Rain, 4 points and a bowl of sick

It may not sound like it from the title of this post, but the weekend was an extremely good one apart from a sick little girl at the end of Sunday. We got back to Biarritz on Friday for a series of appointments about some work we’re doing on the house and at the hospital ahead of the operation to remove the metal plate from my arm next Friday. I should have known that it was going to be a good weekend when the French anesthetist was on time for his consultation at 6PM on a Friday evening...

Saturday was focused on a day of show jumping in San Sebastian in Spain. It was the first competition of 2013. I was keen to go because over the winter I really felt that Pich and I had made some serious progress (despite me also feeling sure that I’d said that before). I really wanted to see if what we were doing in Orthez could be replicated in a real competition. Thankfully the news was good. Whilst we did have one bar down (my fault), no-one could deny the fact that Pich jumped superbly and that there was a huge difference between what we achieved yesterday, and what we have been used to over the last two years. There’s another competition again in Spain in mid-February so we’ll see how quickly I can get back in the saddle after recovering from next week’s arm operation. Yesterday was also the first run out for my new personal “air-bag” – a rather sensible middle-aged gift I bought myself just before Christmas. Check out http://www.point-two-airjacket.fr/ to learn all about it, and also look at the short Karim Laghouag – championnats d’Europe video to see why it’s probably not a bad investment (http://www.point-two-airjacket.fr/videos.php). It’s just a shame that my coach, Michel, wasn’t wearing his when he took an uncharacteristic tumble in the afternoon and broke a couple of ribs as a result.

The plan for Sunday was to get out and about in and around Biarritz but heavy rain for most of the day put paid to that. Because it’s France, Sunday was lunch at the in-laws. I personally thought the duck and foie gras was excellent. However Gaston came out in a rash three hours later and Capcuine has been vomiting ever since. Her first projectile effort came whilst she was in the bath with her brothers. Maxime was extremely displeased. As he climbed out of the bath in disgust, he severely scolded his younger sibling at the same time as peeling half-digested magrets and canard cuisses off his little torso.  Gaston sat on looking vaguely perplexed still trying to work out if he was hungry enough to eat the little floaters. If managing that little watery circus wasn’t enough, I then had to pack the car in the rain. After that I had just time to tumble dry my jacket before we set off for Pau. For the next two hours poor little Capcuine did an admirable job of combining sleeping with dredging up seemingly endless quantities of bile (her little stomach long since empty). I had opted not to drive, meaning I had the pleasure of multi-tasking the mopping up of Capucine, and the feeding of a MacDonald’s happy meal to the other travelers in the car. Life at the head of a little family surely doesn’t get much better than that. Thankfully Capcuine’s now sound asleep, although I doubt she’ll be at crèche tomorrow.