Christmas at Hoppenstedts

Today Angie's mother and step father were due to come for the day but called in the morning to say they were not feeling too well. So the day was rather "flat". I had baked a special Christmas Cake last night. I wasn't keen on it but Angie wanted one so I did my best. Looked magnificent and I think tastes as it should but for me it's a rather dry, chocolate overloaded creation. Sure a drop of alcohol would improve it. Perhaps we can find some new victims to offload it on. 

Angie is a Life Of Brian fan (dubbed in German) but at Christmas she reverts to a German comedian known as Loriot (real name Bernhard-Viktor Christoph-Carl von Bülow) and his classic Christmas sketch from the /0's and 90's. So we often get to hear her say  "In years gone by there was more tinsel"

This year Christmas has been very dreary and certainly tonight when I put the horses to bed, there was a marked lack of tinsel - not a single LED blinking light.

The horses have just come in and are munching their prepared food which is a token gesture but one they thoroughly enjoy. They don't get any grain, just a small portion of sugar beet pulp, pre-soaked in water. As I learnt last year from Edinburgh University's Vet School an excellent feed for horses. Rosie, the black Quarter Horse, has a metabolic disorder and has her own British imported molasses-free sugar beet to which she gets half a liter of vegetable oil a day. Without the sugar beet, she wouldn't eat the oil.

This morning Angie rode out with Sultan in horrible windy rain. I picked Flash up at the halfway point and he was more than pleased to get in the car.


There followed a late snack lunch in front of the TV and I for one fell in to a long deep sleep but stayed awake long enough to see Angie wipe away tears from the last 10 minutes of the film Heidi (1993 version).


When I eventually woke up, it was almost dark and Angie announced dashing out the door she was going out for a ride with Rosie. And indeed they had a great ride in the dark and though a black horse not ideal, Angie, Rosie, Flash & Luna were all equipped with neon reflective stipes and coats as well as LED blinking collars. Must have been quite a sight.

Luckily it had stopped raining in the afternoon but started again at 20:00 when I brought the horses in. The air has changed, there is a smell of snow in the air.