PAST IMPERFECT...

It's paranoia revisited.
All those sensations which - I was convinced - had been consigned to the past.
Ever-present low-level nausea. A distracted search for displacement activity. Trying not to watch the clock. Secret calculations. Loss of appetite. The stomach-flipping reflex when the 'phone rings or a text buzzes through.
No - I'm not in love... though looking at what I've just written, I'm sure a reader would conclude that I was; the symptoms are virtually identical.
No.
My darling daughter is jumping a new (and very young) horse in the ring this evening. She'll be working in just now - and I'm not there to check her girth, write her number on the board, find her hat, tie, spurs; chat up the ring steward, (could Jill still be there? surely not) hold the rugs, run up the stirrups, buy her a hot dog etc etc...
Most importantly, I'm not there to encourage her nor absorb her nervous outbursts.
And you'd think after ten exhausting, emotionally draining, financially punitive years on the road in a lorry, with Harriet, the ponies and horses, I'd be just so relieved that someone else was doing the whole freezing to death in the Cambridgeshire Fen thing this evening.
But in fact, although nowadays my horsey activity is limited to patting the odd nose and helpfully holding a bridle, I'm actually itching to be there.
So much so that at lunchtime, I very nearly decided to drive 3 hours back up to Cambs just to watch a couple of tiny clear rounds.
Good luck Harriet and Sassy... that's another half an hour accounted for, and she should have jumped by now...