I went to the NWDC "do" on showing your horse in harness, at George B's, on Sunday last. I say "I went" - but - We'd all thought George was running it. Not so. George told my daughter Jen (the secretary) on the preceding Tuesday that "that woman from Greenholme who used to be chairman" was going to organise it.

"You mean my mother?" said Jen.

"Aye, that would be right," said George. "I'm going to a birthday party for our Robert."

So Woman from Greenholme had to hurriedly print off handouts and round up photographs and harness, while Jen arranged for someone to come with a horse and carriage and give a "how not to do it" demo. We got the lads to put down a line of straw bales for the harness, handouts, magazines and photographs and Jen brought a table for my laptop which had a photo show going. We set out George's motley crew of chairs behind the bales, leaving the rest of the arena for the horse and carriage.

George did come and answer questions from us for about 45 minutes before he went off to the party. He discussed proper whip length and use, and how a lady or gent would handle it while giving a salute to a judge, and also showed us some of the different bits he has in his tackroom – one was a version of the Sam Marsh pelham, with a broad, flat, swivelling mouthpiece that always leaves the mouthpiece flat across tongue and bars, no matter whether the driver has the reins set at curb or cheek.

Alison, who although young is the current Chairman of the club, brought her black and white mare Tilly, who is by a hanoverian x B&W cob colt out of a Fell. Tilly's about 15.2 and often inclined to mess about, going backwards, but perhaps because Ali and her mum Christine were trying to show us "how not to do it", she entered into the spirit of the day and was only naughty when told to be! Ali came in wearing dirty leggings, no hat or gloves, with her harness all wrongly set up, and she and Christine had loud conversations about Going Too Fast (with Tilly cantering and being tapped on the rump with the whip to make her buck), then Christine tried to grab the reins off Ali and then, when things slowed down, she put her feet up on the dashboard, while spectators, as part of the game, offered Ali a cigarette and had conversations with her from the "ringside".

George spent some time adjusting the "wrong" harness on the mare, which was interesting because Ali had set the traces a hole too long, but George thought they were better that way because the mare was further from the dashboard of the cart (which was a vehicle made for 14 hand pony and was on the point of being too small for her). On one side, the shaft tug hung behind the pad; on the other it didn't. There were lots of possible reasons for this – one trace longer than the other, the removable shafts being set up slightly differently, or even the mare bending more one way than the other. It took 15 minutes of discussion to settle on the trace length. It certainly gave weight to my comment later in the session about "never buy a new set of harness and fit it for the first time at a show".

After George went off to his family party, I carried on with a discussion of what the judge is looking for in a horse shown in harness; making the point that the horse is mainly what is being judged, and all the other accoutrements are just add-on goodies. I didn't go into the specifications of the "perfect horse" – merely saying that every single person in the audience KNEW they had the perfect horse in their stable. Christine and Ali recalled an incident late last year when a Welsh cob, in an exercise cart with dirty webbing harness, wiped the floor with several smarter turnouts. It drove really well and behaved impeccably, while all the others were either doggy or naughty.

It all worked really well, depsite the short time we'd had to organise it. There were lots of questions and plenty of discussion. The non members coughed up a fiver each; a couple of people who had not previously shown their ponies in harness found the session very helpful in planning their summer outings to shows; and we even got a few new members joining the Club.