Hello all - good to see you all again and I hope you've all been well.

I've been up to my eyes in work at Addington Manor Equestrian Centre, and having a lot of fun with it, too.  I don't fly much now but I find I'm not really missing it.  It's no fun any more - not since all the security restrictions were brought in post-9/11 - and I'm getting too old to deal with the stress that traversing an airport terminal inflicts on me

If you see my latest submission - you'll see Mabel, the little feral kitten we rescued and you can read about how we came to rescue her.  On a sad note, we had to have Henry, our elderly black and white cat, put to sleep about a month or so ago.  He'd been ill for a while but he'd been well maintained on medication but he just came to the end of the road and I wasn't willing to watch him suffer.  I hope he's happy - wherever he may be now.

We lost our photographer at Addington recently.  He just wasn't making enough money to make a decent living so he called it a day.  TBH, many of our riders are professionals.  They're not usually riding their own horses so they don't have much interest in photographs of themselves.    I thought he might do better taking photos at pony club events - the kids always love their photographic mementoes but I was at a club meet a couple of weeks ago and their photographer only sold one photo all day.  Looking around at the people who watch the show-jumping at Addington, most of them seem to have the latest, state-of-the-art DSLR anyway so if they want photos, they tend to take them themselves.There IS a point to what I'm saying here, so I'll get down to it.  

Matt, our commentator, also has a stable yard and his fiancee rides and jumps horses.  She was riding in several classes in our Summer Classic 5-day competition last week but because Matt was commentating and therefore stuck in the judges' box, he couldn't take any decent photos so I decided to take some for him.  It seems that he was somewhat impressed with the photos I took because he showed them to Tim, the centre owner, who promptly offered me the job as the centre photographer!  He wants photographs taken to be put up on a web-site and sold directly from there.  Of course, I declined.  I just don't have the confidence or the ability yet to produce work that would be good enough for sale but it was extremely flattering to be asked.

Anyway - that's it for now.  I need to get some sleep ready for an early start at Addington tomorrow.

Take care, stay safe, shiny side down