Whispering Back (19 page)

Adam and Karma sunbathing by the round pen
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Nicole exploring the best spots to scratch Karma
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Amber with Jo, Brian and Adam
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With Monty and Kelly
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Joe
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Finn demonstrates the correct way to canter
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Moor Wood in the snow
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Sky being long-lined by one of his devoted fans
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The gang relaxing in their pasture
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‘And afterwards?’ Kelly asked dubiously.

‘We simply put it back in the lorries and take it away. No worries.’ Kelly was still a little unconvinced. If the premises weren’t completely cleared and vacated by 1 a.m., there would be a £10,000 fine.

In the event, a record four and a half thousand tickets were sold, the horses were a tremendous success, and Monty said the surface was amongst the best he’d ever worked on. What he did next, then, was perhaps a little unkind.

Kelly, Monty, Dean and Dido (another student and later a teacher on the courses) were just relaxing for a moment at the end of the demonstration, waiting for the lorries and diggers to come into the arena to start clearing the surface.

‘Have you given any thought as to how you’re going to separate the sand from the soil?’ Monty asked Kelly conversationally.

The colour drained from Kelly’s face as she asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, the soil arrived in a different truck from the sand, didn’t it? Obviously they need to be separated out before being taken back. I was just wondering how you planned to do it.’

Kelly looked beseechingly at Dean, who was nodding matter-of-factly. ‘Yeah, they won’t take it away if it’s been mixed up.’

Kelly looked at the surface, with clumps of soil appearing through the sand, looked at her watch, and then looked at the team, clearly wondering if we had enough spades. Then she looked at Dido, who was taking Monty firmly by the arm, saying ‘Monty, no, that’s not fair, don’t be so unkind . . .’

Monty retreated quickly. Trying unsuccessfully to hide from Kelly behind Dido, he protested, ‘Now, now, violence is never the answer.’

By the beginning of 1998, it had become obvious to us that the little paddock in Milton Keynes where we had already spent so many hours training Misty, and several other horses, and where we had taught many a riding lesson, was not going to be suitable for the volume of work we were now getting. We had already looked into surfacing an area for the riding school, but as we were only renting the land from the Milton Keynes Parks Trust, we were unwilling to invest much money. A round pen in a field overlooked by a number of rather expensive houses was unlikely to be popular with the council. The prospect of having more horses prompted us to look for somewhere else to use as a training yard.

Scanning through the local equestrian magazines, we came across an advertisement regarding a medium-sized yard in a village called Hanslope, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. ‘Long Street’ seemed ideal. Having just been taken over by new managers, it only had a couple of liveries in as yet, and the chances were we would be able to take on as many extra boxes as we liked, at least in the early days, on an ‘as and when’ basis. It had an outdoor school, which, although it was built on quite a significant slope, and had a less than perfect surface, seemed like luxury after so long doing without a school at all. Best of all, it was large enough to accommodate a round pen and still have room to ride around, so Leslie and Karen, the couple managing it, were happy for us to install one there when we eventually got one. The yard was also located just about a mile away from the Milton Keynes Eventing Centre, which meant we would be able to hire their indoor school and other facilities if the need arose. With the optimistic view that Nicole would be spending all day every day training horses, it made sense for our lot – Sensi, Misty, Finn and Cobweb, and our friend Jenny’s ex-Police horse, Major, to be on site. Jane, our friend who knew Lucy Rees, and who kept her horse, Jasper, near ours, decided to come too. What really clinched the deal was that there was a large barn available for our horses to stay in, so they wouldn’t have to be stabled.

When we worked out the sums, it turned out not to be much more expensive than the cost of the paddocks we were already renting. I still had one more term to finish at the Japanese school, so at least we had a steady income for a few months. Even so, it was a worrying commitment, particularly as Nicole had just given up her job with the police at Christmas. Knowing that she needed to concentrate fully on the business and not spread her energies too thinly, the decision felt right, but January is a notoriously bad time of year for many businesses, and perhaps particularly so for horse trainers. Everyone feels the pinch after an extravagant Christmas, but with months of mud and rain ahead, the average horse owner tends to shrink into survival mode. ‘Doing’ the horses every evening becomes some sort of endurance, assault trial. Head down, battling against the elements, knee-deep in mud, hands red and raw and deeply lined with dirt, feet frozen and numb, they search a rain-sodden field for their mud-drenched equine by the light of a torch, carefully checking that the horse is warm enough under its state-of-the-art, arctic, breathable, self-righting, lightweight rug. Risking life and limb, they lead their four-legged friend through the wellie-snatching, slithering mire, extricating it from the gnashing teeth and flying hooves of the hungry mob at the gate, to a stable knee-deep in straw, haynets and feed waiting, water buckets filled to the brim, all having been prepared at some bone-chillingly cold, dark hour of the morning, before the owner rushed home to change for work in order to be able to pay for all this pleasure. Occasionally, inspiration will strike, and the wise will pack off their horse, and its numerous rugs, lotions and potions and feed supplements, with careful instructions for hay soaking, feet scrubbing, and feed mixing, to someone like us, while booking themselves a fortnight’s holiday in the sun, re-mortgaging the house if necessary.