glenatron | You win some, you lose some.

What an extensive weekend.

On Friday we had a gig in Guildford- we have changed our image to include sharp jackets and shirts. Appropriate that our first show with the new outfits was in a small room full of teenage kids pretty much flipping out and loving it. Consequently it was amazingly hot. Playing was great fun but I couldn't flip out as much as I wanted for the last two songs cos I was sweating like I'd just been hosed down and had consequently drunk so much water I was sloshing and I thought I'd probably chuck. Really good fun, though.

On Saturday Zorro and I went for our first hack.

sleepsy_mouse brought Joe along and we explored up the trail a bit:

The view from the gallery.

Zorro photogenic, me not so much.

Joe grabs a meal on the go.

DINNER TIME!

It was brilliant- Zorro was really happy and marched along looking at everything but pretty much entirely unperturbed.

Saturday night was the Hag do. It was classic, really good to see a whole lot of you again and apologies to anyone who didn't get the attention they deserved. Those kazoos weren't going to play themselves, though.

We arrived home at six in the morning on Sunday and promptly went to bed until midday.

In the evening we were back up to the yard and I was doing a bit more with Zorro, in the school this time.

Zorro puts in a sharp disengaged stop from a brisk trot.

We did a bunch of riding, me trying to remember all the things that have slipped in the time since I last had regular lessons and sort them out. I did fairly poorly but I got a few improvements as we went around, which was good news.

By the time I got off, after some really lovely work, Zorro was really with me, so we walked back to the gate matching each other step for step, him stopping when I did and generally just being amazingly bless:

Today I wanted to do a little work with the big Z as I'm going to be out tomorrow night and I just mostly want to be doing stuff with him when I can. I set up some blocks in the school so we could do exercises round them and did a bit of basic leading with him around those.

Zorro explained that he would like me to do a bit of work on personal space, and he did it thus:

That's my right side, those are teeth marks.

I know exactly what I did and it was totally my fault but still not alright for him to think that is acceptable. It would be fair to say I went ballistic, turning into a whirlwind of spinning ropes and driving energy that sent him shooting back to the end of the rope and then backed him up from there.

After that he was a bit jumpy but we did some good work, me really making an issue of any attempts to be mouthy on his part and generally being more high energy than usual but working hard to keep things controlled and stay patient and calm. By the end of the session he offering some really nice work and much less prone to trying to grab his rope or my training stick so maybe a lesson has been learned there.

It certainly has been by me- he's so good it's easy to forget that he can be quite argumentative and that we are still very new to each other. It hasn't really knocked my confidence I just feel a bit sad that he thought it was necessary to do that.