Hovis’ Friday diary: maybe I have been going about things all wrong…
(Image credit: Karen Thompson)
Dear Diary
I’m starting to think that maybe I have been going about things all wrong – I know hard to imagine right? But it may just be so.
You see for some time now, I have been trying to get out of work. Very successfully I might add. Between the intermittent lameness, moving houses and thus being a little “fresh” (mother uses a different word, but then she is an uncouth yob as we all know), then the old school being replaced with another school, which we haven’t been allowed to use for a little while, then it’s actually been a fair while since I’ve done any work.
And I have enjoyed this.
A lot.
This was however before I discovered the true meaning of a “work event”. Why didn’t we have this clarity before? And more importantly why didn’t anyone tell mother? Instead of stressage and circles and the mind-numbing boredom which was “work”, we would have had beer and sandwiches and games as a “work EVENT”. It’s different see. It transpires that what we, the uninitiated and clearly fractionally backwards masses thought was a bit of a jolly in the bijou restricted grazing paddocks of the human herd leader, was actually al fresco workshopping and quite literal blue sky thinking. It has to be said if we had been any more shortsighted then we’d be needing to hire a lot of buses to Barnard Castle to check out our eyes…
So, it’s gotten me thinking. If we are allowed now to apply a more liberal interpretation of the word “work”, then what changes could we make to our equine drudgeries? Could stressage circles be abandoned in favour of a more “freestyle” approach where marks are awarded less for correctness, submission and accuracy and more for flamboyance, creativity and distance of rider ejection? If all that’s needed to shake things up is a more formal dress code and questionable memory skills then get me Tie Rack on the phone and call me Dory…
Regardless of mother and I clearly needing a long chat, and possible an inquiry or two, regarding her interpretation of the word “work” we haven’t actually done any yet. She’s still hobbling about with the fluidity of a pair of pirates in a three-legged race and there are still many, many machines moving about, which makes a cat in a tuna factory be more trusted than I am to behave.
She did get some decent physio the other day after she decided that she needed to trim the hair at the back of my knee with scissors and I decided she didn’t. Apparently, her human physio is keen on gentle manipulation, but watching her hang on with the ferocity of Kim Kardashian to her pre-nup as I bicycled kicked with the abandonment of a Riverdance extra with myoclonus, I’m pretty sure I gave her much more bang for her buck in the manipulation stakes. Most normal people would have probably let go and accepted that the Edward Scissorhands routine was going down about as well as a porcupine at a nudist colony, but this is my mother. By the time she’d hacked off enough hair toallow my skin to “breathe”, her back surgeon could be heard weeping and I was about as much in favour as Cummings and Goings at a number 10 reunion.
So, I’m off to ponder the meaning of work, supervise the arena construction and avoid mother wielding scissors anywhere near my personage.
Laters,Hovis
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