Life to 23rd October 2020

To say it has been a bit of week so far would be a gross understatement.

Last Thursday, 15th October, one of our horses (Benney caricatured in the header picture) came into the yard with a cut on one of his fetlocks and was lame. Then on Saturday Bryn came in with a fresh cut on one of his fetlocks and lame. We cleaned him up and kept him in overnight. By now Benney had been stable kept for three nights to give the wound a chance to heal. It was getting better. On Sunday morning we pulled Bryn out to be groomed. Poor old lad, he could only walk on three legs.

The emergency vet came out, examined him. Instead of having a quiet Sunday in the garden we were motoring all the way from Ringwood to Donnington in Berkshire, 110 mile round trip, to get him admitted to a specialist veterinary hospital.

Alas the plans of mice and men are thrown asunder by injured equines again.

On the way home we stopped off for a MacDonald’s. At the counter we ordered and asked for a Happy Meal veggie burger. We were told they were not available. We asked what the other veggie options were. Salad or fish. Sorry? Fish is not vegetarian. The burger flipper told us “Well, it isn’t meat is it?”. Far too tired to argue so we settled for three happy meal cheeseburgers.

All of us were quite tired by the time we got home late that afternoon

Monday and Tuesday went by in a blur. The hospital kept us fully informed of Bryn's progress as he underwent scans to make sure his tendon sheath had not been damaged, which it was not. They also drained fluids from the joint to check for infections which there was but very minor.

Bryn came home on Wednesday bandaged and with a course of painkillers and antibiotics.

That same day in the House of Commons an amendment for free school meals for children during the school holidays including half term was presented before the House. It is currently estimated that there are 1.4m children in need of free school meals at a cost of £15 per week. The total cost using this data would be £21m. Bearing in mind that the current PM, when he was mayor of London, spaffed £21.4m of taxpayers’ money in construction contracts on the doomed to fail and then abandoned “Garden Bridge” project I fail to see how he could not have backed this reasonable amendment. With trust and respect in this current Government’s handling of the COVID 19 pandemic £21m for free school meals seems a missed opportunity for going someway to restoring some of that trust and credibility. And even better for the Tory party this small amount of money would be paid from central Government funds.

The amendment was rejected. I find this a particularly galling act of arrogance by the Government because of recent experiences we have had travelling around the West Country.

We were staying in Bristol in August at a smart hotel. Less than 100 yards from that hotel’s front door was a church hall facing on to a square. When we walked past it, we saw a line of people and a few children snaking through some barrier fencing towards the hall. The queue must have been thirty to forty people long. At first, we thought they were lining up to go into the hall for a service, but they were not. They were lining up to receive a hand-out meal from the church. We looked around the square and saw what neither of us had ever seen before. People, some with children, sitting on benches or the few scraps of lawn having their evening meals they had collected from the church.

The current PM, when he was Mayor of London spaffed £417.000 on a gala to celebrate the start of the doomed to fail and then abandoned Garden Bridge project in London. That is an amount that would have paid for free school meals for a week for nearly 28,000 children, some of whom may well have been in that queue in the centre of Bristol.

Oh well, who am I to question their motives as these things are decided by the special advisers who are experts in their fields within Fortress Downing Street?

I just fail to see how our British society is working properly when things like food poverty, especially amongst children, is happening. This country is currently 5th or 6th in the world league table of Gross Domestic Product. It is a country where in one part of it a children’s charity is having to be funded by UNICEF whose main body of work is in third world areas.

It also seems the traditional Christmas fare of roast turkey is under threat. This is because in the run up to Christmas workers who are highly skilled in slaughtering and preparing turkeys and come from Europe. Under the current COVID restrictions they would have to self-quarantine for fourteen days before being able to start work. It takes twelve weeks to train a person to their high skill levels and there are only nine weeks to the big day.

It looks like some turkeys are going to have a reprieve and will see 2021. Half of our household is vegetarian so we are not especially worried about this as one of us will enjoy a nice piece of fish.

I am pleased to say that the vet saw both the injured horses earlier today, Friday, and is very pleased with their progress. My goodness those equines know how to put their owners and connections through the emotional grinder.

Friday has been a good day.