Category: The Monday Minstrel
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Monday Minstrel: Patient Bird
I was sitting in my car, eating a take-out sandwich, and I had the window down. I could hear all the birds singing and chattering. Then I noticed this little bird. He was on top of a hedge and let out the occasional chirp to let me know he was there. He knew I had…
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Monday Minstrel: The Warhorse of Medieval times was a pony!
Back in the pre-pandemic days, when we were still travelling my husband and I did a tour of arms and armories in England. There were several horses in armour to be seen and it was clear the horses were not huge. So when I recently saw an article in Heels Down online magazine I thought…
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Monday Minstrel: Trigger and Roy Rogers.
When I was a kid Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger were my favourites. I used to watch them on tv . Trigger made his name in films in the 1940s and 1950s and later several TV series with his owner Roy Rogers. Trigger learned more than a hundred cues for assorted tricks and could…
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Monday Minstrel: The horse and the snake!
The zodiacal animals raced across a river….
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Monday Minstrel: What do I spy?
But wait…something caught my eye….
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Monday Minstrel: Facts about the London ‘Cab’
The London cab driver will know 25,000 streets and 20,000 places of interest without GPS!
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Monday Minstrel: Poem by Anna Blake
Such an arc to his stride, soft rhythm as his hooves cut the arena sand. Sit tall, rider, with balance and broad shoulders. Fill your lungs and share his pride. And then just ask for a little more. Too much and he’ll lurch on tense muscles. Ask with the quiet belief that when he feels…
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Have you read Black Beauty?
Kathleen Walker-Meikle’s book, The Horse Book, has some background on the well known book Black Beauty. I loved this book as a child and thought I could share what she says about it here. The novel Black Beauty was written by Ana Sewell ‘to induce kindness , sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses’. Sewell,…
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The Monday Minstrel’s Motivation
If you don’t know where you’re going you’ll end up somewhere else. Yogi Berra
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Monday Minstrel: Bollards! The Spoils of Victory!
I belong to a Facebook Group “Memories of London” and recently saw a post about the final resting place of the canons from the defeated army of Napoleon ! Here is a quote from the post. “After the defeat of the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the British started to strip the…
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Monday Minstrel: How do birds survive the Polar Vortex?
The Polar Vortex has descended. As the name sounds it is a broad swath of arctic air that descends onto Canada and spills on down into the northern US. I look at the little birds that come to our bird feeder and I wonder how they survive in the severe cold. This winter I am…
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Monday Minstrel: The Ballet Dancing Horse.
Alignment, placement and transitions are of prime importance.