The Wheel of Fortune turns

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Just as I sat down to write the blog last night, all filled with The Cousin’s birthday, I saw the news on Twitter that Kauto Star had suffered a fall in training, and was doubtful for the Gold Cup.

I felt as sick and sorry as if it had been my own little mare, the one I have been riding each morning for the last two weeks. It’s an odd, dual feeling. There is the crashing regret that I think anyone might feel when a great athlete they admire undergoes an injury. It’s a sadness from afar. The champion exists on the mountain top; I only watch from the foothills.

But because I love horses, and because I have been living with horses here in the south, and because I am growing increasingly connected to one horse, also a gentle thoroughbred, there was an extra empathy, a disproportionate whack to the stomach. When I read that he had fallen in training, I could almost hear the crunch, feel the heavy thud of a half a ton of horse hitting the earth.

The birthday was still going on, when I got the news. I did not write anything here, or say anything to the Cousin. It was her special day, and I did not want to put the mockers on it. I attempted to call in the perspective police: it is only a horse, whom I have never met.

But the melancholy lingers. He may shrug off the stiffness, get fit enough for his final blue riband. After the first shock and sorrow, my raging optimistic instinct kicked in. He’s a horse in a generation; he’s as brave and bold and strong as the steeliest lion; he has a heart the size of twenty houses.

My fantastic, romantic, narrative sense went into overdrive: this will be the story of the century. Not only was he written off at the beginning of the season, not only was he considered too old, past his prime, but just at the moment when people thought he could break all records by winning his third Gold Cup, this happened. If he could come back from this and storm up that hill, then I never need watch a race again. It would be every fairy tale in the world, rolled into one, glorious, impossible story. People would talk to their children and grandchildren of it, for years to come.

Then, the low, rational, realistic mind asserted itself. Horses come back from falls all the time. The racehorse, despite being a finely bred creature, is also tough as nails. But, like humans, they are tough when they are young. A seven-year-old can get bashed about a bit, and recover quickly, the scars of battle healing, the stretches and strains knitting back to wholeness. At the age of twelve, which is sure veteran country, a horse is slower to get back on his feet. Two weeks is not long. It may be the end of the road for this fine, brilliant creature.

The thing which has marked Kauto Star this season is his joy in racing. I have watched his victories at Haydock and Kempton over and over, not just because he was magnificent, but because he was having so much fun.

I’m not sure I ever saw an animal delight in his galloping and jumping so much, not since the wild days of Desert Orchid. It sounds fanciful, but I have wondered whether he beat Long Run because he broke the younger horse’s heart, just a little. It was something in the joyous, dancing way that Kauto ran his last two races, which even the determination and gift of Long Run could not match.

Even if they could, by some miracle, get Kauto Star fit enough for the last day of the festival, the danger is that that rampant joy would be gone. There would be the sense memory of his training fall, instead of the muscle memory of the soaring leaps that won him the prize last time out. He is an extraordinary horse, but he is also a sensible horse; he might just decide, quite rightly, that the giddy fun was no longer there. He might take it easy, take it slow, be cautious and careful. The heedlessness might be gone.

It is hard to judge the mind of an animal, especially one which owes so much to its wild, herd heritage. Anthropomorphism is bred of human sentiment, of category errors; it is also not useful, in this context. On the other hand, anyone who has ever worked with horses will tell you that they remember. Even if Kauto is back to fighting strength, which would be a training feat in itself, will he remember the dull Friday at home when he tumbled, or the arching triumph in December, when he made history?

He owes us nothing, not one damn thing. He has done more than any other horse in the last twenty years. He has thrilled and soared.

He has made me cry, laugh, shout, roar, stamp and jump. He has made the Pigeon bark her head off and shoot vertically into the air. He has won me ready cash.

Cheltenham this year will not be the same without him; it will be a drabber, poorer place. (Oddly, I sometimes think of the world like that, without my old dad in it, and he was a little bit of a racing legend too, in his own way.)

If it should be time for the auld fella to go out in the field with the sun on his back, it is the very least he deserves. Even if my fairy tale heart whispers, oh, oh, if only.

A couple of lovely Kauto pictures for you -

Winning The Gold Cup:

Photograph uncredited, from Sportinglife.com.

Look at those front legs. Hard to believe that a horse that can do this could make a schooling error. But they are fallible creatures, not machines:

Photograph by the Press Association.

With his trainer, Paul Nicholls. That man would never let harm come to that horse. Whatever decision he makes will be the right one, for the right reasons:

My own daily ride. Not quite as grand, but very, very dear:

She doesn't look bad, does she, considering she's just come out of the muddy field?

Some garden colour:

The Pigeon, doing her sphinx number:

Trotting on:

Then turning, and looking quizzically, as I dawdle behind, as if to say Are you coming?

Just spoke to my mother. Her fervent wish is that Kauto Star will now retire, and we can remember the glory days, and spend future weeks watching old victories. I sort of know she is quite right, but I can't help but dream of one, last, glorious time.

A very brief birthday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Tremendous red letter day. It was the Beloved Cousin’s birthday. It started with a birthday breakfast at seven-fifteen; I boiled eggs and made sourdough toast and did the coffee with the frothy milk. Now it is half-past eight and it is not yet over. In between treats and flowers and presents, I managed to do work and gallop the mare. I also made, by request, the special green soup.

As a result, I am so tired, I do not know what my name is. I really have no stamina at all. I even took extra iron tonic, but it makes no odds. The Godson is doing his Latin homework by my side (they really do still say amo, amas, amat) and the lulling repetition is sending me into a gentle trance.

As a result, there is no blog of any name. I know nothing of what is happening in the world; my brain may not form a decent sentence or an interesting thought. But it was a lovely day, and no one deserves a happy birthday more.

Normal business shall resume tomorrow.

A few compensatory pictures for you. There were some very delightful birthday flowers:

Some little beeches in the dancing March sunshine:

Happy Pigeon:

Ready for her very elegant close-up:

With her special southern friends:

They all look a bit fed up at this stage. I had made them pose in eight different positions. I kept promising them a biscuit and then making them sit for one more photograph. I think they were all thinking, by the time I took this one: I bet Kate Moss never has to put up with this shit.

But I think you will admit it really was worth it.

In which I immerse myself in art; or, a visit to my imaginary friend

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Today, I went to the National Gallery, to look at the women.

I love the National Gallery with a fierce love. I love the building. I love the swanky marble entrance hall. I love the parquet floors and the jokey guards (they joke with each other, not one) and the gangs of schoolchildren. There were at least four gaggles this morning, and they were having a ball.

There was one group which particularly took my interest. I was making a rather laborious set of notes about a schoolmistress by Chardin, which happened to be right next to that vulgar, blowsy portrait of Madame de Pompadour by Drouais, when they all came and sat down beside me, so I was able to observe them for a while.

They were a very eager, mixed group, all colours and creeds, I should guess; perhaps about seven or eight years old. Their excellent and serious guide was asking them all kinds of questions about what they saw when they looked up at the Drouais. She did not tell them who the picture depicted.

‘What can you tell about this lady, just from looking at her?’ she asked.

Many hands shot excitedly up.

‘She is a posh lady, because of her smart clothes,’ said one.

‘Yes,’ said the guide, pleased and loud, so the whole group could hear. ‘She was a posh lady.’

Hmm, I thought, sceptically. Not quite as posh as she would have liked. Those naughty French aristos at court were very sniffy about her, with her brand spanking new marquisate, given to her by the king.

More suggestions were now flooding in. ‘She likes reading,’ called out one child.

‘She knows how to play music,’ cried another.

‘She is very fashionable,’ said another, in rather awed tones.

I thought that was fascinating, because the dress in the picture is a horror; busy with patterns, guyed up with lace. It had nothing to do with modern fashion at all. Yet, somehow, the child had drawn the absolutely correct conclusion that it would have been the last word in smart ladies’ outfitting in the 18^th century.

I had work to do, and so I could not linger any longer. I did not have time to stay and see their reaction when the guide told them that she was the famous mistress of a French king. I wondered how she would explain to a bunch of small children what a mistress was, or even how she would phrase it. The King’s special friend?

What was interesting though, and in some ways rather enchanting, was that they were all so enthralled by this dead, white Frenchwoman. The children were almost all what is rather horribly described as from minority backgrounds; their parents were probably first or second generation immigrants. Their grandparents or great-grandparents would possibly have lived in Pakistan, or India, or Africa, or the West Indies. Yet there they were, in the marbled hallows of the British National Gallery, looking up at a French court favourite, their eyes wide with wonder and interest.

Perhaps I am romanticising this too much, (and assuming and extrapolating) but I liked the idea of the ease of the cultural cross-over. Maybe it is because there is something in very young children that does not court difference; they see humans as humans, and find the aspects of common fascination. It is only later that barriers get erected, and everyone must be divided into groups, and otherness becomes a thing.

Whatever it is, I loved watching those small, upturned faces, learning, observing, longing to answer the question.

It was interesting too to go to that gallery for a discrete, working purpose. Normally, when I am in the south, I run in there, every trip, and look at my three favourite pictures. I almost always do not have enough time (there is never enough time). So I go always to my most beloved Titian, the portrait of the unknown young man, painted in 1515, as fresh and vivid and filled with clarity as if it were painted yesterday.

Then I run to the other end of the building and have a quick look at Van Gogh’s Cornfield with Cypresses. I am not keen on the much more famous sunflowers, which sit two pictures along. They are too blatant and yellow for me. I like the gentler, bluer Van Goghs.

Then, then, for my final big treat, I walk a couple of rooms along and find the mighty Stubbs portrait of Whistlejacket. I am ashamed to say I don’t know much about this picture, or this horse. I have no context. I just love it because it is so marvellously vast, running from floor to ceiling, and that it is so boldly about the horse.

There is no background, no jockey, no stud groom, no charming turf or architecturally pleasing buildings on the horizon. It is all equine, unabashed.

The horse is in his pomp, half rearing, looking boldly out from the frame. Even though he is clearly a horse that was bred and trained for domestic purposes, as far as racing can ever be described as domestic, there is a wonderful flight of wildness in his gaze and in his physicality, as if he is harking back to his ancestral past, when his predecessors were untamed things that ran across some nameless plain.

I took a quick look at all those pictures today, but I was there for my book, and so it was to the ladies I went. I looked at the nymphs, the goddesses, the society wives, the calm mothers, the saints, the tired Toulouse-Lautrec women of the street, the muscular Degas acrobats, the elegant Gainsborough aristocrats, the widowed queens, the serving girls, the calm, contained Dutch matrons.

I concentrated, I thought, I took notes. After three hours, I suddenly knew I could not look at one more thing of beauty. I get aesthetic overload quite quickly. I once went round the whole Uffizi in forty-five minutes. I was twenty years old, but even so. I do wonder if there is something about the brain: there is only so much high beauty it can take in. Or perhaps that is just my odd brain.

There was one last thing I had to do. It has become my absolute pilgrimage, every time I am back in the dirty old town that is London. I took the side way out, down the staircase, through the café (rather elegant, and filled with happy, genteel women having lunch), and out into the Charing Cross Road. Another sharp left, and I was in the National Portrait Gallery, my favourite of all the favourites.

I wheeled past the shifting, swelling crowds desperately trying to get in to see the Lucien Freud exhibition, tripped up the shallow flights of stone staircases to the second floor, ran through the Carolean gallery, where poor old doomed Charles I looked slightly finished, on his great big horse, and into the very last room at the back.

I sometimes wonder if anyone ever goes there. It is the farthest point of the gallery, leading nowhere; you have to know where you are going and why you want to go there. It is the 19^th century political room, filled with dark-suited men who did things like pass the First Reform Act. It is a shivering, turquoise green, with a vaulted silver ceiling. I think a silver ceiling is the last word in chic, but that really is just me.

There, on the south wall, is the fellow I have come to see. He is my favourite man in London. I love him so much I cannot count the ways.

‘Hello, Lord Brougham,’ I say, in my head. ‘You are a handsome devil.’

He is nothing to do with my work, or my life, or anything at all. I could justify all this by telling you of all the important historical things he did, of his high ideals, of his extraordinary parliamentary work. I could also tell you of the artistic merit of his tremendous portrait. All this would be true. But sometimes I am wholly superficial. I come to gaze on him because he is absurdly beautiful.

He stares down from his green wall, a half smile on his 19^th century face. I think, as I always do, how deliciously well dressed he is, how elegant is his hair, how fine his features. I think, without any sense of dissonant oddity, that he looks rather pleased to see me.

I sometimes do wonder why I tell you all this. Horses, dogs, hills, American politics, psephology in general, the human condition, Lord Brougham: here are all my nutty little obsessions laid bare. I hope you think, as I do: each to each is what we teach. Otherwise, I am really in trouble.

 

No photographs of the day today. I did actually take my camera with me on the train, so I could give you a lovely vista of Trafalgar Square, but it turns out I forgot the memory card, so that was no good. I am going to do something I rarely do, and give you other people's pictures. Here is some of the beauty on which my tired eyes rested today:

Chardin's schoolmistress:

Degas, After the Bath:

Van Gogh, Cornfield with Cypresses:

Stubbs, Whistlejacket:

Mrs Siddons, by Gainsborough:

My imaginary friend, Lord Brougham:

It's quite shaming, having an imaginary friend, especially when you are forty-five. I never had one as a child. I think I rather looked down my nose on those people who did. Still, he's better than a seven foot pink rabbit.

And I know it is a bit of a crazy juxtaposition, but of course there must be the Pigeon, on whose beauty my eyes never tire of gazing:

All about the smalls

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It is very, very difficult to stay grumpy when things like this happen:

I was sitting at breakfast, drinking my black-as-pitch coffee, the kind that is so strong you can stand the spoon up in it, eating my bacon, and half-thinking about my work for the day. The two older children had just left for school. The Four-Year-Old was noodling about with the dogs.

Suddenly, she presented herself at my side, quivering with excitement.

‘I am going to get dressed,’ she announced. One sort of felt she really needed a soundtrack to go with this pronouncement, something heavy on the string section, with a bit of brass going on.

‘That is very thrilling,’ I said. ‘Are you going to choose your own special outfit?’

‘YES,’ she shouted, in delirious delight. (Imagine if one still got that same thrill from the mere fact of getting dressed. The endorphin level would be off the scale.)

She then raced down the corridor in her furry boots, singing that truly terrible Celine Dion number about Near, far, wherever you are, at the top of her voice, chased closely by three equally excited black dogs.

It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

I do not know when she started singing Celine Dion songs and I am not going to ask.

One of the Dear Readers suggested music as a remedy for the grumps yesterday, and I wonder now if that is not right. When I am at home, I suddenly realise, I sing a lot. I do wild shouty singing in the kitchen, when I am making my supper. I sing practically every morning, as I walk round the block with The Pigeon.

Because of being so far in the north of Scotland, away from houses and people, a big part of my walk is in the places where one cannot be overheard. So I can belt out Turning Japanese, or St Dominic’s Preview, or Simple Twist of Fate, or, a more contemporary favourite from the little mop-tops that are Goldheart Assembly, King of Rome, without fear of being overheard.

I can’t do that here, because I am in a house full of people, and because it is the south, and there are not quite the same empty spaces where people cannot hear. (Although there is one little hidden wood I have my eye on that might be fine for belting.) Anyway, since I always like a new, half-baked theory, my new, half-baked theory is that perhaps my body is missing the singing.

The Four-Year-Old returns.

She has made the Pigeon a card. It consists of indecipherable calligraphy, quite long.

‘I’ll read it to you,’ the small person says.

She reads.

‘Dear Pigeon, Thank you for coming on this day, I love you very much, and I know you like Noddy books’.

‘That’s a brilliant card,’ I say. (I feel slightly tearful. How does such a very young human remember the whole thing about the Pigeon and the Noddy books? It was almost a week ago. I am forty-five, and I can't remember what happened yesterday.)

The Four-Year-Old beams.

‘I’ve got one for you too,’ she says. She looks at me with a dark, knowing look. ‘It’s not pink,’ she says.

We have this continuing conversation, because her favourite colour is pink, and mine is not. In fact, I do not really like pink at all, except for the occasional flash of very dark cerise. Occasionally, the Four-Year-Old likes to check.

‘Do you still not really like pink?’ she will say, her head on one side.

‘No,’ I say, because one must never lie to children. ‘I like green.’

She clearly thinks this is quite peculiar, but she lets it go. I can see her thinking: just humour the old girl.

My card, which is not pink, says, according to its reader: ‘Thank you for coming. We have had an enormous day.’

‘An enormous what?’ I ask, as she reads this out. I want to check.

‘An enormous day,’ she says, with more smiles.

I love the idea that our day has already been vast. It is only eight-thirty in the morning. The Today Programme is not even over. Yet, there have been huge doings in this house.

The Four-Year-Old looks at me gravely. ‘I have to go back to my office,’ she says.

‘Good plan,’ I say.

I turn to typing, at the dear old kitchen table. The small person sits herself down with her notebook and her pen and her fold of stickers, and settles to serious work. She is quite absorbed now, silent, concentrating, focussed. She knows exactly what it is she is doing. I am, and shall remain, deeply impressed.

 

That all happened about eleven hours ago. In the meantime, I have done work, ridden the mare, made fruitless attempts to organise my time and map out logistics, and picked up my telephone to find a text message. I do not get very many text messages. I am not one of those people whose telephone hops and hums and squeaks and bleeps all the time. I quite often leave it off for days and do not even notice.

This text message was a dilly. It made me shout: OH YES. (You see the whole capital letters thing is really dying hard.) Oh, oh, oh, I said aloud. That is the best thing in the whole world, I said.

The third of my great-nieces was born this morning. The text told me that she arrived in rude health, weighing a tremendous eight pounds, and that everyone is doing well.

I've been worrying a bit, in the back of my mind, because I always do when a baby is on the way.

The news that all is well comes as both vast delight, real profound happiness, and great relief.

When I drive north this time, when I throw the car round the final mountain bends to my house, I shall have a whole new human to meet. It seems like an absolute miracle to me. When I left, there was not a person. Now there is.

Even as I write that sentence, even through the fog of tiredness that comes at the end of a long day, I smile.

 

Again, what with everything, I'm afraid there was no time for photographs. I do wish I were better at the organisation of time, but I suppose it is as well to know one's limitations. Hours run away from me like water. Here are a few random pictures from the last few days:

Here is the lovely little mare, again, who went very sweetly for me today. She really is a tremendously nice person:

Her slightly punk hairdo is because she was hogged, for her previous work. It is growing out, and soon shall be smart and normal.

Some elegant black and white Pigeon photographs:

With her friend in the south:

And the three small people, who today have a new sister:

If she is anything like as sweet as they are, she shall be a very, very splendid girl indeed.

In which you do not ask how I am, but I tell you anyway

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

There is an old definition of a bore. It is: the person who, when you ask how they are, tells you.

The British way, of course, is to say: Fine. Even if your dog has run away to join the circus, you have lost your job, crashed your car, invested your savings in a company whose accounts manager has decamped to the Cayman Islands with the profits, when someone inquires how you are, you smile, wryly, and say: I’m fine.

If things are very, very bad, you may elaborate slightly. Could be worse, you might say. But the ironical smile must still be there. You never, ever say: absolutely bloody awful, actually, how about you?

This is the danger of a blog. Blogs need a hard core of authenticity, to be any good. No one really wants to read about a shined up, glossy, gleamy, perfect life. That just makes everyone feel sad and inadequate, by comparison. Comparisons, are, after all, the number one enemy of modern happiness. The new science of well-being is always pointing out that people would be quite happy with their old telly, for instance, if they did not know that the couple next door have just bought a fuck-off plasma screen. It’s the keeping up with the Armstrong-Joneses that kills contentment stone dead.

So there is a very fine line to be walked between truthful and honest, and incalculably boring. No one wants an endless, undifferentiated wail. That’s no way to start a week.

This is why my fingers are pausing over the keyboard. I am frowning at the screen, wondering if there is a way round the thing. Perhaps I should just do a nice little riff on the Oscars, even though now I am forty-five I have no interest in the Oscars. (In my twenties, I used to sit up with my friend The Actor until five in the morning, watching the whole damn thing and shrieking at the bad frocks and the gushing speeches.) Maybe I should do a serious thing on Syria, or an examination of the Chancellor’s doomy statement about poor old Blighty being broke.

And in any case, it’s not as if it was an awful day. I did some work; I had a ride. It was a good ride. I started to remember strength in my legs I had forgotten; the old muscle memory came back. Heels down, toes up, elbows in; trot on, trot on. There was even a lovely moment when I was riding loosely with one hand and The Cousin laughed and said, ‘Oh, are we doing the Argentinian fashion?’

But this Monday has been mostly a day of extreme grumpiness. Oh my God, I was grumpy. I am not usually a creature of moods. Even if I wake up in a bit of a mood, I can usually bash my way out of it by hopping myself up on coffee and looking blatantly on the bright side. I can sniff out the silver lining in a cloud like a truffle hound on the scent.

I don’t mind emotions. Emotions are good, strong, honest things. I get sad, I get angry about things that deserve anger, I get excited, I get happy. That’s fine. That’s all human condition, in its many varieties. It’s the blah, pointless, formless, nothing moods that kill me. They don’t come very often, but one hit today, for absolutely no reason. It’s like a black heaviness, dragging the body down, paralysing the mind, pressing the head down like a horrid iron hat.

Come on, says my rational, empirical mind. There is a reason for everything. What is at the root of this anomie?

No bloody buggery reason, shouts the irrational mind, which wants to be left alone so it can go and sulk in its room like a moody teen.

Even the Pigeon avoids me when I am in this mood. She goes and has a nice walk with the Four-Year-Old instead, which is much more fun. They both come back looking inordinately pleased with themselves.

I’ll work my way through it, I think. I do work. No change.

I’ll cook my way through it, I think. I make carrot soup and winter salad. Nothing.

I take some iron tonic, which has absolutely no effect.

I’ll drink my way through it, I think, as the clock strikes seven. I get out the Guinness. Guinness, what could be more delicious and nutritious? (My father did not even regard it as alcohol, but more like a health food.) Nada. Still furious.

I even find myself doing that fake smiling, because I once read somewhere that by moving your mouth into a smile you release endorphins into your body. The body does not know, apparently, the smile is not real. It reacts as if the happiness is actual, and reacts accordingly. That’s some stupid bad science, I think, as the filthy mood persists.

There is nothing for it but to admit that there are days when I am not mistress of my own ship. Some days, I am just a grumpy old lady. It’s not pretty, and it’s not clever, and it’s not funny. It is just what it is.

Better in the morning, I think, with the last grain of optimism I have in me. Everything is always better after a good night’s sleep. Some days I have to give up, and this is one of those days.

 

Far too livid to take the camera out today, so here is a small selection from the last few days:

Just look at that Pigeon face:

 

This is the lovely little mare I rode today. I really have no business feeling grumpy when I have something as delightful as this to ride out on:

Bit of a Sunday night ramble

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

No blog yesterday, for which I have scant excuse and can only offer apologies.

I always say this when I miss a day, and I always think how bizarre it is, really. Shall the Dear Readers log on and then throw up their hands in fury and disbelief, because there are no new words? I admit that the dearth of Pigeon pictures might cause serious grief in some tender hearts. Since I get to gaze on her glorious face each day, it does seem selfish and derelict not to share her with the group.

You may be able to tell from that opening paragraph that it is Sunday night after a long weekend. It was a lovely weekend. I drove to see one of my other godsons (not the one in this house) play in a match. His team did not win, but he played rather beautifully himself, with high determination, and took defeat with good grace. I was very, very impressed.

There was the lovely thing of a gathering of the very, very old friends. I am slightly obsessed with the really old friends. I’m not sure if it is a thing of middle life, which happens to everyone, or if it is slightly specific to the sharp sense of mortality which has come upon me since my father died.

Rather oddly, the godson’s match was played at the school where my two brothers went. I had not been there since I was five years old; I remembered, vividly, going there with my father, who dressed for the occasion in his best blue suit, in a vain attempt to look respectable. Actually, Dad brushed up very well, but no amount of suiting could disguise the reckless, roguish look in his eye, the absolute lack of respectability with which every atom of his body was infected.

On top of that, the road I took went past the church where Dad is buried. I did not have time to stop, this trip, and I wondered if I minded about that. In the end, I decided I did not. I went there when I was down here last, just before Christmas, and I was glad I did, but it was just patch of rough grass. There was no human there, nor even the sense or spirit of one. It was just a lovely, ancient, English churchyard, still and serene and silent.

Anyway, I’m not sure whether it is to do with any of that, but I grow more and more keenly appreciative of the old familiars. There were five of us, all bound by old histories and mutual fondness.

Three of us were at the same college together, when we were eighteen. University life was not like a glossy American movie or an episode of Friends; we did not really have gangs or cliques. But if I ever had anything like a trio, it was with the two men I saw yesterday. I admired and adored them, and, almost twenty-seven years on, I admire and adore them still.

When I see them, I get all those years of history in one, undilute shot. I get all the laughter and conversation and jokes and teases and memories, telescoped into a single, discrete point. It’s like an existential jigger of Jack Daniels.

I also like that we fall instantly into old patterns, however long we have not seen each other. I like that our default mode is to take the piss out of each other, in the gentlest and most affectionate way. I think it might be a bit of a British thing. It’s a faint parallel to the line about no man being a hero to his valet. It doesn’t matter how grown-up we get, or what professional successes we may have achieved, to each other we are still those idiotic teens, who used to slouch around with questionable hair.

One of the many, many fine things about the old friends is that as long as they are around, there is absolutely no chance of getting too big for one’s boots. That is another thing which I think more and more important, the older and older I get: any hint of hubris must be guarded against. I have no coherent theory for why I think this so vital, but I do. (I mean, there are the obvious reasons, but I think there is more to it than that.)

One final thing, before I stop typing, because typing is dangerous at this stage of an evening, and almost always descends into pointless ramble. The thing I forget when I come south, and immerse myself in family life, is that the blog goes very heavy on the domestic. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that; some of the finest writing I read on the internets is concerned with domestic life. It’s just I always have a faint sense that the neglect of the news, the big events out in the world, is a mild dereliction.

But then, absurdity on absurdity, when I do do a big political post, I am always overcome with angst, fearful that I have banged on or pontificated or just plain bored you.

One day, I shall find the golden mean, and then I can retire.

 

Some quick pictures, because there must always be a visual, even on a tired Sunday night.

Late afternoon light:

Crocuses:

A random tulip shot:

One of the lovely dogs of this house:

There was a very sweet canine moment, when I returned from my trip. I let the Pigeon out of the car, and the two younger dogs were lolling about on the lawn. The minute they saw the old lady, they dashed towards her, and leant their bodies against hers, and licked her face in high excitement, as if to say, where have you been? I am embarrassed to say that the Pidge is a little bit snooty about this. She does not return the affection in kind. She puts her nose in the air, and takes the fawning as if it were her due, as if she is some storied empress, and they her grateful subjects. She pulls rank, without shame.

You see the grandeur:

I feel, as I so often do, that there should be some neat, pithy, final line, something to pull the whole thing together. I want always to end with a bang, not a whimper.

I search my brain. There is nothing left. It is just time to stop.