Part of the journey

Can anybody tell me the exact purpose of earwigs? We seem to be inundated with them at present. Apart from getting into the washing and the feed bins what purpose do they have? I detest them almost as much as cockroaches which as a child living in Malta I had to bear on a daily basis. Spiders at least keep the flies down and make pretty webs although my arachnaphobia is no less as I get older. Years ago when we came to live in Oxfordshire I was invited to a fancy dress barn dance on someones poultry farm. Embracing all that was countryside orientated my boy friend and I set off as Noddy and Big Ears. Yes you have guessed who I was portraying! Anyway, he went off to aquire alcohol and I was sitting on a straw bale taking in my surroundings. To my horror they had decorated the barn with huge grey hairy spiders, so I thought. Then one of them moved! Noddy has never exited so fast! I could have won a 500 meter sprint that day! Never will I or Noddy be attending a barn dance on a poultry farm again.

Bee is my lovely mare. She is now 16 and a treasure but she has never really stretched like the modern dressage rider likes to stretch their horses. I have always put this down to the fact that she is part Selle Francais and the nuchal ligament is slightly shorter. However, recently she has been valliantly having a go but now has to be deeper. I argue that she will fall over. My friend said, 'Does she fall over whilst grazing?' Deep thought on this, no of course not but then I have never seen her trot around the field like this either! My 2 year old does and canters like it too, so theres hope for that one. Today we had some lovely stretching and when she came up to work she was really nice and loose and supple suffice to say I have now almost mastered her left shoulder in canter. Bee likes to run off on the left rein if she can usually when I do a flying change from right to left across the diagonal. This is why I incurred my first error the other day because after the medium canter down the long side on the left rein I had to turn at A and perform a half pass. Unfortunately we zipped past A slightly out of control and missed it so had to do a circle. We will conquer this problem soon!

Have you ever thought about relaxation whilst riding and trying to achieve it? Thats what all this stretching malarky is about. Sometimes though trying to relax makes for more tension. Apparrantly you have to 'get in the zone' a place I have been trying to find. If anyone sees 'the zone' please could you point me in its direction. Thanks.