Mouse droppings in the brain.

I think I might once have had something interesting to say, but that was back in 1987.

That is sometimes what it feels like when I’ve done all my various work, and then sit down to contemplate the blog. I have a sense that there was something absolutely fascinating lurking in the back of my cerebellum, all ready to share with you, but I now have absolutely no idea what it was. I have some odd, faint notion that it was to do with elegance and grace. (Of behaviour, rather than dress.) Or it might have had something to do with Saying the Thing, one of the themes to which I return over and over.

I shake my poor old brain like a rattly box, upend it to see if anything falls out. There is only the mental equivalent of old newspapers and some mouse droppings. (In the actual house, the naughty mice are coming in for the autumn, and I have to make the horrid decision about whether to slaughter them or not. They are only dear little field mice, but oh, oh, oh, they do eat for Scotland and shit everywhere.)

So that is all rather a long way of saying: I have nothing for you. NOTHING.

But down in the field, this great beauty did suddenly remember her racing days, and for some reason it made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

If you had told me I would get a horse which brought me joy and set me challenges and galvanised me from what could easily have become a middle-aged mortality slump, I would have believed you. But if you had told me that I should have a mare in my field who made me laugh like a drain, I should have thought you frankly deluded. Yet, it turns out I have my very own comedienne. She is hysterical. Her Lady Bracknell face is worth the price of admission alone.