Boozer to the rescue

I’ve got bronchitis.  It’s making my attempt to study and move house at the same time difficult, and my ability to update ‘Our piece of it’ almost impossible.  In a couple of weeks the madness will be over.  In the mean-time I thought I’d be easy on myself and share a photo of Boozer and me when we were so much younger than today.  

1980s - Summer in Marshlands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, this is me and Boozer.  Just to be clear, Boozer is the 12.2 hand chestnut gelding, and I’m the ten, or maybe eleven year old girl.  We’re in Boozer’s paddock, which was right next to the school house where we lived, and I think this photo was taken during the very dry Marlborough summer of 1981/82, or maybe it was 1980/81.  Anyways, my hair looks long, so I haven’t cut it yet, and begun that tortured relationship.  That happened a little later when I walked into the Vogue hair salon in town and asked my hairdresser for the day to make me look like Lady Di.  Two hours later I walked out feeling very sophisticated with my shoulder-length hair perfectly curled under and flicked back.  Of course it never looked like that ever again, no matter what I did with Mum’s hair-dryer.  I was still only eleven, and even now, so many years and so much practice using hair-dryers later, I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to, mould my hair into Princess Di’s 1981 hairstyle. 

Anyways, I’m wearing my favourite jeans with the horse patches on the knees, and oh my goodness I’m wearing my school regulation roman sandals.  Hmm, this photo was obviously taken before Boozer had stepped on me too many times.

So, you’re probably thinking ”Summer shmummer, hair shmair, sandals shmandals.  Oh my god!  She had a pony called Boozer?!”  Well, that’s the name he came with.  And I’ll admit, I thought it was the worst name in world; it was so, well, let’s just say I don’t think any of the nice people in Enid Blyton’s books would have owned a pony named Boozer.  But, he’d been around the local pony club crowd a lot longer than I had, and everyone knew his name was Boozer, so he stayed Boozer, except when I entered him in the local shows.  On those occasions I would be overtaken by my sense of the romantic and call him Golden Lad, and sometimes he would reward me by winning ribbons in the show-jumping.