Sarah Todd: Trying times as we aim to get them back to school on the right foot

Shoes have been our big stumbling block on the shopping front. We’re not one of those families that automatically gets them new shoes in September. It’s just that her feet have grown two sizes since she last got a pair so we’d probably get reported to the NSPCC for sending her in the old ones.

We couldn’t believe that for her age group and younger – shoe sizes that six-year-olds could fit in – there are heels. Both proper kitten heels and wedges. What kind of idiots buy shoes with heels for their daughters at this age? It’s not really the worry of them looking like little tarts, more about what damage they could do to their still-growing feet.

The one without any new shoes is probably a bit grumpy anyway as she’s just getting going on the new young pony and the summer shows have all but come to an end.

“Next year…” must seem a lifetime away when you’re 10.

We are blessed in our county with such a huge number of countryside events. Show secretaries and organisers really are unsung heroes.

From my days as a junior reporter gathering up results in the Press tent, all written down by hand and then typed-up back at the office into the early hours, (no mobile phones or laptop computers then) it was witnessed that show secretaries never get a moment to enjoy the events they organise.

As a funny aside, recalling the young lad reporter who typed in “best pair of breasts” rather than “best pair of beasts” still makes me smile. There was nobody checking the copy at the ungodly hour we were sending it over, so it went straight into the next day’s newspaper.

It also strikes me that judges are very much forgotten about by those who take part in shows. Many of them travel huge distances and get nothing apart from perhaps a lunch for their trouble.

It must be, at times, rather a poisoned chalice to have to pick a winner. Tack and turnout classes are my bugbear. It would give me great pleasure to pick out a child who has prepared their pony themselves. Of course, little ones probably need a hand with the plaiting, but if they’ve brushed the pony and cleaned the tack they should, in my mind, be marked above the child whose mother has done everything. Same applies to those with old tack; they shouldn’t be automatically placed behind those with everything new and matching.

And as for any child in old clothes …