"Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in.”

I've begun to notice how many of my quotes are by men. Usually men with beards. Today's is by a woman. (I don't think she has a beard)

Nope. This is author Katherine Mansfield who looks spookily like me when I was younger.

Well, a bit, anyway.

More spooky still, and quite beside the point of this blog, is that when I was looking for the photo above, I came across another photo, of my mother and Auntie Maureen.

Yes, my mum is the one on the right. Gulp.

Back to the blog.

On Monday I had a dressage lesson, riding Alfie, with a real proper professional dressage personage. I had high hopes...undeterred, at first, by the fact that all the other horses looked like dressage horses, all fancy-pantsy,  and Alfie looked like...well, Alfie.

I didn't feel it went well (I'm told it did.) The teacher spent the whole time, it seemed to me, telling me to stop doing all the things I had devised, after two years of riding Alfie, that are the only things that make Alfie move off the spot. Consequently, he didn't move off the spot very much, except once when he did one of his 'I'll show you!' rocketing lurches at ninety miles an hour in the wrong direction.

So - I was full of regret, completely and utterly wallowing in it...Why am I not a better rider? Why couldn't Alfie just have behaved better, especially in front of an audience? Why don't I ride smart horses? Why did I put myself though that just to be humiliated?...

All that stuff... disgusting stuff. I was in tears afterwards, thoroughly exhausted with all those feelings of regret. Thoroughly worn down. I was in tears yesterday morning when I went back to the yard. I wanted sympathy...

In reality, if I had as much sense as I was born with, I could be thinking instead, 'Well, girl. There aren't many people who'd take on such challenging animals, and lavish all that care on them and keep going no matter what, and make so much progress with them, and have the courage to try new things - and would you really want to be on a horse that was so easy to ride and so well-trained it took no skill to do anything with him?'

My trouble is...I HAVEN'T as much sense as I was born with. Sometimes.