Wish I could go into hibernation – and of Books, Baths and the ‘Con Trick’

OK, here we go again, a cold and rainy weekend, with the time change to boot. Saturday was just miserable, our outdoor arena made me think of high tide. There was no way we could work the horses in that muck. So I bit the bullet and went shoe shopping instead. Heels, to be more precise, to go with my evening gown. I’m invited to a private event at the Tower of London end of November, and in typical fashion “I have nothing to wear!”. OK, yes, I do have a “suitable frock” as the Brigadier General organizing the event calls it. And now I also have killer heels to go with it. How I will negotiate the cobble stones in and around the Tower remains to be seen, though. I’ll probably go barefoot half-way through the event. But my mind is never far off horses, while at the shoe store I couldn’t stop thinking how I’d rather buy Dubarry boots than sexy heels.

Sunday the rain stopped and we decided to take Chambord and Saumur out for a spin in the woods. It was COLD, not even a mile in and I couldn’t feel my fingers. That time my mind actually wandered off the horses and on to my bathtub. Ah, nothing like luxuriating in 100F water with a great book. I am reading Clare Balding’s autobiography “My Animals and Other Family”. It is absolutely wonderful, and there are so many things that hit home.

One paragraph gripped me especially, it’s the advise Clare gets from her father’s French assistant trainer: “Life, you see”, said Erwan, “it is all – ‘ow do you say? – a con trick.” (Here I paused reading, because in French ‘con’ is not a nice word, ‘Idiot’ is one of the more tame translations).

“I mean ‘con’ as in ‘confidence’. The more confident you are, the more people will believe in you; and the more they believe in you, the more confident you will actually become.” 

I couldn’t agree more!