Lauren and Lucky (3 page)

Oh well, never mind. I’ve got other things to think about – like the dressage! At tea Leonie and Paula were talking about
lateral flexion
and I was like, oh help!

When I said how me and Lucky will be lucky even to get round, never mind anything fancy, they were really sweet and started going, “Oh, I know how you feel, I’m so rubbish,” and “Don’t worry, I’ll never make it through a whole routine,” even though they are BRILLIANT. How nice is that?! My brothers would just say, “Yeah, you suck, loser!”

I wanted to sit and talk to them for longer, but Arabella dragged me off to look at her make-up collection.

Oh, gotta go – it’s time to head over to the pool!

Swimming was fun last night – we all played water games and had comps together as a big group. Me and Arabella had such a cool time after lights out, too. Just as I was falling asleep, she shook my arm and suggested a midnight feast. I wanted to wake Millie as well, but Arabella said she only had two of the Sherbert Dib Dabs and it might be awkward 'cos it's not the kind of thing you can share out. So I climbed up on to her bunk and we scoffed her secret stash of sweets and chatted, but in whispers so that Jody didn't hear us.

She was telling me about the amazing posh boarding school she goes to – she keeps Gracie in the stables there and she can ride her every single day. Imagine living at a boarding school with your pony! And think of the midnight feasts and the fun you'd have with the other girls. It must be like being at Pony Camp
all the time
! Honestly, her life sounds fabulous! And she's going on loads of different holiday schemes, doing everything from drama to learning French actually in France.
And
she says her parents let her do whatever she wants, 'cos they live in Hong Kong and she only has to see them, like, twice a year or something.

So anyway, when she said all that, there I was, staring with my mouth open. “Wow, you are so, so,
so
lucky, you are lucky times one million!” I said.
“
My
dad's really strict and my school friends live miles away so I'm stuck with my three yucky brothers most of the time. And somehow they always seem to wriggle out of their chores, but Mum never lets
me
off. If it wasn't for my riding lesson on Saturday mornings, I'd go mad! I wish I could be you and always have girls to hang around with, and my own pony to ride and spend time with whenever I wanted to – it sounds like heaven to me!”

When I said all this to Arabella, she just shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess so.” She didn't seem that enthusiastic, but I know she was only playing it down so as not to rub it in. We fell asleep soon after that, so we didn't talk about it any more.

Normally I hate getting up in the mornings, but it was brilliant this morning 'cos it was the first day of waking up at Pony Camp.

After breakfast we grabbed some lead ropes from the tack room and went straight off up the lane to the upper field to catch our ponies. I went up to Lucky and gave him a pat and a carrot and he let me catch him straight away. I also helped Bea get her lead rope on Cracker because the clip was quite stiff and he kept moving his head about, the cheeky boy! Gracie was being a bit flighty and kept running away from Arabella, so she asked Lydia to catch her instead.

It was so nice all clip-clopping back down the lane with our ponies and grooming them in the barn together, all chatting and joking – just how I'd imagined Pony Camp would be!

For our dressage workshop, our group sat at the picnic benches outside the barn. The second
Sally appeared, we started bombarding her with ideas for our routines, and asking questions about the compulsory movements.

“Hang on! Hang on!” she cried. “I'm glad you're keen, but one at a time!”

So we shot our hands up like we were at school, and got into fits of giggles about that. Once she'd answered our questions, Sally explained that most people find it easiest to make up the routine first and then choose music to go with it. You can have two or three different tunes put together or stick to just one, if it fits well. She gave us some really good advice, which is to think about our ponies' personalities and choose the movements that suit their strengths rather than the ones that highlight their weaknesses (so me and Lucky won't be doing any halt to canter transitions then!).

Then Sally sent Leonie to the games room to get some rulers and pencils and paper, and we all copied her scale drawing of the arena off the whiteboard, like this

We started chatting to each other and sketching in a rough plan of which set movements we could do and the best order to do them in. There was lots of rubbing out too, when we realized that you can't link certain ones up very easily! There weren't enough rubbers to go round, so Arabella broke hers in half and shared with me. We had this good idea of doing a twenty metre circle in trot in the AX half of the school so that when we've done the
circle we can go into canter in the AF corner and it should look really cool. Sally came and leaned over us and said she liked that idea, and we felt really pleased with ourselves!

In our lesson this morning we worked without stirrups so we could improve our balance for the dressage. Mischief did a big plunge when he went into canter and Marie almost went out the side door, but she managed to grab the pommel in time!

We worked on the set movements again and I think me and Lucky are actually improving. We had a go at the 20 metre circle in trot and then at getting canter in the AF corner, the sequence Arabella and I had thought up. It worked really well, so we're definitely putting it in our routines! We also tried out trotting down the centre line, then doing medium walk from
C to E, then going back into trot at E. Sally's right, it is tricky when you start putting things together and trying to hit the markers.