A First Time For Everything...

In 26 years, I have never before been injured whilst horseriding - and, up until Saturday, I hadn't fallen off a horse in over 12 years.

Sadly, this track record has now been broken, and I have a fractured ankle to show for it.

I booked a hack out at Trent Park for Saturday morning and was given Joker to ride.  He was being silly from the get-go, refusing to stand still when I mounted, trying to bite Cassius, the escort horse, and generally seeming as if he'd rather be going faster than a walk.

It was very windy and the trees were creaking, which didn't help, and Joker started at every unfamiliar sound, as well as plastic bags, golfers, dogs and pedestrians.  I should have called it a day when some joggers in brightly coloured jerseys came up behind us and Joker attempted to bolt into the trees, but I managed to keep him under control, and we continued on.

This happened again later in the ride, when another horse came cantering up behind us, and I was very nearly unseated, but managed to stay on.  My escort gave me a choice between taking a route that would involve a long canter or a route where the canter stretch was much shorter, and I picked the short one.

As we were trotting up the hill, in preparation to canter, Joker just threw a fit and shot off sideways towards a tree.  I knew I was coming off, so I tried to jump rather than falling, and landed on my feet before falling over into a huge pile of brambles.  That was when my ankle started to hurt.  Joker had set Cassius off as well, so the escort had disappeared into the distance at high speed, and it took her a few minutes to get back to me.  Joker himself eventually also came back to find us, though he continued to cause trouble by spinning round on the spot while the escort tried to hold him.

Not my most successful ride!  Luckily, I have a high pain threshold, and my ankle hasn't really hurt that much at all.  Getting around on crutches hasn't proved much fun, though, and I have to keep the weight off my ankle for the next three weeks!  Oh, for a lift in our building!

Story and Music & Lyrics reviews

Story, by Robert McKee, is an excellent book all about screenwriting.  In contradiction to the sorts of books that are called "Write a novel/screenplay in 30 days", McKee advocates comprehensive study of the craft, lots and lots of research, and generally says that screenwriting is damn hard work.  Whilst this makes the book extremely interesting, very informative, and intelligently written, it also pointed out to me why I will never be as good or prolific a writer as I could be - I'm just not prepared to put the effort in.  Generally speaking, I find research very tedious and I prefer the writing I do to be fun, so I'm happy keeping it as a hobby I dabble in, rather than attempting to hone my craft.

The other consequences of reading Story are that I have a lot more films on my DVD rental list now, and I briefly started viewing films in a different way.

As I was coming towards the end of the book, I watched Music and Lyrics, and my immediate thoughts were these:

The exposition at the start was very stilted, there weren't enough turning points in the plot, the forces of antagonism weren't strong enough to engage interest in the characters, and there was very little exploration of the negation of the negation.  However, once I'd slapped myself upside the head and stopped being pretentious, I decided that it was actually quite fun, and certainly an inoffensive way to spend a couple of hours.  The biggest drawback was the fact that by far the best bit was the spoof 80s pop video that ran over the credits, so everything after that was downhill.  Still, enjoyable enough.