Break a leg in 2012!

Posted by princess on Monday, January 30, 2012 Under: Life in france

So I’m going to forget all that Happy New Year nonsense I began with last year, because it didn’t really get me anywhere at all. I had all these hopes, dreams and aspirations that didn’t even get to flutter on my horizon let alone get anywhere close to being fulfilled. I shall try the new theatrical approach as practiced by Mini in the photo above. No Mini hadn’t broken her leg just removed a dew claw swiftly and painfully in the seat of the truck whilst making a speedy exit after a bunny. In fairness I’m not really sure Mini was that delighted with the whole clumsy bandage arrangement, it’s just what some muppet deemed suitable for her !

Last year was a shocker, it began on a lovely March morning with everything being all pretty and springlike, birds tweeting, flowers budding, baby foal Peggy being born ;

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But it was soon to go down hill as this is the last picture of myself I possess with two proper balanced working legs ! We[i] set off xc schooling to Dol de Bretagne with two young horses quite late and I was all jolly pleased with myself as the worst two had gone really well the day before.I’d just finished on Red who’d also been a superstar when I came to ride the last.He decided he wasn’t going to do the ditch the second time round so without great ado or malice it must be said he did a backwards sidestep ejecting me in a forwards side nosedive which was fine except that my bloody foot happened to be stuck in the stirrup. It was all so inevitable, and played out in slow motion or so it seemed to me. I could fell immediately that my left leg was not accompanying me in the proper manner. I could predict (or so I thought) the pain as I watched my body being snatched by gravity well beneath the level of my knee and foot. There was a sickening crack and a pain that I have never EVER experienced before nor ever hope to again. A prone , hollering, mangled wreckage I thrashed about swearing all the while for the pain to abate thrashing about. Wishing my brain would hurry along and override the hurt in that magical way that it does ; I swore and kicked, kicked and swore, swore and kicked and still the pain was in my face, bellowing at me.

If I’d had a gun I would have shot myself, brave soldier I was not. So I gave it twenty minutes or so just to gather myself but I wasn’t gathering too well . We didn’t really have time for that not gathering because Dol de Bretagne is a good hour and a half from home and the chilly gloom was already settling.

Being France there wasn’t anyone around to help, there probabaly wasn’t anyone in the department for that matter, so it was me and the dogsbody holding two horses a half mile or more from the truck and trailer. It had become apparent that we had to get them back to the trailer so the dogsbody set off with them.Due to it being a widlifey parky sanctuary type place he had to set of in the opposite direction to negotiate the deer fencing wit them. As they faded away from me into the gloom I felt utterly ababndoned. God only knows how those poor mountaineers cope when they get injured twenty vertical miles from help up a snowy crag and their buddies have to abandon them to fetch it.They must feel like they have been thrust into eternal damnation, and I guess for some of the poor souls it doesn’t end much better.

I had hoped I was made of sterner stuff, but after five minutes of trying to swallow down my rising panic I thought I should try to get myself back too. Luckily I had a shorter half mile route to do but it still wasn’t exactly jolly funny negotiating boggy ditches , slippery woods and the whole f*****g perimeter of the duck lake on one leg with the other flapping about in excruciating agony with each goddamn hop.( And when’s the last time you hoped more than the hop, skip and jump at school ? By the end I was aiming at twenty hops ,rest and still I was bushed .)

However I did beat man and cobs back to the trailer so this gave me a temporary triumphant respite that proved to be very short lived when a quick search of the premises by the other half to procure ice or pain killers of some sort didn’t even find an unlocked door. It was a miserable passenger drive home( never go without pills anywhere !), it tells of my pain level that I deemed it necessary to phone both my sisters to keep my mind occupied . Of course once back home in the cold darkness with four horses to put to bed I couldn’t even stand up myself let alone manouvre so it was left to the good old dogsbody while I barked instructions.

From there my 2011 was a gentle persistent scrape along the barrel bottom. I did try and ride as you will find in eveidence on other pages and later posts but it is only in very recent weeks that I have begun to feel any degree of balance in my body or strength in my left leg. I still get considerable pain in my left knee but it’s the kind of pain people are equipped to deal with and riding a few each day os okay aslong as they’re not throwing themselves around too much.

I hope that for all of you 2011 was a better year than mine though indeed I personally know that for several of you it wasn’t. I shan’t begin my own 2012 with any hopes at all ,we’ll see which way the weather and young horses chose to take us but we’ve got over christmas now with all the lights ;