H&E at A&E...

Yes you read right. H had to take dear E to A&E last night following a crashing fall from her horse. Fear not though. There is a clue in it being H that took her there and not a pair of the Wolds' finest ambulance staff.

We'd been to a qualifying jumping show, our least favourite venue as it's a small indoor arena with a twisty and a dusty course. DJ [the horse] had been jumping like the wind with fine strong strides, clearing fences well though necessitating several turns being executed by pointing the mare at a wall and hoping this would be sufficient to call her to a halt!

There we were - E and DJ approaching the final fences of the jump-off and self peering through the entrance door poised as ever to attend should bad things happen - when suddenly a very bad thing happened. Attempting to negotiate a particularly tight turn, neither horse nor rider could decide whether to manoeuvre to the inside or the outside of an intervening fence. (Indecisive is totally not the thing to be at such a moment.)

Failing to opt for one of two right choices, the pair made the third and seriously wrong choice of crashing sideways into the offending fence. Now show-jumping fences, unlike those solid objects in cross-country, are designed to yield readily to any horse 'n' rider combo that jumps them wrong, though that is on the presumption that they are struck from the front. Poles will pop out of their cradles all too easily - as any rider will moan most forcibly when the merest brush of a trailing hoof is enough to stripe down four faults. Even the stands will part like the corn when hit by half a ton of horse doing a steady if inaccurate 20.

In, however, rare cases such as this - a sideways blow - they are far more resilient. The stands remain in situ, the horse is brought to an immediate halt and the rider is catapulted through the air to land as best she [generally] can. For E that moment yesterday meant taking a crashing fall onto her back, striking unyielding scattered poles and dusty ground alike. (The back of the jacket later being found to bear an vivid blend of dirt and paint, much in the manner of an abstract expressionist painting under the influence of a really bad toothache!)

Pa [self of course] was through the door like a shot, grabbing first - as one must - the loose horse. This is not a mistaking of personal priorities - that the horse is more important than the rider - it is an insurance against the animal losing its cool, as they are wont to do in such circs, stampeding round the place and trampling, for example, any stray rider who happens to be lain prone on the ground.

Horse secured one then sprinted to the stricken dau., who by that point was half-risen, tearful, in great pain and yelling "Bastard, bastard." This latter was a great re-assurance to self. Not that one particularly delights in one's only dau. bellowing semi-obscenities in public of course, but rather as a sign of vitality it was most pleasing. (Be most afraid when they lie there not moving or speaking. That is when the skies darken the deepest.)

Curiously, even as one - and several others - attended the scene I was mentally attempting to fathom at whom or what the curse was aimed. Not the horse (for a mare, from experience, one knows that the obscenity of choice in these situations is 'bloody biatch'), not the rider berating herself (gender again being wrong not to mention riders' immutable inability to hold themselves responsible for any error). It was, one rapidly reflected, a joint bewailing of just failing to qualify for the next stage of the national competition compounded by a generalised disdain for the venue.

Anyways, rider was soon on her feet and back in the saddle. Pain thresholds were acknowledged to be high but not insufferable, misery was profound yet not likely to endure and within the hour we were all safely back at base.

H, the meanwhile, never daring to attend jumping events for fear of having to witness scenes such as described above leaving all the effort and stress to self, determined that back-pain indicated back-damage, necessitating a swift sojourn in A&E for the purpose of a precautionary X-ray.

The NHS in all its majesty daring to disagree with H, gave E the once-over, declined the X-ray and dispatched her home with a dozen or so pain-killers. (Actually, though aligning thus to my own take on the matter, sadly these days it is precisely when the NHS determines that all well that one begins to fear for the worst!)

Morning has shown no further sign of increasing pain or injury, which is a blessing. Less of a good thing though is that now everyone is mooting just how much all of this may have knocked the confidence of either horse or rider. We've just had an extended period of lack of confidence apparent in both following a previous large tumble and face an uncertain few days and weeks before it becomes clear whether each is once more eager to risk life and limb at the jumps.

It won't perhaps come as any surprise to anyone in a comparable situation to one's self to learn that last night was a bedlam of bad dreams - mad wolves devouring the nation's people and, far worse, Scientologists seeking to corrupt our souls.

Happy trails or what one asks?!