Somewhere along the way I have lost my confidence: problem is, I have only 20 days to find it again...

That's it in a nutshell really.
I have 20 days to find my confidence.
My show jumping confidence that is.
Yes, I know someone my age really shouldn't be gallivanting around like a teenager - but I love it. And loving it should mean that I am confident about it - shouldn't it?
It does not seem so at present.
Two years ago I was persuaded to take part in the British Horse Society's Riding School Competition, which is held at Moreton Morrell in Warwickshire every year. It is a horse riding competition that is only open to those who do not own or loan their own horses or ponies and all the horses and ponies have to belong or be used at a BHS Affiliated Riding School or Equitation Centre.
It is a wonderful opportunity and somehow I qualified for it being one of three adult riders selected to go. I might add there were only three of us who could!
Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed myself and came last after a disastrous dressage test where I and my caller got in a frightful muddle as to what test I should actually be doing and generally mucking it up (note ALWAYS learn your dressage test off by heart). I then had complete a stable management test - where I astounded myself by getting all the answers right.
And finally I had to jump a course of nine show jumps in a professional arena with full watching audience!
My lovely equine partner at the time, Candy, took me round with aplomb and although not a tidy round  - it sufficed. I was incredibly proud as only three months previously I had never jumped a show jumping course in my life!

Me riding the wonderful Candy aka My Sweet Girl at Warwick in 2015

Roll on two years and I have jumped a lot of show jumps - with a variety of equine partners. But the other day I scared myself.
God only knows how but I really did.
Normally I ride ponies that need a bit of encouragement to get a move on and wake up - and that is fine with me. But I am getting better and so I have progressed onto horses, which thoroughly love their job - especially jumping.
And that is the rub I think.
I am not quite as keen to go at their speed as they think I should be and we tend to part ways - sometimes quiet literally.
Tonight I have fallen off twice.
Once I landed perfectly on my own two feet and would not have disgraced the most elegant of horse vaulters and the other time I involuntary dismounted so as to avoid being smeared against the riding school wall - the look on my mount's face was of total astonishment and consternation.
This loss of confidence - which I fear now is becoming a somewhat self fulfilling prophecy - all started I think about two months ago when I was competing to be selected to go once again to Warwickshire. I was riding the incomparable Poppy, a 15h bay thoroughbred mare with pretty white snip on her nose. Usually she is very quiet and will happily plod on if you let her so is excellent for those learning to ride. She was my mount of choice when I returned to riding through the 2012 Olympic Legacy's Take Back The Reins programme. While she is great to learn to ride on she isn't just a one trick pony: with the right rider she can also pull out all the stops: four years ago she and her rider Helen won the heavily contested Dressage competition at Warwick.
But the thing Poppy loves most is jumping.
The change in her attitude is astonishing from barely going forward, suddenly she is very up for it! Positively dancing in excitement. Her ears twitch forward and she flies.
However, she is not a push button horse and you do have to have her straight and balanced before a jump and when you do she just takes you - she loves it SO much!
When I rode her, I had actually never ridden a full show jumping course on her before. In fact, I had only ever jumped one or possibly two jumps in succession on her.
My mistake.
We did a lovely dressage test then we went in to show jump. I will admit I was a tad nervous - wrong make that suddenly very afraid.
We got to the practice jump and refused. I had taken her in at an angle and quite rightly she said (if she could talk): You what???!
It wasn't very elegant.
I bottled it and was not keen to ride at all. I was all set there and then NOT to do this silly thing and leave.
However, I was persuaded to jump the practice fence properly, which we did. And although I was ready to leave and everyone was just about OK with that; I realised that I could not do it and with the understanding that I would be overseen round the course, I went for it knowing I would only kick myself if I missed the opportunity.
I can honestly say I have no recollection whatsoever of how I got round - we flew. At one stage I was told by my coach to sit up and back as we soared over a skinny and tore round a corner. I never heard her but everyone says I did it beautifully almost before she spoke.
I don't think I breathed at all.
The whole way round.
I rode out not feeling pleased and happy as you would expect - but utterly shaken.
I burst into tears.
And that I think is when I started to overthink.
Get scared.
And lose my confidence.
Each and every time I have jumped since, it seems I go backwards in ability. If I watch others ride before me I almost start to hyperventilate and I look for almost any excuse NOT to do it.
It has landed up with me today - on a new horse I will admit - unable to jump a cross pole. And it was only one side of a cross pole as well - barely off the ground...
I have only 20 days to get this sorted and be able to jump a course of nine 2ft 3 inch show jumps on a new horse  - the fabulous Earwig, with whom I really am doing very well with on the flat. We are unsure that the gorgeous Poppy will be fit enough to go - but that is beside the point as I am just as scared about show jumping on her at present.
So my many friends, and any who are into horses - what on earth should I do?
How am I going to get over this lack of confidence and do myself and everyone else proud?
Is there enough time?
Should I just forget it and stop the pressure and perhaps just concentrate on the dressage?
Do I go at all?

And we shall talk horses....

Hamlet

It's difficult not to be shocked when you first see her - that's if you recognise her at all.


I didn't.


My gaze slid past her as I searched and all I registered about the patient on the bed was how small and bald he was, and how very red and beaky was his nose.


Then it dawned on me that that was my friend.


Luckily for me her eyes were closed and I was able to compose myself before announcing my arrival.   
I felt such a fool. But what was I expecting?


Whenever I had seen her in the past, she was always poised, always in control. I only got to see what she wanted me to see. I always had to tell her when I was coming over to visit and she would always be ready.


It's one of the things I admired - being a person who is so often totally out of control and desperately disorganised.


Now, lying in the bed more incapacitated than ever and totally at the mercy of the system, I had to adjust my expectations fast, think on my feet and realise that the only thing I could do was to treat her as normal with no idea what her normal was any more.


I have only ever known my friend with cancer. She had it before I knew her and when I first met her she didn't tell me. It was 18 months before I found out and I suspect if she had been able to hide it for longer she would have done.


Here, for the first time in ages, at the stables where we all met she wasn't the cancer victim -  rather like the rest of us, just a woman who was  proverbially girding her loins to mount up and ride a horse once again.

It was the golden Autumn of 2012 and Hoof, the British Equestrian Federation’s (BEF) Olympic and Paralympic legacy campaign, had just launched its "Take Back the Reins" programme  to encourage  people like us to get back in the saddle (or driving seat or whatever was the case).

There were six of us, a couple like me who had ridden as kids but had lapsed due to life taking us in different directions and those who had started but not got any further. Whatever the reason we turned up at Newton Hall Equestrian Centre in Suffolk because we wanted to ride again. Perhaps we were trying to prove we could do it before it was too late. Perhaps we were indulging ourselves. We got more than we bargained.

What we found was that for a couple of hours a week we didn't just learn to ride - we found we could time travel - we could be who we once were: kids again with no thought other than to ride. Horse-mad teenagers but with possibly less conviction that we were invincible and a greater appreciation for the art of falling off. 

When you ride a horse you can only really think about what you are doing, you cannot go off into a daydream for the effort to stay on, especially initially, takes up every living second. When you ride you have to be in the here and now. No other thought can intrude; not if you wish to do it right and we all so desperately wanted that. So, goodbye money worries, goodbye work concerns, goodbye demanding family, goodbye cancer!

To be honest those first few weeks were terrifying as we all got to grips with it. My friend was a revelation she was born to it - she made it seem so easy. While I struggled to sit deeper and go with my horse, to keep my hands still and and to smooth my transitions, she tackled far more advanced fair. It was if this was what she was meant to do, quite literally why she had been born.

Just the other day, when she was clearly very poorly (on her last ride as it turned out) she was playing about with leg yields while I still struggled to ask for a clean transition to canter. But here's the thing about my friend, even though clearly she was far more advanced than I, she never lorded it over me or indeed any of the others, never became impatient with us in the lessons when she had to sit  and wait for us to get it together, never got cross  when I lost it and refused to do more than walk or trot, she was so genuinely pleased to see me progress.

To be honest we all were pleased when someone suddenly got it but without her I don't think we would have been confident enough to say so out loud to each other. She encouraged us to share our triumphs and to make little of our failures in the knowledge that next week we'd be better. She exuded positivity in the best way imaginable and it was wonderful.

So there I am in the hospital, beeps and bleeps and coughs and snorts and does she even know who I am? For having been knocked back by cancer again and again, she is here in the Stroke Unit, her left side totally gone and the prognosis is shit. 

So I say to her: "What a bugger!"  and could she: "Please help me because I am so very stupid - do you know who I am?"

I get a thumbs up.

She knows.

So I blather away about Hamlet her favourite equine and how he's just dropped a rider and playing up quite dreadfully. How he's obviously feeling a lot better now he's back in work. And would she like a picture and I'll do that tomorrow.

The magazines I've bought  are totally useless, she can't read them and the damage done by the stroke is far more than I imagined. The only other thing I have in my handbag is a small bottle Cow Shed's Cow Pat - which thankfully doesn't smell of cow pat. I ask if she'd like me to massage her feet I think I get a consent and so I massage her feet and they go from cold to warm, from dry to smooth. I think she likes it but it's difficult to tell.

I say I'll have to go but I'll be back with some photos of the horses and I do go back every other day during half term week bringing photographs and massaging her hands and feet and I chatter and as the days progress she gets better and starts to make her presence felt in no uncertain terms. I begin to understand her new way of talking and negotiate with doctors and nurses to get what she wants.

And then I am away for a week with work and family and she 's there at the back of my mind and the next thing I know she's in St Elizabeths Hospice. I visit and it's not good. She knows me and not knows me but she looks a hundred times better.

But I am uncertain.

And then I go back on Saturday morning and there she is - my friend. She's talking so much better and she seems so alive, positively buzzing. I tell her about the stables and the horses and how I am worried about going to Warwickshire for the British Horse Society Riding Schools Competition. I can just about get half marks for the ridden test, I can jump a clear round but not desperately elegantly and as far as knowing any horse lore forget it. I say I can't go; it is a ridiculous indulgence. She says do it! Have fun! Don't worry so much and that she can help me learn for the test. She makes me feel good about it all and then she asks me to take her to her niece's wedding at the end of May. We'll buy hats and look glamorous and we're going to have a spa day and paint our nails.

She has beautiful hands. Long tapering fingers. Strong hands. Hands that can talk to a horse and hold him in check, that give him confidence, that can make him dance. 

She says I'll have to be with her at the wedding reception: "And we shall talk horses..."

I leave  and feel so happy promising to be back on Monday morning.

"I'll get a movie of Hamlet and all the horses, would you like that?" I say. She gives me the thumbs up and although I am at the stables on Sunday morning I never get round to it. I'm helping with the course building for the jumping competition, waiting for an opportunity, I have my eldest wanting to go home. I'm late and I'm disorganised as usual. I console myself with the thought that I can always drop by the stables in the morning after getting the boys to school and take the photographs and movies then. It will probably be better.

That evening I get a call. 

At some point in the afternoon of March 1 2015 my friend dies.

"....and we shall talk horses..." echoes in my mind.