Our new columnist Tessa Waugh — keen horsewoman, wife of a master and huntsman and mother of two — reflects on the turmoil of combining Christmas with horses at home in Northumberland
AS the turkey becomes an increasingly distant memory and we prepare to take our decorations down, I can't help feeling extremely grateful that Christmas comes but once a year. The children, Alec and Mary, are loving the Father Christmas years (definitely the best phase) but for us, the party years of our 20s are well and truly over (I do not miss those Christmas Day hangovers) and we are 10 years into phase three, the parent years — which means that the season is a mad period of activity that doesn’t cease until mid-January.
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'Sorry, but I wasn't feeling it'
Fresh from the opening meet, Tessa Waugh hasn't quite yet been bitten by the hunting bug. Without the crisp autumnal air and cheek-pinching cold she hoped for, it's a sluggish start
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