Yep, I've been reading a few books, some were pretty good, some were a bit ordinary. But what is even more important (at least to me, and at the moment) is my search for a suitable Rocinante. As the cat is unlikely to be happy sharing her litter box with a horse - regardless of how much I enlarged it - I've spent the last few weekends looking for suitable agistment within a reasonable driving distance. Not an easy task in urban Sydney. Happy to say now that one can now be ticked off the To Do List.
And in a quest to either recapture my youth (as if), or to try to prove something so nebulous that I'm not even sure what it is, I'm now in the process of looking for a suitable horse.
Of course, this presents a number of difficulties - I found out yesterday that whilst the knee operation made walking pain free, all that time limping around before the operation has left a considerable deficit in the knee's strength; enough to make mounting conventionally (via the near-side stirrup) just about impossible. Which pretty much eliminates any horses of height.
But in that ironic way nature has of playing with us, the deficits in knee strength seem to have been compensated by a surplus in girth - mine, not the horse. Which sort of makes vaulting onto anything bigger than a Shetland pretty unlikely.
And as if all that is not challenge enough, I find that after 5 minutes on two horses (I'm sure glad no-one videoed the tragedy of an elderly fat lady being hoisted onto long-suffering horses) the next day the good old back injury (L3, L4 and L5 for those with an interest in such things) says to me "Hey lady! That was not a good idea". I don't know why we don't pay more attention to what the voices say to us - they aren't always wrong, you know.
So for the moment it looks like it's back to Physio to see what if anything I can do to strengthen those body bits that are doing their best to shatter yet another dream - regardless of how practical it is, or otherwise.
Maybe it's something to do with the current Olympic Spirit; perhaps it's just sheer dogmatic stubbornness? Or are those two just different sides of the same coin?
