We went onto the yard. Sally showed me the tool shed where the pitchforks, brooms and wheelbarrows were kept. It was an old brick shed, probably once having served as a coal bunker. Sally ducked inside and switched on the light, a single bulb in a glass dome on the ceiling.
“There, grab a fork and barrow.” She picked up tools and stepped outside. I did the same, selecting a pitchfork, broom and barrow and then going to leave. Being taller than Sally I missed the doorway’s height in the relative darkness and, while concentrating on pushing the barrow out walked straight into the door frame, hitting my head.
* * *
“It’s his first day. All I ask you is you don’t kill the working pupils on their first day…”
I groaned, trying to open my eyes. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to be lying on the ground. I tried to focus on the voices above me.
“I didn’t kill him… Look, he’s waking up. It’s not my fault he forgot to duck for the door! He’s clearly an idiot!”
“Adam?”
I looked up, both Hilary and Sally were staring down at me. Hilary looked somewhat concerned, Sally looked more frustrated that I’d delayed her work. I stood up carefully, rubbing my head, wincing at the painful lump on my forehead.
“See, he’s fine! I told you he would be.”
“Sally! He may have concussion…”
“No Hilary, she’s right, I’m fine… Let me get on with the work.” The two women looked at me. “I promise if I start to feel sick or if I suddenly collapse, I’ll tell you. Please, I feel stupid enough here…”
“Okay!” Hilary helped me to my feet, shaking her head. “Sally, I’ll leave you to it, but keep an eye on him please!”
I followed Sally who was muttering about my stupidity and we started the job of mucking out. I found this rather cathartic, the steady process of cleaning up the stables allowing my mind to wander, concentrating less on the thumping pain in my skull. I was sure to keep enough of my mind on the task in hand to ensure that I didn’t miss anything which Sally could comment on.
I’m a rapid worker, quickly scooping out droppings and wet patches of shavings, tidying the beds and topping up with clean and fresh wood shavings, before dumping the contents of my barrow on the muck heap. I’d learnt long ago if I wanted to have a ride before my school day started, I needed to be up early and muck out quickly and efficiently. When I’d finished my boxes, Sally was still on her third. She grumbled, looking at the quality of my work, unable to pick more than the most minor faults. I appeased her by starting her last stable and so we were both finished at about the same time. I swept down the concrete yards.
“Good… Okay, so you know what you’re doing… I thought you would. Right, let’s groom and get the horses ready for exercise. There’s a list in the tack room.”
The next two hours were spent grooming, tacking up and exercising the horses, ensuring they each had some time either on the horse walker or in the arena where we worked them evenly on each rein. By ten o’clock Hilary was ready to school her first horse and asked me to come in on one of her stallions with a stable name of Tom.
The feel of riding these powerful, ultra-fit horses was like driving a sports car after spending your time on a pushbike. A morning of riding the incredible horses was starting to change my riding. I found out pretty quickly and to howls of laughter from Sally that I’d to be considerably more subtle in pushing on a sports horse rather than one of our riding school horses. I’d owned pretty good horses before, but these were in another class and I’d almost jumped the arena fence getting the first horse to go.
Now, under the close attention of Hilary who was circling her lead horse, Moonlight Sonata, better known as Bob. She pulled up her horse and indicated I should keep circling.
“Okay, your riding position isn’t bad. We’ll need to work on that before we start any jumping. Show me a canter transition.”
I pushed Tom on and gained a good canter transition, Hilary then got me to work on various exercises around the arena before asking Sally to change horses. This happened three times with me repeating the exercises on other horses. At the end of another three hours, I was red in the face and exhausted.
Hilary smiled as I dismounted, having cooled down the horse I led it out of the arena, brushing and untacking him. Sally told me to clean the tack later before handing me a muck bucket and a rake and telling me to skip out the arena and rake it flat. I obeyed without question. Taking my leather riding boots off and sliding on my old wellies, ignoring the pounding in my head.
The arena was huge, however, I worked quickly and picked up the droppings before working around raking the sand flat, walking up and down with the tiny rake. It took over an hour to complete and, in the end, I could hardly move. However, before I could sit down Sally handed me a pitchfork and told me to throw back and square off the
