Naturally after yesterday's blog, Baggy couldn't sleep! Hormonal Hannah and Freda Fretter were both thinking that Creative Clara shouldn't have been so honest about how much the horses cost Grotty Groom and Calum. She was fretting that maybe Baggees will be thinking that she was being flash or something - showing off about how much they have spent over the years. Actually, it was the opposite. She was horrified about how much it costs to own horses, and although Clever Bird is well aware that it has frequently meant that Baggy and Cal were living beyond their means, she'd never dared to do the maths before!! Now she remembers why!
When she first became Wessle's human, Grotty used to keep a little book of the costs involved. After about nine months, having realised that even though she had an extremely well-paid job, due to the massive size of her mortgage, she could not afford to own a horse! So, she did the obvious thing - she stopped monitoring how much he cost her; stuck her head in the sand and carried on. She would have sold her house, before she sold her horse!
Pre-Wesley, Baggy smoked like a chimney. When the doctor asked her, she would grudgingly admit to 20-30 a day, but truthfully, it was more like 30-40! She smoked 100s, and having just checked the current cost, she was stunned! Let's say that they are £10 a packet (they're more!); and that Baggy only smoked 20 a day (she didn't); then since she has owned Wesley (over 14 years), had she still been a smoker, she would have spent £49,280 on fags! The truth is Baggees, that when you do the maths on anything, it's a shock!
Do you drink coffee? A cappuccino a day - that's £9,912, even if you only had 20 a month. Go out on a Friday night? What do you spend? £20? Well that's £14,560!! Do you have a decent holiday each year? What does it cost? £1,000? That's another £14,000. So, yep Baggees, when you do the maths it's terrifying. But as long as what you do, you do because you love it - then what else is money for? And Grotty and Calum adore their horses!
Freda was also worrying that she'd given the impression that her horse is a nutter, and that Grotty must be a really bad rider. He isn't; and she isn't! In fact Wesley is a total sweetheart. Yes, he's extremely sharp, and rather spooky sometimes, but he hasn't an unworthy thought in his head. He does have kissing-spine though, which can be incredibly painful, when his vertebrae trap a nerve; and if this happens, he has to stop the pain - the pain that is worse because Grotty is sitting on the trapped nerve - solution - get the pain aka Grotty off his back!
So, in the fourteen years that Grotty has spent with Wesley, and in the hundreds of hours that she has ridden him for, she has had only 6 unscheduled dismounts! Of those, on only one occasion did Grotty actually genuinely fall off him; the other 5 times, he got Grotty off his back to get rid of the pain! Three of these, resulted in Baggy spending time in hospital. And each time, as soon as the pain stopped, he shot over to Grotty to check where she'd gone.
Baggy eventually got to sleep at around 2.00am, satisfied that she will happily let Grotty spend another £95,000 to keep her beloved horse happy for the next 14 years, if she needs to. And determined to lose a couple of stone, so that she can start to ride him once more. And she might cut back on the cappuccinos too!
This morning, as promised, a half asleep Creative Clara shot up the garden to show the shed building progress.
It's no longer in the way, and the new one can now be built without obstruction.
Steve came today, to get on with the build. While he was at it, Cal and Baggy got the Christmas decorations down from the attic! Guess what Clara has been doing all day!
Yep Baggees, Clara has indeed put up three trees! Amongst other things.
She'll take more photos when there's some light tomorrow, but forget classy, tasteful, coordinated decorations Baggees, this is the Baggy household, and if it didn't move, it got decorated...
... it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...
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