had overslept on Saturday, and missed the bus, and missed the lesson, and I really needed to go, to have a go, to move myself forward in some fashion.

Even once I decided to head into town and figure it out as I went along, well, I kept figuring out all the variables, and it was exhausting, and I couldn’t even imagine how I was going to have the energy to ride the horse. Which horse? Ha! Add this into the equation. I was fed up with Connell when last we met, and had gone back to Simba, but I still felt wobbly, and reckoned I’d rather have Connell if we were doing flat, but was not going to jump him, no way, in which case I would take Simba — or maybe even Delilah, because she knows when you’re a bit off and can take good care of you, but only if she’s in the mood —

So: I raced through the launch, got to the LUAS, used my Hailo app to get a taxi from Ballyogan to up-the-lane, rocked up to the office to pay for the term, only to discover that my usual lesson was cancelled.

{Cue laughter, somewhat demented.}

Would I just go in the 8pm lesson? Uh, no: it was 6.20.

Could I just mooch around on Connell? Yes, okay.

And thus began my very first time as a lady who is on her own, on a horse.

***

The very first time ever in my life that I had to get up on a horse all by myself was when I showjumped, also for the very first time; that was a lot of ‘firsts’ in one go. I can get up on Connell on my own, so that wasn’t the issue. The issue was: what was I gonna do? With him? Like, what? Mooch, as I had said, up and down the infamous laneway? Go down to the outdoor arena, and then mooch? It was perfect mooching weather, bright and clear, and not too cold, as excellent a spring evening as one could conjure.

But Connell can be a real slow coach on a walk, and I didn’t fancy the outdoor, even though it was gorgeous out. I didn’t really know WTF I was doing, and I didn’t want to make a big show of it.

Except I found that I did know what to do.

Connell greeted me with perked ears; I rubbed my face all over his neck and he thought that was hilarious, and demonstrated this by nipping me on the bum. He was saddled, I bridled him, I joined a Livery Lass in the indoor, I got up there, and I started going.

I decided to practice riding a little longer in the stirrup than I have been. I mean to do this every lesson, but then I feel the pressure of being in the lesson, so I don’t. The thing is, a longer leg means better aids, and better response, and better posture, but I always feel too wobbly. So I took the time to do a longer leg, at my own speed, and worked on my balance, and we went great. Then I did a whole bunch of transitions, and then I did the reining-back-into-canter thing, and then the Livery Lass, who’d put her horse back up, came in again and asked did I want to jump, and I said yes.

So I jumped, and he only stopped once, which is still enormously irritating, but in the main, we did really well. There was no one there to tell me what to do to get him to do something, so I had to do the things myself, and it was incredibly satisfying, to be able to do something — anything! — because I thought of it myself.

Then he was so sweaty and steamy that I took him for a walk, in hand.

It was still gorgeous out, maybe even better since the sun was starting to set, a misty red haze in the west. We both took our time, and both stopped at one stage to look at something. I can’t even tell you what, I mean, the mountains are always there to be looked at, so I guess we both stopped at the same exact time and looked at the exact same mountain? It was the most peaceful thing ever. Just standing, shoulder to shoulder, setting sun, brisk air, green fields.

I chatted with other riders along the way, and it was like… it was like I was Livery Lady, doing the Livery Lady thing.

I rode for the guts of forty minutes. Now, when I warm up the Big Horse of a Monday, when I volunteer for Riding for the Disabled Ireland, I am only getting warmed up in my own brain after fifteen minutes, then it’s time for me to get down and hand him over. Just as I am beginning to understand what might be good to do — leg yielding, maybe? Work on that wonky rein back? Canter transitions? — there’s no more time to do it in. This was the perfect amount of time to do an amount of work that added up to a good work out.

Le repertoire, though, he is limited:  I would need to be stocking up on things to do, on my own. Swot a dressage test, maybe? I’ve got a book of jumping exercises, with many, many things to do with poles on the ground, working your way up to actual jumps… There’s a mental fitness that you get, I am thinking, when you have to think for yourself. I am sure that there is a many a day when you just want to hang out with your horse, and do some serious mooching, but there’s also all sorts of planning that enters into it, which I hadn’t known.

If you had told me, seven years ago, when I wasn’t even able to get up into the saddle by myself, when I didn’t even know how to pull the stirrups down the leathers, that I would have gotten to this stage — well, I don’t know what I would have said. Not out loud anyway — but in my heart I know I would have been shouting Yes, pleeeeeease! How soon? Is it now yet?!? I would have immediately begun worrying about whether or not I’d ever be good enough, and how long it would take, and how could I get there more quickly and easily — and as it transpires, it took no ‘time’ at all. It’s now, now, and it feels like it hasn’t taken that long, after all.

***

Riding in Cars with Dads

John James Conley: 22 June, 1941 — 12 March, 2013

It’s winter, January, and in Ireland, the sun is already going down at 2 in the afternoon. The light is blue and chilly and sharp, and yet you can see, just around the edges of the sky, a bit of warmth, a bit of what in the fullness of time will become spring.

I’m sitting in the back of a car, and my friend AM is up in the front, and her dad is dropping me down to the bus after horseriding. Sometimes AM and I talk about the lesson, talk about the horses, talk about how we went or how they went or how we all went together. Sometimes she talks to her dad, and there’s a lovely, proprietary air about it, that says: this is my dad and we are talking about our life, and working out what’s going on for the rest of the day, about where I need to be if I need to be somewhere, and if he’s going to drive me there. I feel privileged to be let in on their negotiations and wrangling, as I remember it so well, because our dad drove us everywhere.

Anywhere we needed to go, our dad took us. I was brought to art lessons, choir practice, football games. He drove Katherine and I to a Rick Springfield concert at the Capitol Theatre, in Passaic, in a snowstorm. He dropped us down, and we ran off inside, with never a thought to what he was going to do next, and never a doubt that he wouldn’t be there when it was time to go. He drove John and I to endless Cosmos games, all the way up the turnpike to the Meadowlands, hours and hours — and hours — before match time, so that we could hang out at the team entrance and shout at Franz Beckenbauer to give us an autograph — hours and hours during which he just sat in the stands waiting for us, never doubting that we’d eventually take our seats, enjoy the game, and then he’d drive us home.

He drove Michael into Brooklyn to see me of a Saturday, and then drove all the way back to collect him on the Sunday. He drove our mother to work in Rutgers, every day, there and back. I’m sorry he won’t be around to teach any of his grandchildren — John, Joseph, Matthew, Michael, Sarah, Thomas, Mary Grace, and Daniel — how to tend to the engines of their cars using his innovative combination of duct tape and shoelaces. My dad took us all to the places that we needed to go, and set us down in the fullest confidence that we were where we wanted or needed to be, and we’d do or enjoy whatever we’d got there for.

He didn’t teach me how to drive — he taught Auntie Sue, and I don’t think I can repeat that story in a church. It didn’t go so well. He did go driving with me when I got my learner’s permit, and one time we were heading out towards 130 down Wood Avenue, and he shouted ‘STOP!’ — and me being me, I demanded ‘WHY?’ and kept on driving. I mean, we were going 25 miles an hour, we were the only ones on the road, and he was like, I want to test your reflexes, and I was like, whatever Dad.

When he lost his ability to manage a car, it was, for me, the saddest thing that he had to lose in his struggles with his health. As the aphasia got stuck in, and the words didn’t mean what he thought they meant, and his spatial and motor skills went astray, it was hard and sad, but really the worst thing, from my point of view, and I think for him, was that he couldn’t take us places anymore. Despite our own independence, it was still nice to get into a car and drive with our dad.

Bless him, though, he turned into the world’s worst backseat driver: at Christmas, Mom and I and he were in the car, heading for home, and he did not agree with the route that had been chosen, and let us know it. If there was a way to get someplace without encountering more than one traffic light, Dad knew it. I think he would have rather stuck red hot pokers in his eye than drive down Route 18.

This tendency used to drive me demented, because it seemed to me that going round about on minor roads was a waste of time, but he always proved me wrong. I have a punctuality fetish, the nurturing of which probably began in seventh grade, when I wanted to leave for basketball, now, and Dad wouldn’t go until it was time. He was always right, I always got there on time, in fact in good time, as he would say. I remember this to be one of his favourite phrases: all in good time. The upshot was that I would get to Saint Augustine’s exactly ten minutes before practice began, which was exactly when I had wanted to arrive in the first place, and he’d look at me somewhat archly and say, ‘All right?’ Yes, Dad.

‘All right, babe?’ ‘Oh, Dad…’

Dad gave us plenty of time to say our goodbyes, two or three years worth of downshifting, plenty of time to adapt and accept, even if it doesn’t make the lack of his presence any more acceptable. He gave us time to gather together, to allow us to work as one to help him in any way we could — more, I think, for the experience of all of us being able to do something for him, as a family, than because he wanted anything for himself.

We’re all deeply grateful that his passing was as calm and as dignified as the man himself; that he was known in the world as son, nephew, cousin, husband, brother-in-law, father, father-in-law to Sharon, Melanie and Scott, grandfather, and friend; that in the end, there was nothing, no thing, that could ever get in the way of his strong, unflappable essence; that the big man with the gentle spirit has joined all of our family and friends above, and is probably giving people lifts in heaven, and already knows all the back roads.

It is spring, now, and the light is coming back, only now, with the little extra something that is our dad, the little extra help from spirit that will be his influence, a voice in our hearts that is his, and the sure and certain knowledge that John James Conley always knew how to get around the stop lights and get us where we needed to be — all in good time.

1965

New Half Chaps: My Big 2013 Purchase

Very much liking. I was actually terribly bummed last week, when, between the rain and the gales and not wanting to walk up the long, long lane in the weather, I had to wait to wear these.

These are, as ever, from my favourite chaps place, justchaps.com. The craziest thing happened! I got an email telling me I could track my order, and I realised that I hadn’t given them my full address. So I rang.

‘Hello!’ says I, and then proceeded to introduce myself. ‘I didn’t give you my full address!’

A tiny beat of silence, and then: ‘I am working on your order right this very minute.’

We were both delighted, and slightly freaked out.

Obviously, they arrived, safe and sound. They fit really well, and are being admired enthusiastically wherever I go.

I do miss the hi-vis stars… may have to see about buying another pair of those. Or maybe the ones with the bright pink hearts?

I also got a new hat, which is okay. It all up to safety standards and all that, and it is light, as new helmet technology seems to be going in that direction. Except it is so light that two weeks ago, I was late getting out of the house, and actually did not have my hat in my rucksack. That’s how light it is. Now, I maniacally check, because it had been years since it was necessary to don a yard hat… and I hope never to have to do it again.

So that’s me, really, for the rest of the year. Well, except I’d like a new stick. And I’m on my second-to-last pair of cotton gloves, which are the only kind I like these days. Oh, gosh, and I’d really like a new long-sleeved top…

***

My foot is not on the seat, it’s just balancing on the sticky-out seat frame.

***

My Half Chaps: Worn Out in All the Right Places

I only noticed what a wreck these half chaps were the other day. I mean, I knew they were getting some wear and tear, but they are actually in utter bits.

I am very proud.

Not only because I’m not going off and spending money where I needn’t — sure, these’ll go another three or four months at least — but also because I’ve had them for years, and I guess I must be doing something right, because I think they are worn out in all the right places.

I bought these … at least, wow, five years ago? I remember going to meet my lift from the LUAS, and struggling to zip these up before I got to the yard. Now, they’re getting to be that bit too big, a combination of five years of breaking them in, and the loss of a few centimetres on my calves.

I’ve got another pair with blue stars. I got those mended because they are only starting to wear out — they are amateurs compared to these — and I’m saving them for when these are done.

Given the state of them, you’d think they were done, wouldn’t you? I think I am waiting until they unravel in the middle of a lesson!

I am proud of them, and myself. I have begun my seventh year of horseriding, making new gains, still working on some of the same issues [I can still be wobbly, and my hands can still be a bit loud] and these — these are proof to me that I have hung in there. That they are indeed worn out in all the right places, so I must be improving.

I had no idea, even though I loved the horses straightaway, even though I wanted to improve and learn, that I would be here long enough to completely blow out a pair of half chaps. I’ll hate to see them go! Long may they — ha, ha — reign.

If You Love Something, Set it Free… [The Miracle: Part V]

A couple of weeks ago — see, I didn’t even bother writing about this, because honestly, this is like the eleventy billionth post on this topic.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into the building at the yard where the lockers are, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye, as I was taking off my outerwear, that the walls looked yellower. Paint job? I wondered to myself — but maybe they had always been like this, except I never noticed? No, yellower, deffo, I thought as I simultaneously thought Oh, craaaaaaap. Sure enough, the long stick was nowhere to be found. And the tower of lockers that contained mine own had been shifted around, too. You know that weird feeling you get, when you know that something is changed — it’s like, your body knows something is weird, it is standing there with a key in its right hand and it knows that it is not going to fit into the lock, and it waits for the mind to figure it out so it can whatever comes next.

Located my locker, not the stick. Asked around, snooped around — nothing.

That was that, finally. All gone. The thing was, it wasn’t horse people moving stuff around, it was painter people, so, not a hope that they’d even just pitch it into the indoor arena.

I had this other long stick, I talked about it here, and I grudgingly brought it along the following Tuesday — and then realised when we were halfway home that I’d just left it on the ground! I frantically texted my instructor to please find it for me. There was no way I was going to lose two sticks in one week!

Then today I decided to take along a sort of medium-long stick instead of the red — okay, so, clearly, we are not deprived of whips in the Conley household. But the long stick was ‘the’ long stick, the Lassie Come Home of schooling whips, a veritable prodigal son of riding crops. I wanted that one, dammit, because, because — because I managed to keep it hidden, in an active yard, for almost two years!

It’s about its history as much as its length.

I walked down to the lower arena, to watch the end of the lesson and to save Connell the walk back to the indoor. His rider had just taken the fence at B, and was heading towards A. All the way at the opposite end to where I was standing. She had a stick in her hand. She had my stick.

The lower outdoor arena is 50m x 30m. 50m = 164ish feet. And I knew it was my stick. I experienced the moment of doubt that anyone would, from a distance of 50 metres, but: it was my stick. I knew it! I recognised the way it was frayed at the end. I felt — I felt a bit annoyed, as well as exultant. Annultant? I claimed it back nevertheless, because for crying out loud, this thing is like a homing pigeon. I gave my medium long stick to AM for the hour, and brought both of them home.

Have I lost my nerve?!?! I don’t think so. I think I’ll leave in back in its hiding place. It really is fiddly to carry about. Also: comments from the outside world have degenerated to the degree where I got honked at from a car on my way home. This allows me no time for a come back. Unacceptable.

I absolutely dare it to disappear again. I dare it!

Modern Technology Meets Horses, Works

My go-to website for ordering stuff is robinsonsequestrian.com, and I generally take a spin round their place whenever they send me an email, which is, er, twice a week. Or so. Ha, ha.

So there’s this hat, right? It comes in either blue or pink — like, a powdery, lavendery blue, and a magenta-ish pink. I say this like either of those are not worse than straight up blue or pink, worse in that everyone at the yard will notice, and probably not in a good way. Although I think I could pull it off. And the hat is only €45.

Except that it doesn’t specify whether or not it’s kitemarked, and I mean, who’s gonna make a hat that is not, but that weirdy string of letters and numbers is always featured on any info to do with hats, and even though I wasn’t in the position to buy it, I wanted to know. So I thought I’d email them and ask.

Then I saw that ‘live chat’ option.

OMG. Are they out of their minds? A] Hello, high technology! and B] A facility for horse-mad people to just ask a million questions about gear?

I was dubious. Equestrian centres in regard to websites and Facebook have only just — only just — managed to catch up to the rest of us, and sure, who could blame them for being a bit on the back foot? Horses take up time, even more time than the internet! The last thing most horse people have time for is virtual platform maintenance.

In fairness, Robinson’s is a business, and a well run one at that. So I hit the button and typed in my my query.

Thanks, Rebecca!

Go there now and try it out! It is utterly satisfying.

Fifty Shades of Hooray! Or: Extremely Kind and Incredibly Stunned

Some friends made me a gift of that Airowear Outlyne Body Protector that I was lusting after.

Holy wow, it is the most amazing thing that has happened to me in a long time. In, maybe, ever.

Fifty Shades of Neigh: Body Protector Lust

It’s not like I had the money to spend, but nevertheless: at the Dublin Horse Show, I went and tried on some new gear.

I am trying to remember when I got the John Lewis yoke that I’ve been using… I’d say maybe three years ago, at least? Getting used to being sandwiched in that thing, that big blue thing, took ages. But I’d had a pretty hard fall off of Amigo, and when I went to my physio for my routine appointment two weeks later, I told him I’d fallen and that it was still sore, up around where the bra hooks are. He checked it and said, Yeah, you’ve got a vertabrae a little out of whack, and I said out loud, Oh, right; I said to myself, in loud: ohholycraaaaaaaap.

It was time to woman up and start wearing protection; clearly, it was past time. I had officially gone up a notch {a centimeter, a millimetre} in my riding, and yeah, okay, should have been wearing one already, but now I was, and once I sweat the stiffness out of it, it was fine. As bulky and awkward and unattractive as it was, once the lesson began, I generally forgot all about it.

In the last year or so, I’ve been tightening it and tightening it, pulling the velcro closures closer together, shortening and shortening the straps. Looks like I’ve lost some weight, and the new one I wanted to get, the jockey-ish one that zips up the front, eh, it was still a bit pinchy under the ribs. I googled a bunch, and immediately fell in deep desire with the Airowear Outlyne, because it takes into account that the ladies have different requirements — ladies have breasts, and this piece of design excellence takes that [them?] into account.

I totally didn’t understand the sizing chart, and you had to measure everything: chest, waist, over the top of the torso, God knows. I put it out of my mind, because I didn’t want to buy it online and have it be the wrong thing. I wasn’t going to wear an important piece of equipment without it fitting properly.

Then I went to the horse show, and thought, Well, you know, I’ll just try some on. Why not? It’s no big deal.

Here is the Champion FlexiAir in black. It was jammers in Holmestead’s stand, and I took down a sample in Adult Large myself. I felt like this would probably be okay, since my present one is an Adult XL, and if it’s getting too big… I strapped myself in and it fit, mostly. Something felt wrong. I wiggled it around, and readjusted the waist strap, but it didn’t seem to be sitting correctly.

One of the ladies became free. This feels wrong? I said, really not certain how I knew that. I mean, all the closures closed, so… It’s too long, the lady replied briskly.

She fit me in one with a regular back, and pulled the straps even tighter. I liked it fine, it seemed a little loose around the shoulders, which would probably settle in time… but I wasn’t in love, much less lust.

Falling in love/lust at the Dublin Horse Show is the work of a minute. There is: So. Much. Stuff. Brushes, whips, gloves, half chaps, and booooooots, the long boooooots. If I think that the BPs are expensive, the boots are like, I don’t know, buying yourself a private tropical island. I don’t need long boots right now, and if I did, I’d have to get them specially made as my calves are not assembly line dimensions. This is totally cool, and I actually tried on a pair of winter weight mucking boots that mostly fit, but with long boots — long boots can’t ‘mostly fit’.

Ah, sure, I didn’t really like those muckers that much. Got nothing to muck, in fairness, anyway!

And then… and then. Pitched up to the Ayr Equestrian stand in Simmonscourt and there it was. The Airowear. I… I touched one, the one in the front, that looked vaguely like an adult size. I stood there and kept staring at it, like a, like a stalker, until one of the ladies asked me, would I like to be fitted for one?

Oh, would I.

The fitting-man eventually became free, and picked up the very one I had been gazing at. He started talking, but I barely heard what he said after he said, This is a ladies slim — sorry, a what? A slim? He fussed with straps and adjusted panels, and then told me to zip it up.

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhh. OMG. It fit like it was made for me, personally tailored. It cinched up the boobage completely yet comfortably. I went to sit down to check the length of the back — perfect. It sparkled in the sunlight, it glowed as I admired it in the full-length mirror. I swear, it is shiny, it just doesn’t look that way in the photo {I swear!} Yer man kept saying over and over, It adjusts to your shape, can you feel it? It adjusts to your shape, and it was all I could do stop myself telling him to leave us alone, me and this astoundingly supportive and well-fitting body protector. Leave me! I yearned to shriek. Leave us in peace!

It felt… so strong. It made me stand up straighter, it fit perfectly over my shoulders and down around my back. And yet it felt light, too! It was amazing!

And then your man did the sterling-to-euros conversion, and I reluctantly, but decisively, drew down the zipper and handed it back.

I asked him twice more: Ladies slim regular? Slim? Ladies? After he walked away, and I waited for my pal who was trying on jodhs, I kept going back to look at the tags. Ladies Slim Regular. Huh.

I spent the rest of the day thinking about it. Knowing better than to borrow against future expectations, I tried to put it out of my mind… but I would occasionally blurt something like, Well, at least I know what fits, now; and Christmas is coming. And: If only is wasn’t rent week! But, no, no: this is a thing that can wait.

In other news, the Irish showjumping team won the FEI Nations Cup, which was fantastic!

It took my mind off that body protector, anyway.

The one I have is fine. It still fits, it’s still safe, all is well, it’s grand. Seriously, Christmas is coming!

Dear Santa…

The Will to Power < 2012 Style

I’ve written about this before, but things have changed.

I Will Not React, I Will Not, I Won’t!

I AM, KIND OF.

I came to tweeting reluctantly. I thought it was nonsense, and then, encouraged convincingly by a pal, I began.

It is fun! I find that I tweet about sports and food and the weather, mainly — oh, and bus journeys. Posts from both this horsey one, and my beauty one automatically link to Twitter; you may have even found your way here from there.

It was the first day of Gran Prix jumping at the Olympics. It’s a bank holiday here, and I am staycating, which is super fancy talk to describe my indulgence in the holy trinity of me, my couch, and watchin’ stuff online.

I thought, Ah, sure, one computer is enough, I don’t have to try to work and watch at the same time. Eh, no, need the auxiliary, just so I know who’s up next, and how everybody is doing, and, well, stats. I am fully in touch with my inner dude, and bless him, he’s a bit of a nerd.

I also was busy tweeting, of course. And most of the tweeters are female, and most of them know what they are talking about. More than I do, because informative tables notwithstanding, I sort of don’t understand how almost everybody can qualify for whatever the next round is, because it looks like almost everybody did. I mean, didn’t you have to qualify for the Olympics in general? Should they not just be taking it from there?

I keep those kind of questions to myself, and will quietly google them later. Because, you know, no need to sound like a dope in front of the whole world. Who wants to do that?

The dudes who tweet stuff like, Shouldn’t the horses be the ones called Olympians, or whatever. I knooooow it is pure make-the-horsey-people-crazy bait, and it all I can do, not to react. Yes, dude, let’s just let the horses jump the course all by themselves, who needs people? I will grant you that those horses are smarter than many humans [AHEM] but I am not entirely convinced that they can read the numbers on the fences. So, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell where to go next. So, riders are actually helpful in this instance.

I went and googled horse jumps entire course by itself and came up with nothing. So there ya go.

I could, of course, simply fail to tweet, but it is fun, and somehow or other, one of my tweets was a top tweet, for like most of the event, and I don’t know why it was, but I was delighted with myself. So there, trolls. I won’t engage with you directly, so don’t waste your characters.