A black horse beneath a black sky

A good weekend, all told- mostly dedicated to horsemanship- yesterday I rode Othello again, a little further around the school and without Lou right beside us for reassurance, which was fantastic. Today we spent a while with Othello, working on picking up his feet, which he hates, but is apparently much easier to do politely if someone gives you tasty pony treats when you pick your feet up nicely. Never let it be said that bribery doesn't work.

This afternoon the weather was quite unusual and it took a while to realise that the reason the bands of high cloud looked so dark was that they were not cloud at all, and were instead smoke from the oil depot fires in Hemel Hempstead, which must be happening about 70 miles from here.
( Pictures of ponies and the sky )

I may be wrong about the smoke of course, it could just be clouds of roiling darkness out of London, in which case I would expect a beam of eldritch green light to start pouring from the Telecom Tower at any minute, anouncing the terrible march of the dark legions from Minas Moorgate...