No blog.

I had a rant all ready to go for you. But then I realised I am far too fragile for a rant. The fragility comes from tiredness, which comes from still not having worked out how to organise my time seamlessly and effectively. I will get there. I have not got there yet.

And the reason that one needs to be robust for a rant is that it invites responses in kind. When I am this tired, my skin is thin as paper. (It is not very horned and hide-ish at the best of times.) Someone would get furious, or take something I said the wrong way, or merely get a bit ranty themselves, and I would want to weep. Then I would castigate myself for being so pathetic, when I spent the morning with people who have no legs. So you do see.

Actually, my current favourite member of the walking, talking perspective police is a gentleman who got shot in the head. He had to learn everything again from scratch. Now, you would not know. He occasionally looks at the sky and searches for a word, but other than that there is no sign that he had to rebuild himself from the beginning. Imagine that. The horses adore him. Despite having been one of the most brilliant of brilliant fighting men (he was in a crack regiment and people who know of his service speak of him with awe) there is something rather gentle and earthed about him. So that is why the voices in my own head tell me that the very least I can do is butch up a bit.

However, tonight, butchness is unavailable. That app may not be downloaded at this time.

Instead, I went and sat in the field and read and looked at my horse. I have already lost Virginia Woolf, so I took Lytton Strachey instead.

I’d forgotten how much I love him. I love him with my whole heart. He is so funny and clever and unexpected.

The light was astonishing, the thickest, most golden, most ancient yet this year. It was like that line in Leonard Cohen: ‘and the sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the Harbour.’

The horses ignored me and went to graze. They are happy; they have no need of their human just now. Stanley the Dog, who had been off sniffing for pigeons, suddenly appeared by my side. I was intent on the lovely black prose on the old yellowed page in front of me when I felt an insistent nose pushing at my arm. Up, up, up, it went. So I lifted my arm and draped it over his strong body and scratched his ear and went on reading about the corpulent Prince Regent.

 

Today’s pictures:

This morning:

This evening: