Don't faint!

I rode! Don't faint. The temperature was cold but it felt warmer than it was. The wind was thrashing the trees but it felt less windy than it was. And the sky was bright blue and the sun was bright yellow and we had a lovely hack along  the road by the snow banks that are slowly reducing.

I  have put a gullet plate one size too big in his saddle. It was tipping backwards and putting too much weight at the back, and I was unhappy to put more air in the back because is would have made the back airbags feel very different from the front, and relatively hard. So I have dropped the front, so that all four airbags can be pumped up to a similar pressure. Interestingly, the last horse I did this with was Zippy, who was also a very well bred  warmblood with  a short back who was cold backed in winter.

Congratulations to blogger Caroline, who was the only one to explain why the new car is called Errol.  Alexander McCall Smith has a series of books set in Corduroy Mansions, London. One of the characters is a literary agent who is handling the pre-publication of an autobiography of a yeti called Errol Greaterex. So he had to be, didn't he?  It does suit him.

We have found out a little more. He was indeed a special order by someone (metallic gold is a very unpopular colour at the moment, but I love that!) and is already registered to that buyer and had been prepped for collection and he just didn't/couldn't collect him. That left us walking into a Skoda dealer who had a car that had number plates on and that was going to be "second hand" the moment someone drove it out onto the road, with a much lower value.  No wonder they were keen to do a deal!  Not only did we get the buyer's deposit, but we also "shared" with the dealer the potential loss of him being classified as second hand.  We've got about 4 grand off a fantastic car with 24 miles on the clock, which are mostly our test drive, AND bumwarmer seats :-)))

C.