Ending December
29 December 2007 20:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronSounds like everyone had a good christmas, which is excellent news. I enjoyed myself seeing both families, getting gnarled by small ( but about twice the size she was a month ago ) puppy on Christmas day and being replaced in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sleepsy_mouse's affections by her ginger cat on Boxing day. We were going to call in at Lakeside ( a stupid-big mall by the Dartford Bridge ) on the way home so I could buy some new trousers as the only jeans I have that aren't ripped to shreds are my novelty ripped-jeans jeans. Unfortunately everyone else had the idea of january sales in their tiny minds and we took one look at the queues for parking and dashed off, pausing only at a big old tack-shop on the way home.
We have still not been able to getsleepsy_mouse's christmas present home- it's a hen-house which is one inch taller than the boot of my car and one inch wider than the boot of hers. This is more than just a little frustrating but I'm sure we'll think of something.
Today we had another lesson with Julian, and once again it was amazing. If I had learned as much in five hours of instruction as I'm getting in each half-hour session I would feel I was getting value for money. As it is, I'm getting so much out of these lessons they are effectively free. Brilliant stuff! Today when we were starting out and I was riding in walk with my eyes closed it felt no different to with my eyes open- when we had our first lesson it felt very different and much less stable. I've stopped feeling like there is any forward and backward movement in walk, it's just a steady rocking of the pony's barrel. I'm sure that stuff like this is probably obvious to most people who ride but it feels to me like someone is switching the lights on one after another.
Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be a little more clement and we will be able to go for a long wander out with our own ponies.
In the meantime, I got Portal for Christmas and a possibly psychopathic robotic test-mistress is trying to persuade me the tasks I have been set are impossible...
sleepsy_mouse's affections by her ginger cat on Boxing day. We were going to call in at Lakeside ( a stupid-big mall by the Dartford Bridge ) on the way home so I could buy some new trousers as the only jeans I have that aren't ripped to shreds are my novelty ripped-jeans jeans. Unfortunately everyone else had the idea of january sales in their tiny minds and we took one look at the queues for parking and dashed off, pausing only at a big old tack-shop on the way home.We have still not been able to get
sleepsy_mouse's christmas present home- it's a hen-house which is one inch taller than the boot of my car and one inch wider than the boot of hers. This is more than just a little frustrating but I'm sure we'll think of something. Today we had another lesson with Julian, and once again it was amazing. If I had learned as much in five hours of instruction as I'm getting in each half-hour session I would feel I was getting value for money. As it is, I'm getting so much out of these lessons they are effectively free. Brilliant stuff! Today when we were starting out and I was riding in walk with my eyes closed it felt no different to with my eyes open- when we had our first lesson it felt very different and much less stable. I've stopped feeling like there is any forward and backward movement in walk, it's just a steady rocking of the pony's barrel. I'm sure that stuff like this is probably obvious to most people who ride but it feels to me like someone is switching the lights on one after another.
Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be a little more clement and we will be able to go for a long wander out with our own ponies.
In the meantime, I got Portal for Christmas and a possibly psychopathic robotic test-mistress is trying to persuade me the tasks I have been set are impossible...
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no subject
Date: 30 Dec 2007 18:50 (UTC)I actually think the stuff you're learning is very simple, but advanced. Some people get to a quite high level of competition without ever realizing things like the motion of the walk is very much side to side, or without being able to ride with their eyes closed. It's amazing stuff...so exciting to learn isn't it? Reminds me just a little bit of the simple brilliance of the riding clinics I did ages ago with Francois Lemaire de Ruffieu from the Cadre Noir. What he said was often simple but brilliant like that too. Although from the sounds of things Julian is even better... :-)
no subject
Date: 30 Dec 2007 19:21 (UTC)He quotes Charles Harris saying that the mark of true genius is to take something very simple and make it even simpler. That certainly seems to be his aim.
It makes me appreciate how lucky we are to be in this part of the world- I may whinge about how crowded it is, but the best teachers and clinicians must necessarily be within a few hours travel just because there isn't room for them to be any further away and still be in the UK...