Fall, not falling off, and the end of BB9

Autumn is here.  The scent of it hangs in the air, deliciously crisp and fresh.  When I was a child growing up in Canada, it was called Fall, presumably because the leaves fall off the trees.  But it is also the fall of summer, the end of a year long cycle of birth through to death.  So whilst I love the summer, the spring, and even winter, I think the Fall is my favourite.

Autumn is also the time I love to write the most.  The weather is still gentle, the rains wash away the stifling heat (usually!) of the summer, and it's good to be all cosied up in the house, in front of the patio doors, looking out into a garden alive with intense colour.  I become melancholy but in a good way - a time to reminisce and to write about it.  This year is particularly strange and melancholy because I'm not going back to work, the scan is on the 16th to see if the RT worked/didn't work/how much it worked, and I see the oncologist on Oct 1st.  A scary time.  And the children have returned to school, the day has a pattern again, a natural rhythm that I can fall into.  I'm hoping it will be a good time to crack on with my work, and to finish my novel.

And of course Big Brother finishes tonight, so will have to find something else to occupy my days, especially now (fingers crossed) when my stomach seems to be sorting itself out.

Riding

I had a fantastic lesson yesterday, despite torrential rain and the horse refusing to walk across a flooded yard to the indoor school!  Siobhan had her ears pinned back but eventually settled down.

I've been reading a lot lately about jumping techniques and cross country, and realised that I didn't have an independent seat at all when it came to jumping positions.  So I asked my teacher if we could work on that in order to get my confidence back.  I spent 45 minutes learning how to balance in a cross country seat, and it all started to fall into place.  Fab.  The best bit was when I was asked to get Siobhan to jump over the pole on the ground, and to tell her when to take off.  I thought, how the hell do you do that?  But S is such a good teacher that I managed to get it second time around.  Funny - there seems to be no relationship whatever between what we learn in the early stages of riding, to what we learn further down the line, but I love that it's so technical, so physically challenging, and so enjoyable.  Oh dear, I am truly a horse freak now!

Big Brother 9 Final

It's Friday and the last day of BB9.  Who wins?  You decide (because I'm too tight to pay the costs of a vote!). 

This year's series has been more inspirational than previous years.  They seem to have gotten rid of the idiots early on - the violent ones, the fame seekers, the shallow and the depraved.  The tasks have been interesting, and Big Bro has been quicker off the mark to stamp out unacceptable behaviour (probably since all the furore over Jade and Shilpa Shetty in Celeb Big Bro).  The range of people has been far wider this year, in terms of age, place of origin, and character, and that's made all the difference for me, because of course I only watch it to study the interaction/psychological side of people for my writing (and if you believe that you'll believe anything lol).

I think we've been left with a lovely bunch of people this year; Darnell with his 'potty mouth', and issues of not fitting in (reminds me of myself when I was younger except I was more sad than angry), Rachel with her 'Disneyesque' character (so what if she is simply a nice person?!), Rex, whose arrogance and plain speaking is actually quite endearing now (although what was going on with him and Nicole - a co-dependent relationship if I ever I saw one), Mikey who is extremely funny and has a wicked sense of humour (although I'd probably kill him if I had to live with him), and last but not least, Sarah the Aussie who genuinely doesn't  seem to realise that she's really leading poor Darnell on all the time with her flirting (and who has already won £25 grand).  I'm struggling to pick a winner, feeling they all deserve it pretty much, but Rex says he'd give the money to charity (so not him - I want it to make a real difference for whoever wins it), and Sarah has cash now... I think... er... mmm... okay - Darnell.  I'll go with Darnell to win!