Bonus Post: Best Beloveds

I suddenly realised that I had not put up the traditional Best Beloved pictures. I thought: but today is September 11th. If that day is about remembering anything, it is remembering love. I know that sounds strange, but I still think that love conquered hate that day. You can’t bring down love with jet-liners, you can only destroy buildings. People sent messages of love, helped each other for love, mourned each other with love.

So then, in a kind of frenzy, I thought: I must put up all the Beloveds. I must trawl through the archives and find all my humans.

Finding all my humans, it turns out, would take forever. Which feels sort of symbolic of something, I’m not sure what. A good thing. My heart has a lot of humans.

So I’m just giving you the animals, as usual.

And then I thought: perhaps that is better. Animal love is so simple and easy. Everyone can love a glorious dog, or a beautiful horse, or a sweet pony. Every person can say, as some of the Dear Readers sometimes do: oh, but how I love Stanley’s handsome face.

That’s the clever thing about animals. They are universal. They are the generous receptacles for all that good, human love, even when you have never met them before.

And now I really am rambling. It’s been a long day. I’ll stop, and let you enjoy The Beauty: