Holiday again!

I have another week off next week.

I like this.

I had 2 weeks last month.

I have 1 week next week.

I have 10 days in September.

Nothing then till Christmas admittedly, but spacing my hols like this has been lovely. It was because I had no time off other than Easter from Christmas till June, but partly that was because I didn't have time.

Anyway the result is lovely.

I am not doing anything very exciting, going to Pembrokeshire and pottering around. If the weather stays as wet as it is now I may be in wellies instead of sandals but as we had lovely weather for most of the time in France I don't feel I can complain.

Work is busy, so I will be glad to have a week away from it.

Race horse to riding horse

Nic owns what one chap I spoke to charmingly described as a 'recycled racehorse'. He was too slow to win races so is being retrained to be a riding horse, learning to trot, canter in a sedate way, and generally do things other than run very fast in pretty straight lines getting over any jumps in the way.

The horse world is keen on this and they have set up a competition which has classes for just that - ex racehorses. However she has been to 2 events in the last week - called 'Search for a Star' and winning the competitions got you a place at the final in the Horse of the Year show. The prize money at the Horse of the year show is about £2000.

This is where the reality sadly parts from the ideal.

The first competition she went into was won by a horse which had once gone half way round a very easy course. It has been produced by a professional show yard so it is like a top winner for Crufts in the horse world. The rider was amateur but the yard is not. In the competition were Nic's horse - Five-a-Side, and another horse which was owned as a racehorse for over 10 years, he ran and won £100,000 during his racing career, and when he retired the owner decided to keep him to ride for herself. Both are ideal candidates but neither were placed. The second one was yesterday and although there were fewer professionally produced horses nevertheless one of the 2 horses that went through was professionally produced and despite being very naughty and not letting the ride judge get on at first was still selected.

Showing depends on the preferences of the person judging because racehorses come in a lot of different shapes and sizes and comparing a small sleek flat racing horse to something 8inches taller and much heavier and they seem to be judging as if the 'show horse' is the shape which is wanted and ignoring almost the racehorse element.

The first class Nic took him into had some jumps to go over, and if you knocked one down you were out, so 14 people were out in the first round. Fair enough.

One person Nic spoke to the first week was absolutely furious at the - as he saw it - bias in the judging.

A good idea which has been taken over a bit and misdirected perhaps.

Busy weekend

I have been away for weeks and busy doing other things for most of this summer, so this weekend I really attacked the garden. I did the tubs, planted bedding plants, did some (but not all) the weeding, tidied up the paths, did the hanging baskets and it is now looking much nicer. I also did some housework, piles of washing, and had another battle with the wireless reception for the computer.

Although it is working at the moment, it is random as to whether it works or not. Last night Nic needed a map printed out and I had to put the pc onto the ethernet cable to get an internet signal. This morning I tried my Macbook and Nic's Vista pc and neither of them worked. I went upstairs to phone the ISP again and the Mac got a signal but the pc didn't. I phoned them up (again) and they asked what operating system I was using. On being told we had a Mac, Vista, Windows 7 and a PS3 in the house I think they gave up the idea that it was an operating system which was creating the problem. He asked to go onto the router set up system but I said I had spent an hour and a half with one of his colleagues resetting that last week, so he came to the same conclusion I had come to which is that the router is kaput. It is really annoying because I've only had it for a couple of years, however needs must, so they are sending me another one.

Oh - I also cleaned the downstairs windows outside. This is an extremely rare event.

I am pooped.

Place of greater safety - Hilary Mantel

I started reading 'A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel while on holiday and was really enjoying it. I absolutely loved 'Wolf Hall' which won the Booker this year so although my sister had said it wasn't as good, and it is a lot earlier, I had fairly high hopes.

The first half was great. The book traces the French Revolution mainly through the characters of Danton, Desmoulins and Robespierre, starting from their childhoods and moving on through their youth to the revolution. It is distanced from the violence of the revolution and there is little real feeling of the horror and savagery of mobs in the streets, and the feeling of social disruption which must have been there. She has a wonderful technique of commenting on the action or the character of the people in her stories, and the tone is always contemporary - she makes no attempt to talk with historical accuracy, which is a relief because all the people at the time were talking in modern idioms to them. Whenever she does this it works brilliantly, and acts as a real comment on the progress of the narrative.

However once the revolution gets going the book stalls.

It has got very dull and I find I have little interest in the characters at this point because they have all got stuck into a rut. It is strange because the political situation at that time was extremely dynamic but she hasn't managed to convey that. I feel that the characters are more interested in their love lives than in the politics which were ruling their lives at that time. Her narrow focus also loses its effect because - apart from Marat - none of the other significant characters in the Revolution get much of a look in, and don't become individuals, only names.

I am over three quarters of the way through the book, and have no real urge to complete it, which is disappointing.

I have, instead, picked up the new Michael Morpurgo book - 'An Elephant in the Garden' which I read this morning in bed and loved. He is such a gifted writer.

Back on line

Hurray!

My laptop is now talking to the router and my wireless is back. Maybe it just needed a rest. I am very relieved because otherwise I would have had to go to the computer doctor on Saturday.

I have planted my front tubs tonight with some pretty begonias, and have put some bizzie lizzies in the hanging baskets so the front of the house now looks nice, and will attack the back garden this weekend.

I now have an exciting evening paying bills and doing the ironing. Sometimes life is just so full of thrills.

Wireless-less

The wireless part of our internet connection seems to have given up the ghost. it wasn't working last night, and it isn't working tonight. I spent about an hour talking to the man at the help desk and he said he would phone me back in 15 minutes. That was an hour an a half ago. I am now on hold.

He tried telling me the airport part of my laptop wasn't working, so I got Adam's laptop on and - surprise - that doesn't connect either!!! There is nothing wrong with the laptops, it does seem to my technical ignorance that there is something wrong with the router. This is working on the ethernet cable at the moment, so the internet is working, but the wireless isn't.

I am driving to Aberystwyth tomorrow so wanted to go to bed early. I have not done any of my post holiday ironing mountain (boy is it big!) because of talking to computer man and waiting for him to phone back, so I am cheesed off in a big way at the moment.

Gardening in the sunshine

B and I spent an industrious afternoon attacking the garden in Pembs yesterday. The grass in the flowerbeds was so long in places that the rose was growing ever upwards in an attempt to find the sun. We pulled out masses and masses of grass and put in some bedding plants so there will be pretty flowers there instead. We also did tubs with trailing begonias and bizzy lizzies which will be lovely as well in a week or so when they settle in.

We were both filthy when we were finished.