{"id":2924,"date":"2010-03-11T11:02:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T11:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2924"},"modified":"2010-03-11T12:40:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T12:40:04","slug":"an-early-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2924","title":{"rendered":"An early lunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m on my way to London’s Glittering West End (when was it ever that?) for a working lunch with an Ad Agency.<\/p>\n

I love Ad Agency lunches, they’re either ‘M&S sandwiches in the conference room while half-a-dozen creatives workshop the concept to death’ or ‘all expenses paid slap-up feeding-trough fests’.<\/p>\n

Sadly today will be the former, it’s a music-related thing.<\/p>\n

And then straight to the yard afterwards, to sit on an equine or two.<\/p>\n

I got a deliciously curt text from Owen yesterday that, in a nutshell, said: ‘Lesson. Sunday morning’, to which I could only respond ‘Yes please!’.<\/p>\n

I feel sorry for the professionals at this time of the year. They’re getting their (or their owners) horses going, they’re focussing their four-star horses on Badminton Horse Trials<\/a> (which comes very early in the season this year – end of March!) whilst bringing their less-experienced equines in to lower-level competitions, which have already started.<\/p>\n

I think Owen is aiming two of his rides at this year’s Badminton and he’s got eight others at various lower levels.<\/p>\n

So that makes him a busy guy.<\/p>\n

And then there’s amateurs like me who are desperate for 45 minutes of his time to rub some more rough edges off, and hopefully apply a thin veneer of polish which we hope everyone else won’t be able to see through.<\/p>\n

There is just over a week to go to our (Tom and me) first One Day Event, it’s swung around so quickly it’s frightening!<\/p>\n

There are five horses based at our yard who are competing at the same Event (out of a field of 499 entries), and Owen is riding two of them. Not at the same time, obv.<\/p>\n

Next Friday will be phenomenally busy at the yard. The five competing horses will be bathed and groomed and trimmed and generally tarted up to within an inch of their lives.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the tack will be broken down, cleaned, oiled, reassembled and put carefully ready for the following day.<\/p>\n

I’ll take the lorry out, fill it up with diesel, polish my boots, make sure the required clothing is laid out in the living accommodation, and try to fit in a double lap of the gallops with Tom – probably while they’re working on the other horses.<\/p>\n

As I said, it’s come around frighteningly fast.<\/p>\n

I shall make use of the rest of the journey in to London to learn, once again, the dressage test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m on my way to London’s Glittering West End (when was it ever that?) for a working lunch with an Ad Agency. I love Ad<\/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-2924","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\/2924","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=2924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}