Right now being one of those times.<\/p>\n
There are two sides to every story and here’s my side.<\/p>\n
If you divided this evening up in to two conversational columns it would be fair and true to say that my input would be in the smaller of the two.<\/p>\n
I love hearing my wife talk.<\/p>\n
She tells me how her day has been, what kind of a day her colleagues have had, how she’s going to organise things (meetings, aspects of future work), how her public have been.<\/p>\n
And she usually delivers it all with such feeling (sometimes good, sometimes not good, sometimes enthusiasm, sometimes devoid of enthusiasm) that it’s…<\/p>\n
Compelling.<\/p>\n
She does talk, my wife; she rattles on, hopping from event to event or from topic to topic like a conversational grasshopper might, from blade of conversational grass to blade of conversational grass – pausing long enough to sway briefly in the breeze before skittering skywards to the next theme.<\/p>\n
It’s a joy to listen to her; in a way it’s a kind of extension to the way I love her. Don’t ask me to explain, it just is. I suppose I kind of bask in her day – or the output to her day.<\/p>\n
But late this evening I cut her off; raised my voice harshly to end a conversation.<\/p>\n
You see, a day or so ago she sent an email to our landlord; instead of asking for urgent work to be carried out, it firmly implied that we would do the work.<\/p>\n
This evening The Lovely S asked me to read the response (which says – paraphrasing – ‘Yep, you guys go ahead and do the work’).<\/p>\n
Which is obviously not the position that we wanted to be in; let’s face it, the landlord should get someone round here to fix the problem right now.<\/p>\n
I pointed out that our original message to the landlord was flawed.<\/p>\n
And I got blamed for it.<\/p>\n
I suppose if my day had been less sh1t I may have just rolled with it.<\/p>\n
But I didn’t.<\/p>\n
I raised my voice, said loudly ‘Don’t blame me for this’ with heavy emphasis on the word ‘Don’t’.<\/p>\n
That’s when I was told not to use that tone of voice again and was then put on the receiving end of a helping of cold shoulder as The Lovely S literally and metaphorically closed the door on me and went up to bed.<\/p>\n
So because there’s no-one else around and it’s late and I’m feeling absolutely carp can I tell you just a little about my day?<\/p>\n
The vet came to see the horses early this evening.<\/p>\n
Vinnie needed his annual flu\/tet jab. Except an examination of the paperwork revealed that his annual jab is out of date so we have to start the flu\/tet course of treatment from scratch – three visits, three injections and each visit\/injection fully chargeable.<\/p>\n
Oh well.<\/p>\n
Then she looked at Beech.<\/p>\n
I wanted her there to give me an honest, professional appraisal of him, his condition and his prospects.<\/p>\n
The examination was detailed, thorough and lasted over an hour.<\/p>\n
On the positive side of things she doesn’t think he’s in any pain.<\/p>\n
On the negative side though, her diagnosis is that he’s got a neurological disorder which is robbing him of the ability to judge his personal space and the position and use of his body in that area of space.<\/p>\n
Her opinion is that it’s untreatable.<\/p>\n
And likely to worsen – in that he might start falling over and be unable to get to his feet soon.<\/p>\n
Sue, the yard manager, is convinced that his condition has improved in the last fortnight.<\/p>\n
I don’t see it.<\/p>\n
But in the face of her optimism I can’t make the decision – that decision – just yet.<\/p>\n
So he’s got another few weeks, my lovely, lovely boy – as he isn’t in any pain – to try to prove Sue’s judgement.<\/p>\n
All the vet could say was how unfair it all is, that he’s been so unlucky in life.<\/p>\n
And he has.<\/p>\n
Though I can’t help feeling that an unlucky horse must in some way be the butt end of a neglectful owner; that all of Beech’s ills are attributable to my culpable shortcomings.<\/p>\n
I hope, I really hope that I’m not prolonging the inevitable.<\/p>\n
In giving him more time I really want to be doing the right thing for him.<\/p>\n
Which is ironic, really.<\/p>\n
Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.<\/p>\n
The right thing.<\/p>\n
Yet this evening I’ve done the wrong thing, said the wrong thing and said it in the wrong way.<\/p>\n
Which all goes to make me not much of a human being really.<\/p>\n
I know I should be sitting here feeling sorry for myself but I’m not.<\/p>\n
I feel sorry for my wife who has to put up with my shortcomings.<\/p>\n
I feel sorry for Beech who has to put up with a neglectful owner.<\/p>\n
Because you know what Winston Churchill said about things re-occurring?<\/p>\n
‘The first time it’s circumstance. The second time it’s happenstance. The third time it’s enemy action’.<\/p>\n
And this is Beech’s third serious incident since he came to live with me.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should find Vin a good home before I break him too.<\/p>\n
I just hope I don’t break my marriage too.<\/p>\n
B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Right now being one of those times. There are two sides to every story and here’s my side. If you divided this evening up in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}