My work is done.

I finished my big polish and have no more words and no more brain left. The sun shone. The autumn leaves are suddenly growing vivid and gaudy. The red mare’s young friend came for a ride. The dogs danced up and down the burn as if they were inventing choreography in their doggy heads. 

A dear friend sent me a lovely message to say he has read The Happy Horse and had loved it. This was incredibly touching for two reasons. He is a writer and a reviewer and he has a vast amount to read for his work. And although he was once a very fine amateur jockey, he has not sat on a horse for years. So that was a true act of friendship.

Across the way, a wedding is taking place, and happy people in kilts are smiling at the good weather and the joy and the love. 

I squint, with the last that is left of my cognitive function, at the first meeting of the season at Cheltenham, where the equine athletes stretch and gallop and soar

under the benign gaze of Cleeve Hill. A faint shadow of melancholy falls on me as I think how much my mother loved this meeting. One is reunited with old friends, back from their summer holidays, and one gets a dazzling glimpse of the new stars, the young ones brought over from France or the novices who are just graduating to hurdles. ‘Very bonny,’ I write about one fella in my notebook, under Horses to Follow. ‘A little sprinkle of stardust perhaps.’

            

It’s been a long week and I feel a bit like Joey Ramone when he sang: I guess I’ll have to tell them that I got no cerebellum. Which is one of my favourite lyrics of all time. But I got my work done.