Twenty minutes.

Today there was literally sunshine and shade. The sun suddenly appeared, then fled for the hills, and some sulky, chill rain took its place. Now there is a light outside the colour of honey, with an indigo sky behind the beeches.

The red mare was perfect. I know nothing is perfect, but today she was. We could not ride for logistical reasons (how I sometimes hate logistics) so we went back to groundwork school and did our ABCs. She adores this. It’s as if she can relax because she knows all the answers. So as I did the standard desensitising, which involves flicking ropes all over her body and cracking whips like a stockgirl, right next to her head, she went to sleep. She’s supposed to be a crazy thoroughbred. Nobody told her.

Wrote 1233 words of book.

Did a new experiment in time management. I put everything into twenty minute increments. It is astonishing what you can get done in twenty minutes.

I don’t know where this idea came from and I don’t expect it will last, but it was interesting, and I grew less panicked about time whizzing past my ear so that I can hear it whoosh.

Started to write this. It is getting late and I am tired and the cerebellum is packing up for the day.

‘Oh, stop it,’ says the practical voice, who is quite ruthless. ‘You don’t have to do a blog.’

‘But the Dear Readers,’ the impractical voice wails.

‘The Dear Readers have lives,’ says the practical voice. ‘They really don’t need to know all about yours, every single damn day.’

The impractical voice knows this is true. But the wail continues. There must be blog. Or, or – THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM WILL FAIL.

The impractical voice says, sullenly, scuffing its shoe on the floor: ‘They’ll think I am dead in the ditch.’

‘Let them,’ says the practical voice, who really can’t be arsed and wants to have its first gin of the evening. (The practical voice turns out in fact to be a flinty dipso.)

‘I’ll just do a quick one with no pictures,’ says the impractical voice, compromising, rationalising, pleading.

‘Yeah,’ says the practical voice, heading for the drinks cupboard. ‘Because you know if they don’t see ONE MORE PICTURE OF THE RED MARE they will survive.’

So that’s how this got written in under twenty minutes. See? It’s my new miracle.