It’s been a good few days since the last post. Surprisingly enough it’s been quite busy. To get friends and family up to date here’s a quick summary…
Maxime – enjoying school after his first school rentrée – quite blasé about the whole thing in fact, parents quickly forgotten about after he is deposited at the school gates each morning. Capcuine and Gaston – absolutely fine as well, they started at crèche on Monday so no more Mimi the nounou for them (a different story). Gaston continues to refuse to crawl anywhere, although this now at least seems to annoy him, which we are construing as progress. Capcuine is overly active and seems to be a mini-Maxime, except for the fact that she will clearly be the boss of the house, if she isn’t already.
Sandie – handling the fact that my new boss is also called Sandy very well, and having a whale of a time at work. The recent show jumping competition in the front garden went wonderfully well with over 140 horses competing over the course of the day (a real feat especially for her first competition). She also had over 2000 visitors to the Stud Farm last weekend for the French National Heritage Open Day thing when all government buildings are opened to the public. She combined this with an art exhibition in the stables which was also extremely well received. The big event of Monday, sorry, one of the big events, was the reception of her new car – a black Qashqai +2. After months of deliberation we didn’t manage to agree on the car we wanted so she applied the 80/20 rule and opted for Nissan. I will huff and puff in my little corner for a while yet, and I’ll come out when I’ve decided if I want to change my little Twingo, and if so, what for (naturally I already have a few ideas and will no doubt be well counseled by my young petrol head cousin in Glasgow!).
Job – going fine. I am still in the process of meeting lots of people. I think I have almost got the lie of the land. What strikes me is the number of pockets of good people dotted around the place. I think the key thing that is holding us back is the lack of a single vision uniting all of these different groups of people, and the sheer number of different moving parts in the company. This week is a busy week in London, Paris and Amsterdam, and it will culminate with a key meeting on Friday where we will hopefully get a bit of an agreement on how to fix some of these things. Big trips are also planned for Bangalore, Boston and Johannesburg/Cape Town over the next couple of months. Air France continues to send me excessive amounts of special offers and other marketing rubbish.
Pich – doing ok despite knocking his hip on a metal girder at the weekend because of another stallion showing just a bit too much interest in his hindquarters. After a busy August with nine days of competitions in the space of three weeks we’ve had a relatively quiet period with lots of serious work being done at home. It feels like we’ve made progress, and although things are not completely perfect, we’re probably in need of a competition to see if things really are better or not. After almost a season of serious work, he also seems to be becoming less of a stroppy, lazy teenager and more of a responsible young adult so hope springs eternal (NB I’m currently less sure about the eight ages of horses, but I suspect the process is at least similar in part despite the fact I’ve never seen him on a scooter - see previous posting)...
That’s it for the minute. Consider yourselves updated!
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