2nd week already

Monty and Celebrity - Poster Image 1

This last week has gone by very fast, I can't quite believe I've been away from home for a week already. It was a busy, busy day for Monty today so I spent much of the day online, trying to sort out my order at the Apple Store, which for some reason wasn't going through on either of my credit cards. Eventually I tried customer the customer service international line by Skype only to find out that I had missed their opening hours by 7 minutes.

Later on I took a call from Debbie who'd had a request from HRTV (Horse Racing Television) for a picture of Monty to make into a poster for a showstand and she thought I might have something useable. The problem was that they wanted a portrait style image and the vast majority of my pictures were in landscape but I managed to pick out a few that were in portrait and crop a few others down so that I had a selection to choose from. Monty chose 4 that he was happy to be used and I sent off some low res versions for her to choose from.

Monty and Shy Boy - Poster Image 2

Monty was too busy to ride but he arranged for me to go out with Maya in the early evening. She's from Dorset but is out here running his courses and is one his top instructors - there's less than 30 qualified instructors worldwide so it's a big deal to get that well qualified. I got saddled up on Celebrity and we rode out onto the racing track. After a lap or two at a walk we trotted another lap. I didn't think I'd get all the way round at a trot but I did, I suppose I'm starting to get acclimatised to it a bit better now.

Then Maya, who was riding Monty's big horse, Chrome said she was going to have a canter. I wanted to go as well but didn't want Celebrity trying to keep up with them if they started to go really fast so I held him back until she was half way around the track, then set off at a nice pace. I managed to go a full lap and it was lovely to feel the wind as we went, the full heat of the midday sun was off by then and it was just the perfect temperature to ride; Celebrity had hardly broken sweat at all.

It was interesting to talk to Maya about some of the differences between the way things are here compared to back in the UK. The average annual leave allowance here is only 2 weeks which makes me feel very lucky to have more than double that. She also told me about some of the medical expenses, e.g. around $5,000 for a root canal. I'll never resent the £20 a month I pay for dental insurance again.

After we finished the ride out and it was time to dismount I realised I couldn't get my right leg over the saddle and had to ask Maya to haul it over for me. I took Celebrity back to his stall - he's quite happy to follow my scooter around now - and went back up to the house. By the time I got off the scooter I realised my right hip was almost completely seized up, fortunately most of the flooring in the house is varnished hardwood so I could get around by shuffling and sliding, it probably looked rather strange but whatever works...

In the kitchen there's a sculpture of a long-horned steer that Pat is working on. So far it's been created symmetrically but she wanted to turn the head to one side which involved cutting a big wedge out of one side of the neck and a cut in the other, a bit like cutting a tree limb off. I got involved with holding down the board it's set on while Monty and Pat worked at carving out the clay and pushing holding wires into it to hold the head in its new position. There were a few scary moments when the head seemed to want to droop downwards but once the wires were in place and the clay replaced in the cut out wedges, it held up fine and it certainly gave the sculpture a more animated feel. She's working on it using a photograph of real steer but the sculpture already seems more life-like than the photograph and it's not even finished yet.

The day ended again with a few more Western movies complete with stories from Monty and trips to the IMDB to look up filming locations and other details.