Kisses

I owe 3 Science Museum photos! And I will owe one more tomorrow. I now don't finish my placement until the 15th/16th, owing to the fact data collection took a lot longer than we were hoping. Darn visitors not doing what I wanted to interview them about. In the end we resorted recruiting some people for interviews, but you can't rely on that.

Photos will come. Swearz. My camera died on me and I didn't remember to charge it until today because I'm forgetful like that.

Anyhoo, for now, enjoy some pictures of me and Mikey!

My work placement, and working weekends, has kept me away from the yard for aaaages. Way too long. The one day I managed to get up there in the last few weeks (until this weekend) I arrived to fins Mikey had thrown a shoe!

But I forgive him. Because he gives kisses.

And it's cute.

But you have to be careful, because sometimes...

...you do end up with a faceful of pony-stubble.

Which is unpleasant.

But most of the time it's just cute.

And now Mikey has all 4 shoesies on so as soon as I finish my work placement he is back in regular work. AND we got our jumping paddock back last week and spent yesterday setting up a huge course of jumps.

Mikey's really excited for that.

(photos by Tim Wright)

Some Low-Quality Photos from the Yard Today

Any excuse to blog, huh? I'm trying to get myself in the habit of blogging what's actually happening right now, rather than just saying 'oh, I'll blog that some day' and then forgetting about it. That's my excuse anyway.

So, firstly, Mikey says 'Hi!'

He also hopes you will notice how brave he was to stand there so close to the deadly white plastic chairs as they were stacked and unstacked.

Mikey has a phobia of white plastic chairs. Really bad. But only when they're picked up off the ground and moved around. Chairs on the ground, fine. Not bothered. It's the flying plastic chairs that will eat you.

We discovered this when someone picked up a chair in front of him just after I'd mounted on the yard and he proceeded to freak out and bronk me all over the place while I frantically tried to steer him away from children and small ponies.

But he does have a nice tail, so we forgive. 

And spend more holding up white plastic chairs with apples on them than a really sane person would. But horse people are rarely sane people.

This is Ricki with his owner, and also Ricki's new flymask, which makes him look like a robot.

This is our new horse, Buddy, being 're-introduced' to Ricki with said flymask after Bud mistook the poor pony for a horse-eating robot and started a horsey campaign of terror against him.

And this is Pelé.

He is a cockapoo that has just been bought by the family of one of our clients/yard kids. He is 8 1/2 weeks old and not allowed to touch the ground until his vaccinations are done. This means he needs snuggling.

And we need to snuggle him. Just because.

Time for a Break: Pubs, Walks and Cooking

I don't know, I get back into blogging and Blogger dies on me! Hope it's not the universe trying to tell me something.

Anyhoo, I enjoyed my first couple of days without crazy amounts of work to do in an AGE this week. I do still have one report left, but the largest bulk of my MA work (if we don't count the dissertation) was finished on Tuesday. So that leaves time for some fun stuff - and blogging!

Of course, I started off slowly. Have to ease back into having down time, you know. Tim came to visit and we had a nice lazy time in a put beer garden on Wednesday. This pub, to be precise.

Check out the menu:

Tim & I had fun picking what we would eat if we didn't already have dinner at home planned.

We make our own fun.

We get this view of each other way too often. Such nerds. I believe I've covered this.

That's better.

I wasn't around to blog about my new Joules bag! Been wanting one for forever, actually, as I didn't have anything I could fit my A4 folders etc. in. Nothing fancy or expensive but it makes me smile.

Yesterday, we took a walk in Sarratt, along some new maintained paths we'd not explored before, and inadvertently discovered halfway along that I had been there before on the horses! Turns out my sense of direction/geography is not the hottest.

Then, I made a fish pie! 

Salmon and leek pie, actually.

Yes, I actually cook when not bogged down with work.

And today, I went riding! Mikey and I are practising a new game I call 'reinless steering' and he calls 'stupid'. But he puts up with me anyway, so that's ok.

I'm back - nobody panic!

I haven't totally neglected this blog, I swear. I've just been so busy lately!

As well as all essays, projects and reports we have to do, our project at the Geffrye Museum has kind of taken over our lives, as we were kind of warned it would. It hardly seems believable that it's almost finished - my got the last of our portfolio contributions in yesterday, our interactive map is going live on the website this week and we're finished off our digital story about tea on Tuesday. The exhibition itself goes up in the museum on the 16th of May and is well worth a look.

I still have an ethnography to write, as well as an individual report on our project. And then there's a 4 week work placement (at the Science Museum!) and a dissertation to write.

So, much work left to finish. But what can I say? I missed blogging too much.

Anyway, here's a few of photos from the time I've been missing.

As I was saying, the Geffrye project does kind of take over. Been spending an awful lot of time there, but it's an awesome place to be.

And the project team have been great to work with.

I've found myself spending far too much time on tea-related activities in the last few weeks.

No, making 'tea' out of tea leaves wasn't strictly necessary for the project but it looked like fun and it's ended up going in our slideshow!

Between working, I've been trying to make the most of summer. Fun times with the gang and such:

Riding Michael when I can.

Mikey and I have been trying to practice our jumping.

We need a lot of practice.

Hopefully the summer will see a lot more time for that!

Promise not to abandon this again - it's my new month's resolution!