Monday, January 18, 2021

So many horses - and another lockdown

 I've been fairly uninspired to write recently. I haven't been able to go out much. Not only is Britain into its 3rd lockdown, so there isn't much to do anyway, but I managed to somehow injure my ankle, perhaps when I was doing a resistance band workout at home, so I wasn't able to do a whole lot as I needed to really rest it. I got a tenser bandage for it and everything. After about a week, I was starting to feel better, not using the tenser bandage, and decided I was safe to walk again, so my husband and I went out to enjoy the weather, walking for well over an hour, and while I felt fine at the time, by the next day, the had started feeling pain again. So much for getting better. I've been off it for about 2 weeks at this point, and I finally went out for a short walk today, about a third of what I usually do when I went for exercise, and so far I feel fine, but the real test will come tomorrow after the ankle has a chance to stiffen up overnight.


Meanwhile, I thought I would add a tidbit about horses in here. I've learned that horses are often viewed on the street in London--and not just mounted police. The last time I was in London for tourism was 15 years ago, and I can't recall ever seeing horses on the street, even police ones, despite the fact that I spent about a month here and was going out a lot. But I guess if you stick around long enough, you eventually start to see them on the roads. Blogger's interface doesn't allow me to post the video directly, but the horse viewing started shortly after we arrived when we were still in quarantine. I can at least share a link to the video in my Google Photos album. My husband called me over to the window, and we ended up witnessing hundreds of these horse-and-chariot sets racing down the street at a nice pace, I think a canter but some with a high step as if they were in dressage. All the horses appeared to be ponies, though, so they're not dressage type horses, but I was told that the people doing this might be Travellers, who are well-known for having and working with horses a lot. And given the background photo on the page I just looked up to link for readers, I would definitely concur with the suggestion I was given! I had read an ethnography about Travellers in one of my anthropology classes in university many moons ago, but I thought I would add some info for those of you that might not be as familiar with them.



Anyway, aside from the horse guards near Westminster and the mounted police, I've seen what appeared to be children riding with a teacher when I went out for a walk one morning. The person in yellow appears to be a teacher and the rest are quite a bit younger. After sharing this photo with my husband, he informed me that one thing he had learned is that in the UK, even in London, horses are indeed allowed to go on city streets and that traffic even has to yield to them. If you search the web, you'll find numerous laws and by-laws related to horses on the roads. It's quite fascinating! The riders pictured here were on a somewhat quieter street turning onto a busy one, and sure enough, drivers slowed down and allowed them to carry on. They were at least trotting, so it's not like they were going at a slow pace, but even in the wild west where I come from back home, it's not even legal to ride a horse in the city unless it's on personal property, and I think there is only one equine centre there. I just find it all really fascinating. In addition to these folks, yesterday I saw yet a new set of individuals on horses. In this case, they looked like they might be military. From the looks of the horses, they appeared to perhaps be the members that comprise the horse guard (which I'm pictured with above), and perhaps they were taking the horses out for a walk. There are stables in the city, surprisingly, but perhaps there's not that much space for them to get exercise. 








The final photo of horses I'll share is the one of the mounted police. You actually see these all over, especially in green spaces as it's convenient to walk around on them, I guess, and you can also guarantee to outrun a perpetrator, should there be one. It also gives you a bit closer to a bird's eye view as well, I would imagine, for keeping an eye our for anything or anyone suspicious. The ones pictured here were walking down the street, perhaps heading back to the stables or who knows.

 

Before leaving this post entirely, I wanted to share a few photos that I forgot to share in my post where I mentioned different things in the grocery store for Christmas. In England, you find Christmas dinner sandwiches. I first came across these way back in 2001, the first time I ever came to England. I was running out of money and had eaten nasty mayonnaise-heavy sandwiches from 7-11 in Madrid because it's all I could afford by that time, and when I returned to London, I was in the cafeteria at my friend's school and thought I'd get a sandwich for lunch. I don't think Spain really has a sandwich culture, so I wasn't really expecting awesome sandwiches there, but I thought for sure I'd see something without mayonnaise here. I was quite mistaken. I did manage to find one sandwich that didn't have mayonnaise, and as I had only been looking at the ingredients list and not the names of the sandwiches, I failed to see that the sandwich was a Christmas turkey sandwich, replete with cranberry sauce and stuffing. Seriously. Spiced cubed bread between two slices of bread? It was as disappointing as the ones in Spain but for other reasons. These days, it seems that they've branched out quite a bit with different Christmas dinner type sandwich options. It might not be hard to to guess that I decided to try none of them. 😆