Gandalf the.......black?

Last week I was given a great excuse to make more fancy dress costumes, i.e. the announcement that they are organising a Halloween Fun Day up at the stables this weekend :-)

So off I toddled to Mondial Tissus, the (not very) local (and very expensive) fabric shop in Bergerac and spent ages looking for something black I could buy lots of without spending a fortune. Which still turned out to involve spending more money than I would have if I'd  invested in a ready made costume on eBay. But where's the fun in that?

Mucho fabric was required due to Ali's desire to go as one of the Nine, or the Ulairi, the Nazgûl, Ringwraiths, Black Riders, servants of the Dark Lord - otherwise known as them big, black-clad scary buggers that chase the Hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring.

So armed with many metres of fabric, I set about constructing a costume. This mainly involved making a basic long tunic, adding dangly sleeves and a hood, and then trashing the whole thing to make it look knackered. Easy! Sorted the hood bit by sticking one of Mike's leather hoods from a LARPing costume under it, pilfered a latex sword from the aforementioned LARPing goodies and the job was a good 'un.......

Although there was one teeny problem - the Black Riders (and the clue is in the name) all rode dark coloured horses and as you know, I've got mainly white ones. I did ask Carole up at the stables if we could use her dark bay Trotter but she didn't think he'd be able to cope with the costume......

So I had to draft in good old Gandalf. He was prepared to go over to the dark side for one photoshoot anyway. We did a dress rehearsal a few days ago and got these shots:

I put that last one on Twitter and the nice people at The One Ring.net retweeted it, so now it's had more retweets than anything else I've ever posted. Someone suggested that Shadowfax had changed sides ;-) Maybe I should get some black paint for the party on Saturday.......

Darth Vaders, Princess Leias, Star Fleet Command, a Wookie or two, some unlikely looking aliens.......and a bloke in fishnet tights.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, our annual pilgrimage to the Médoc Marathon, the biggest excuse to dress up, go running and drink wine on the French marathon calendar.

So I got dragged round the shops on Friday by my very own MAMIL to purchase some pipe insulation, dowelling, silver paint, cotton wool, an Alice band and a plastic wineglass so he could have a bit of a Blue Peter moment with his fancy dress idea.

This year's marathon theme was science fiction. We do have a fair few costumes already, being the sort of geeks who have been known to frequent sci fi conventions in the past, but none of them would be exactly comfortable for running 42kms in, and having learned his lesson from last year's idiotic plan of running in plate armour, he chose a wiser course this year and made this:

So off he trotted, amidst the host of Star Wars/Trek characters, bizarre aliens, Supermen, Pirates (?), the odd flying saucer and even a Tardis, to start the race.

We watched the whole marathon go past the start and got pics of some great/bizarre/downright weird costumes, like this:

..and this:

and. erm this:

...because every marathon I've ever been to has always had at least one Frenchman in fishnet tights running (I can't imagine how bad the chafing must be!!) usually sporting a pair of comedy breasts and grinning inanely. This year I even saw a Princess Leia with comedy breasts but sadly failed to get a decent photo. And Mike was gutted not to see any women dressed as slave girl Leia from Return of the Jedi, although there were a host of men in drag doing it :-/

I think this guy took Mike's "most uncomfortable costume to run in" prize:

I bet he was glad it wasn't as warm as last year!! And here are pics some of the more bizarre offerings on view:

 Captain America in drag?

 Some of him at least has been assimilated by the borg.....

 

 ummmm.....

Nice touch with the underpants here:

 

Not sure about these guys, Space Rats from Blake's 7, perhaps? ;-)

Leia's really let herself go these days...

Star Fleet officers like to wear drag too.....

 

During the race, we went off and had some lunch, but decided to pass on the 16€ menu:

But I did try some of the beer!

And the old boy managed to run the marathon in about 5 and a half hours which isn't bad for him. Although we missed him at the finish due to the SNO seriously living up to her nickname and annoying not only her sister but innocent bystanders so I had to take her away and find a playground to occupy her.........

Oh and whilst we were away for the weekend, guess what? Tari escaped again. How does she know....???

Hacking and things.....

It's that time of year to start making resolutions I suppose, not that I ever do really. But this year one thing I am goign to aim for is more hacking out. Last year big G clocked up a total of 580kms (I only started counting cos someone told me barefoot horses just can't do the distance on the road that shod horses can, mind you) but I reckon we can outdistance that this year.

I am going to aim for getting out on a horse 300 days this year. Probably won't happen with all the rest of the stuff I have to do but it's good to have aspirations.......

Today we started the ball rolling with a 7km hack - as it's still the holidays that meant with the SNO along for the ride so we couldn't go too far before the "my legs hurt/he's too sweaty/my boot's falling off" chorus commenced.....

Lovely sunny day for it though :-)

In fact we've had a few good days lately which has meant we could do this

 

 

and this

and this

and this.....

Happy New Year everybody!

Spotty Indian Pony

Éowyn's turn for the calendar shoot today, thought Sky would look the part as an Indian pony. So she's an unbacked two year old, but that didn't matter!

Sky was better behaved than the child, unsurprisingly.......

Anarchy in the.....south west of France?

So it's that time of year again, time to think about photos for our annual Horsetales Charity calendar. Some of us want to do the fancy dress theme again and for the Naughty Nordic Princess there is really only one look to go with her mane and her non conformist attitude:

All that work with fly spray desensitisation meant she didn't even mind being graffitied - unlike Aliénor who hated having her hair and makeup done, although she's got the moody punk expression nailed.......and wants to keep the studded belt!

Doggy Dressage.....

Today Chocolate made her Interdressage début......there was a class for dogs on the December schedule so of course Ali wanted to do it!

There's a prize for the best fancy dress, out came this month's ensemble again......

....and here's the video
So far she's the only one in the junior class......she could win by default!

Bareback dressage......

....is hard work!! There was a bareback challenge class in this month's Interdressage competition and as the entry fees go to charity, I decided to give it a bash......here's the video

Poor Gandalf wasn't too sure what was going on, I was far too heavy on his mouth, he's not used to that.....


Ali did her class in fancy dress too. Possibly the desert Bedouin outfit wasn't the best choice for this weather, we had to add a fleece and gloves!

Here's her video

Backing the donkey

Had an idea for another fancy dress picture for our charity calendar today. So armed with a selection of sheets and scarves, I went to see Ross the donkey. Rossy has never even had a saddle on his back so we started with that, he sniffed it a bit but didn't seem to bothered when I strapped it on....

Then we leaned Éowyn over his back, he was fine, so on she got....

He was very good, especially when she leaned forward and gave him some carrots! So we got the kids kitted out for their fancy dress shot, Rossy didn't even mind having the dress draped over him.

Such a good boy!

Medieval Mayhem in Bonneville......

We are organising a charity calendar this year featuring some fancy dress photos of our horses and today we did a photoshoot. So here's Gandalf the Grey as a medieval destrier:

and Maverick as a lady's palfrey:

We had lots of fun galloping up and down the field, Mike took tons of photos and we gave the locals something to stare at......