It feels like spring today, and the ice under the snow in the pen seems to be gone, so I went out and longed Mitzi. It's the first work she's done in ages, and she was surprisingly good. She listened well when I asked her to transition from one gait to another, even from lope to walk. And when the dog galloped up the driveway she went straight in the air and made steam-train noises, so it was just as well we were only longeing. However, for a girl who hasn't done much except be a horse since before Christmas, she was really pretty good.

Scout, the new Hackney, is apparently a really good trail horse so his owner invited us to join them sometimes when I get Mitzi going again the the spring. I've been wanting to do that but wanting to go out with a sensible horse, so I said thank you very much. We'll see how that goes. (And okay, I have a crush on Scout. He's the cutest thing.)

I mentioned that I didn't see a lot of San Francisco or Oakland patches on the Hell's Angels in Gimme Shelter. Watching it yet again and looking for that, they pretty well all just had "California" on their vests--the guy or guys wearing "San Jose" patches didn't have Angels insignias which makes me think they were in fact prospects.

Up hear the stage, though, the prospect-looking dudes were consistently outnumbered by the ones in full Angels colours. Not that I am arguing with the Angel version of things.

Also, Keith Richards does say more than six words in the movie: he makes a crack early on about a non-existent groupie, and then remains silent until the scuffle in which Meredith Hunter is killed. As the activity moves out of the lights you can hear someone English who is not Mick Jagger yelling, "We're splitting, all right--if those guys don't stop beating people up we're--" and then another Angel explains that the guy they were after was shooting at the stage. (He may have been, I guess--apparently Hunter was pretty amped up on methamphetamine and he might have reacted badly to the violence around him. Or, you know, he may have been trying to defend himself.)

Anyway, Keith clearly had more on the ball than he looked like he did.

And then, having in the words of Sam Cutler had "successive bum trips" laid on me all weekend, I played a U2 concert video and that levelled me out nicely. Good old U2--they have their faults, but a lot of them spring from an earnest desire to be a force for good in the world. Which was just what I needed!