Inner Warmth

Photo © Ortwin Scheider
(After posting this Ortwin Scheider got in contact, was very happy to have the photo used and in fact within a few minutes had sent a copy of the original! I have shown this in the "extra photos" section below.. Thank you so very much and I will be in contact to learn how to keep such a great filing system - might help with the tax returns!)


Angie and I out for a ride when we were "Bliped" for the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" regional pages for Fuerstenfeldbruck (FFB). At the time we had no knowledge of the event but shortly afterwards a friend gave us a copy of the newspaper.

I am posting this on 19th December 2015 i.e. 21 years to the very day the newspaper appeared and it is a pure coincidence. I was yet again in the annual panic to get the tax return done before the year end, so as to turn up at the tax advisers office on Monday 21st for them to get it delivered electronically to the tax office by 31.12.2015 and thereby avoid a heavy fine.

Now you may ask how I can do a tax return before the year has finished? Well I always manage it, year for year, trouble is I am always one year in arrears - it's the 2014 return!

And whats a tax return got to do with posting the photo? Well the newspaper cutting has always resided in the file "Animals" and like every year when I get around to doing the tax return, the file is opened and on the top in a plastic see-through envelope is the photo.

So why do I get out the "Animals" file to do the tax return? Well because Germany has a "unique" set of tax laws; I have heard it is supposed to be the most complicated in the world. One of the 1000s of paragraphs says one can set off third-party liability insurance premiums and not just for a person but everything and every being it is possible to have such an insurance for, and the Germans like to take no chances, so almost everything is insured - the cars, the trailers, the tractor, the inflatable dinghy, the house property, the dogs, the horses......and we are just private people. Ask someone with a business what he has to insure!

Perhaps cats, chickens and geese are somehow included in the property insurance, or the courts have until now decided one can't be held responsible if one's cat runs across the road and causes an accident. The "Animals" file also contains the annual invoices for the animal pest tax we have to pay for the horses, chickens and geese but we can't offset the 3.55 Euros/year tax against income!


To the photo: I, in front riding Asyr, our Arabian gelding who was then 9 years old. He is still alive today and cantering around the fields but is no longer ridden. Here his last Blip appearance last week - the one in the middle.
Behind me is Angie on her first ever horse, Nero, a 1980 born gelding trotter destined for the racecourse but probably never achieved the required performance and was "got rid of" for a very cheap price. He was a fabulous fellow, a great character and 100% reliable. Even Bliper Nogbad trusted Nero to transport him. Sadly the treatment he probably had as a young horse resulted in foot problems and at the good age of 25 on 25.07.2005 he had to be put to sleep. We and especially a very good friend, Mona another FFBl'er, miss him very much even today.

I am pretty sure the photo was taken of us on a track near the village of Biburg close to Fürstenfeldbruck. Have shown it on the map. For years we had the horses at a one-cow hamlet "Hanshofen" not far away but had recently moved to a stable in Gilching. Four days before this photo was taken, Angie (on her birthday) and I had been at the lawyers and signed the contract to buy a house in Grosskitzighofen, some 50km away, with our own stables and where we moved to on 1st April 1995.

So this is one of the last photos of Angie in her homeland county. She was born in Olching, again not far from here and still gets homesick for her "Bruck" where mother and father still live. Occasionally she comes home after shopping locally with a beam on her face: "I got to talk to someone waiting in the checkout queue who spoke Bavarian!" (here they speak Swabian).

Being an honourable Bliper I have googled the photographer and indeed found his Facebook page and so sending a message asking for permission to use his work - I hope he doesn't say no as I don't have another photo for this day! In advance, a big THANK YOU, Mr Scheider!

I wonder who wrote the text to the photo which roughly says:
"Riding in winter is not as cold as it appears on this photo. On the one hand, even cold-blooded (draft) horses radiate a cosy warmth. And on the other, the riders are in constant movement and the muscle use warms excellently."