Sunday, a day of rest?

Actually there's no such thing as a day of rest round here, but the morning was relatively quiet so I had a chance to catch up with laundry and upload all the previous day's pictures to Flickr for the ACTHA people. Debbie left to go back home for a few days and I was sad to see her go as she's been ever so lovely to me. Pat arrived back though having been away for a few days to open an exhibition of her sculptures in Lexington. She had left only a few days after I arrived so I've not really been able to get to know her yet.

In the afternoon Monty took me out for a ride, just the two of us, with two Willing Partners Horses, I was riding Celebrity again, using a Dually Halter instead of a bridle. We rode up past the house and past several other houses sitting on land that had once belonged to Flag is Up Farms and onto sandy trails through the scrub where it looks just like a scene out of a cowboy film. All the way he was pointing out the trees he had planted, oak, pine and poplars, 250,000 of them. Little brown lizards were scattering out of the way and ever now and then I'd see a bush that looked like it was made from dry twigs but up close it was covered with tiny purple daisy-like flowers with yellow centres. We came across a lama, several dogs and various other things that would have spooked Elvis (Sam's horse that is, not The King) but Celebrity was fine with all that. He only spooked the once, when a dry crinkly leaf blew under him and even that wasn't much of spook.

It was a lovely peaceful couple of hours, in one way it was rather like a devout Buddhist getting to spent time alone with the Dali Lama and in another way it was like going out for a hack with my own Father, something we haven't had the chance to do for years. They're a very similar age, Monty's birthday is the day after Leon's and from the nose up they look amazingly alike - or maybe that's just my prosopagnosia and a bit of wishful thinking. It was oddly both ordinary and extraordinary. Monty works so hard and gives so much to other people that getting on a horse and riding out away from it all is his reward and relaxation.

When we got back Monty was immediately off to give his time to yet another human being in need and I spent a bit of time with the horses in the paddocks. There's three horses in particular that I'm getting very fond of, they seem like a bunch of adolescent brothers, all have a very similar white marking on their foreheads. When I pull up at the gate they all come charging over to say hello and push and jostle to get my attention. They all love to be rubbed on their white marks and on their noses and they stick their heads through the gate and taste my jeans, my shoes, any bits of the scooter that they can reach. There's a definite pecking order and the one at the bottom of the heap doesn't get much of a look in though I can tell he's just as curious and interested as the others. When I move away on the scooter they all come running after me to the next gate, hoping for more attention.

Back up at the house I did some more work on editing pictures and correcting some of my typos in the blog. I had been hoping to get up to Santa Barbara to visit an actual Apple shop but it was starting to look like that might not happen so I started looking up prices on Macbook Pros on the Apple store and swithering about whether to buy a new one or a refurb and finally pressed the button on a top spec i7 model with the faster hard drive and high res anti-glare screen and paid an extra few quid to have it despatched more quickly to ensure it got here before I leave. I can barely contain my excitement, I've never been able to buy a brand new, top spec Mac straight from the Apple store, I've always had to buy from eBay and hope for the best, so this is really a big thrill. And for anyone reading this who doesn't know me, yes, I am a geek and proud of it.

Back in the kitchen Monty was watching old Western movies on a channel he's recently discovered that just shows wall to wall cowboy films and old black and white series from the '30s. It's fascinating to watch films with him because he knows so many of the actors and can tell just by looking at the horses whether it was shot in an authentic location or in Europe - I finally understand the meaning of the term 'Spaghetti Western'. It was interesting to look up the films we were watching on the IMDB and find out exactly where the locations were and how old the actors were at the time. He has an amazingly accurate memory and can also predict when the horses are going to do their falls and whether they were trained falling horses or tripped on wires.