Esmerelda and I settled in for the long flight
Well, I’ve been here in Normandy for nearly a week and blow me down if there aren’t relatives of mine all over the place. As I told you in the last blog, I knew that I would run into my big brother, Norman who’s the official mascot for next year’s World Equestrian Games but there are other cousins and relatives popping up all over the place. Poor Norman seems to have the toughest job – his eyes aren’t too good it seems (actually they’re under his nostrils which would make things a bit tricky to see) so he has to be led around by a couple of volunteers and he seems to get very hot. Ah well, I guess that’s the price of being a superstar
Nice to catch up with Norman but I'm not sure about his taste in hoof colour
Talking of superstars, I ran into Esmerelda from the Equestrian Social Media Awards at Melbourne Airport. It turned out she had been with some of the finalists in Australia – as we were the runner-up for the Aus/NZ region, we had plenty to talk about. She was a bit worried about flying but I took her under my wing and we had some fun getting here.
Ow, ow, ow Christina - a little support under the bottom would be appreciated. I'm thinking the Ground Jury next year need their own mascot
Anyway, back to Normandy where we went to a testing event (maybe that should be Test Event) with lots of horses jumping fences and apparently the Australians did quite well. A couple of them even got to take two of my family home so I hope they’re going to look after them. Normans are quite fussy so I hope they get a good home and good food – I have a feeling that they may be better off living with the horses and looked after by the lovely Australian grooms. I think they’ll be going to live in England for the time being, which is quite lucky as I believe immigrants are finding it tough to get into Oz right no Being orange and only able to speak French probably doesn’t help either
My cousins are heading back to the UK with these Aussies . but I've got a feeling Rachel will be their best bet for some TLC
Well, that’s all for now but there’s another of these eventing things on this weekend so I’ll take a look around and fill you in next time. Until then, here's a few more photos
Esmerelda and I check out the French champagne at the airport - purely for research purposes
One of my cousins is working with the WEG Vets .. unfortunately he seems to get practised on a bit
