New Year's Day 2012

It has become traditional for our horses to have a pint of Guinness on Christmas morning and another to welcome the New Year. By an unfortunate (?) oversight, they also had a pint on Boxing Day morning - far from complaining, the four of them were eagerly awaiting the arrival of their feed buckets the following morning! However, they had to wait until Denise arrived to play Barman on New Year's Day.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to one and all!!

Christmas Lunches 2011

Some of the happy eaters

How did the Chef and Mine Host manage to escape from the kitchen?

I am so very grateful to Jo Winfield, our secretary, for these contrbutions to the blog while I was away visiting my two sons and their families near Brisbane in Australia over Christmas (lucky me!!). I had a fantastic time out there.
The support from Jane, Gill, and Jo Corr in filling the gap of caring for the horses with John Newell was magnificent.

Both Wally & Denise were indisposed for the month of December when Wally underwent surgery to replace his aortic heart valve and a single heart by-pass. While I was away for 6 weeks from mid-November visiting friends and family in the southern hemisphere!
I'm happy to report that Wally is making an excellent recovery and we are all looking forward to a new season of carriage driving starting, weather permitting, in a few weeks time. I think we can expect Wally to be a bit moo...dy at times as his heart valve came from a cow!!

This year there were two “sittings”, and on each occasion Joy and Peter arranged the seating to ensure easy access for wheel-chair users. The restaurant and tables (and staff) were beautifully decorated, and the food was excellent. In all, about 60 had lunch, and Joy and Peter coped amazingly with “crises”, which started with the Secretary paying a last minute visit the night before the first sitting, and saying dramatically to Joy, “It's been cancelled!!”. She then apologised for her twisted sense of humour, and Joy remarked she was very relieved as she had just finished peeling 6 kg sprouts! And then when extra people arrived at intervals for the second sitting, tables were shifted and additional ones laid, extra chairs and meals found, all with the greatest good humour.

and a last thought . . .
For those of you who have not had the doubtful pleasure of meeting the Secretary, she is currently trying to persuade the Group Organiser to allow her to resign, volunteers welcome . . .

Group Organiser's and Chairman's response...."resignation not an option!!!" :-)

Our Oldest Passenger?

Eve was 93 when these photos were taken in August (thank you, Connie!). Eve spent many of her school holidays on the family farm in Surrey, where she helped with the farm work, starting each morning with catching the two reluctant cart-horses. Sadly Eve lived most of her life away from the horses which she loved; so it was to achieve a long-held ambition that she came for a drive. She has arthritis and very poor short-term memory, but this is one experience which she still remembers with great pleasure.