So, the slide into middle aged pony patter is complete, I've got too fat to ride the midget pony (I blame Covid, not the snacks, or the gin). We go walks, occasionally we manage a wee jog, then before you know it you are uploading videos to Tiktok with the black beauty theme tune as a background...
I've spent the day refreshing Eventingscores.co.uk as Prickle was competing in the Scottish Grassroutes championship. A decent dressage and a clear showjumping round set them up nicely for the cross country. He flew round the cross country, finishing three seconds too fast, which sadly cost them another Blair rosette to add to the collection. Fourteenth out of fifty eight entries is still very respectable and he heads of for a well deserved wee holiday now.
A wander around Edinburgh on the last weekend of the 2022 festival and nine days into the refuse workers strike, sad to see the city so utterly grubby but certainly a very visual reminder of the importance of the work they do. I smiled to see Greyfriars Bobby had a small snack as well as a large selection of sticks and I stopped to look at the Witches Well at the base of the castle esplanade. The fountain (now dry) was sculpted in 1894 by John Duncan, evocative and rich in symbolism, it epitomises the decorative Art Nouveau style of the time. The fountain shows that the perception of good and evil is often in the eye of the beholder and that can be very dangerous indeed. We may also have spotted a few more giraffes...
Sunday stroll around Jupiter Artland which is currently hosting a Tracy Emin exhibition, I must admit I don't really "get" her art, uncouth wee soul that I am but I did manage a homage to her "I lay here with you" sculpture. Nathan Cooley's "In Memory" graveyard where the names have been removed from the stones is, as it is meant to be, unsettling. The boathouse included water from one hundred named rivers around the British Isles and the bee hives contained no bees at all!
