tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13652440844627040272024-03-18T03:03:39.601+00:00THE SMALL THINGSA blog of Scotland, horses, dogs, love and trees. Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.comBlogger2162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-63849687254160052842020-03-10T13:05:00.001+00:002020-03-10T13:05:52.167+00:00Cheltenham. Gratitude Redux.<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the beginning of 2020, I resolved to write every day about gratitude. I would keep a gratitude journal, counting all my blessings, one by lovely one. It relapsed, as these things often do. But today, as the Cheltenham Festival gets into its great, raking stride, the gratitude is shooting into the stratosphere.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful that someone - I should know who, and I think he might have been some kind of reverend gent - looked at the glorious natural bowl that is Prestbury Park and thought, ‘I know. We’ll set the best thoroughbreds in the land running round there.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful that there are brave, tough, humorous, talented men and women who ride those thoroughbreds with skill and grace.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful that there are women and men who train those horses, who are up at dawn and worrying until after midnight about legs and backs, about distances and ground, about minds and hearts. I’m in awe of how they take victory with humility and defeat with stoicism. They live with hope and disappointment, and most of them treat those two imposters the same.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful that there are hundreds of thousands of people who will go to the races and shout their equine heroes and heroines home. I love the Cheltenham crowd, because they know what they are about. They aren’t just there for the beer. They’ll often give a horse who finishes second or third the most rousing reception of the day, because they recognise courage and they love a trier. They adore plucky underdogs and they know what it takes to get up that hill.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful for Twitter on days like this. I can’t make the five hundred mile journey south, so I sit in my room in Scotland, watching on the box. But I’m not alone. I’ve got my online racing crew, and we make bad jokes and compare hats and soothe each others nerves and share the love.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful for the extraordinary Cheltenham ground crew, who have spent the last few months fretting over every blade of grass, every birch twig, every drop of rain that falls. When I switch on and see that magical sward of emerald turf, I know who I have to thank.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m grateful for the women and men behind the scenes, the ones who look after these grand horses every day of their lives. I know their life; I grew up with it. I know the dedication, the adoration, the sheer, relentless work. I know the long hours and the impossible dreams and the lack of sleep. When you see them out on the course, screaming and hollering and jumping up and down, they are not doing it for money or fame. It’s because those are their friends out their, their boon companions, their beloved compadres.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">And most of all, I am absurdly grateful that the thoroughbred exists in the world. It was invented out of whole cloth, from the Arabs and Barbs and Turks, whose speed and majesty and power was crossed, over three hundred years ago, with the strength and kindness and sturdiness of native Irish and English mares. Whoever came up with that idea was a genius. The stories are legion, and often improbable. The Byerley Turk, the big Daddy of them all, fought in the Battle of the Boyne. The Battle of the Boyne! (He shows up in the pedigrees of both my mares, and every time I see his name, I get a little thrill.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The horses you will see out there this week are not just athletic machines, dourly programmed to win. They have their quirks and idiosyncrasies. They are packed with character and charm. I swear that some of them even have a sense of humour. They have many of the virtues you would look for in a human: they are gutsy and genuine, honest and strong, authentic and kind. They are also crazy beautiful, so that this festival is an aesthetic feast, on top of everything else.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As I rode back from the shop on my red mare, where we had been to collect my Racing Post, I thought that today might be a day for the girls. Few things in life make my heart dance like a really brilliant, tough mare, and there are a some of those running today. I’m hoping that the dazzling, elegant Epatante and the powerful, absurdly talented Benie Des Dieux might make it a Ladies’ Day to remember.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">And now, we are off.</span></span></div>
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Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com113tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-63899761334259074792020-01-14T23:24:00.001+00:002020-01-14T23:24:10.018+00:00Gratitude: Day Fourteen.
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<span class="s1">The gales blew all day and Scotland looked dour and cross. So today I am extremely grateful that the electricity is still on and that a tree did not fall on my head.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com167tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-83958236074023091002020-01-13T16:52:00.000+00:002020-01-13T16:52:13.359+00:00
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<span class="s1">Today, I am grateful that I have excellent gumboots.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m especially grateful that my excellent gumboots do not have a hole in them.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that when my friend and my landlord ring me up to tell me that the horses are out, they sound amused, rather than cross. (Landlords do not always want thoroughbreds galloping about over their nice, neat grass.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that I only had to halter the red mare, and the other two followed happily on their own, as if they were off to a party. I looked at the red mare as we walked home. She had that look on her face that means she can handle anything. I adore that look. It means we are in it together and we’ll set everything to rights and we are a supertop old lady team.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that when I decided that, tough as these horses are, rugs were called for, the herd gathered themselves in a nice circle and stood like saints whilst I wrangled with the straps. Everything was flapping about like mad, because of the gales, but you would have thought that each mare had a devoted handler at her head. One of the things I’ve always loved about the horsemanship I practise is that you can put the rugs on in a thunderstorm without having to tie anyone up. The Standing Still Olympics come into their own.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And I’m grateful that I could stump home, windswept and damp, to find a warm house with the roof still on. I’m appreciating every inch of that as I type this. I’m just hoping that the power lines don’t come down. But I’ve got blankets and candles and two dear lurchers to keep me warm.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com211tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-3488885052345170302020-01-11T21:54:00.004+00:002020-01-11T21:54:46.150+00:00Gratitude: Day Eleven.
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<span class="s1">My gratitudes are very simple today.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There are two of them.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">First, the red mare gave her young friend Cara the most gentle, gracious, tender ride this morning.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘That,’ said Cara, turning a beaming face to me, ‘was my first trot out in the open all on my own.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Cara is eleven. She hasn’t ridden for that long. She has a beautiful natural seat and a matchless spirit, but she lacks experience. I’m responsible for her and so I err on the side of caution.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She mostly rides my little bay mare, and when we go out, I keep her on a leading rope. These mares are the kindest horses in the world, and they are rigorously trained, but they are still thoroughbreds. They have an enormous amount of power and speed. I don’t let just anyone loose on them, because it would be like putting a seventeen-year-old driver in charge of an Aston Martin.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Cara asked to ride the red mare this morning because she thought the little bay mare needed a rest. I applied my caution rules, because these two are not regular partners, and also because the red mare is a whole hand taller. It’s a much longer way to fall.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But the red mare does something enchanting when a child is on her back. She carries them with as much care and protectiveness as if they were her own young. She often looks as if she is carrying a tea tray loaded with priceless Spode china. It’s something I’ve never seen in any other horse. And she was so happy and relaxed, and her young rider was so bright and confident, so I gave Cara the rope and let her go along on her own.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And then we chanced a trot. My dear old duchess, who had clearly been up all night practising with the dressage squirrels, gave the most delicate, smooth, poised sitting trot I’ve ever seen. Above me, her youthful rider looked down in triumph. Her first trot, out in the open spaces, all on her own.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘You just rode a sixteen hand ex-racehorse in a perfect trot,’ I said. ‘You should feel proud.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Later in the day, I went down to check on the horses. I ran my hands up and down the red mare’s mane and scratched her in her sweet spots and laid my palm on her forehead.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She breathed into me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for taking such care of that dear girl.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And the second gratitude was that Bryony Frost and Frodon won the big race of the afternoon, jumping and galloping with all their customary zest and boldness. The pleasure I got from that was all love. I had no money on them, only my heart. I love them because they love each other, because they are both enthusiasts, and because they have the same glorious, bright, fighting spirit.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So, it was thoroughbreds that made my day, as they so often do.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com85tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-70634580256470184982020-01-10T20:36:00.004+00:002020-01-10T20:36:56.031+00:00Gratitude: Day Ten.
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<span class="s1">This experiment is revealing some fascinating things, even just ten days in.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There have been moments when I have resisted gratitude, which feels bizarrely weird. Surely it should be a joyful and straightforward process? What could be lovelier than paying thanks for all the good fortune in one human life? Apparently, the complicated psyche does not always think so.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There have been days when I’ve found it hard to choose.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There have been times when I have felt entirely bogus.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">All the contradictions and subterranean elements of the mind are, apparently, coming out to play.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But today the gratitude is utterly simple. It’s for friendship. It’s for the old, old friends with whom you can be your absolute and utter self. It’s for that moment when you can pick up the telephone and a beloved voice is there and even though you haven’t spoken for a while, you pick up right where you left off. You can stand in a Scottish field in the gloaming, with the receiver pressed against your ear and you can laugh and you can cry and you can question and you can affirm. My goodness, what a rare privilege that is. What balm for the singed spirits, what restoration for the soul, what a lift to the heart.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The funny thing is that after this incredible, intense, beautiful conversation with someone I have known and loved for over thirty years, someone with whom I have shared history, someone who knows all my secrets and my quirks and my moments of flakiness and who has told me all hers in return, a much newer friend rang up.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We have only shared intimate thoughts and feelings for the last two years or so. You might think that nothing can replicate those old, profound relationships, and yet there is a kind of soul sister connection that does not seem to rely on time.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It’s a completely different thing, and yet it has all the same pleasures. It’s all about being known and accepted and admired, and knowing and accepting and admiring right back. It’s galloping about over twelve different subjects and shooting off on tangents and then coming back at the end and laughing over the ground we have covered.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I got it all, today. It’s love, really, in every single one of its many guises. It’s a great, big, fat outpouring of love. And I think every human being needs that. So I am more grateful than I say, as the first full moon of the year rises over the land.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">PS. The photograph is not a good photograph. I took it yesterday. The red mare and I were riding and the gloaming was coming in and there was not much light. Everything is slightly blurred, and you can’t quite see the full glory of that moon. But it shone down on me and my thoroughbred and it made me feel as if there was some kind of sign or hope or blessing. That moon is how I feel now, so I don’t mind that nobody is going to be writing home about my photography skills. I think you get the feeling from the blurry picture, and that’s all that matters.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com131tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-47046334486991023022020-01-09T23:18:00.000+00:002020-01-09T23:18:03.676+00:00Gratitude: Day Nine.
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<span class="s1">Today, I was grateful for the Scottish sunshine. The gales of yesterday blew themselves away, and, after some early cloud, the sun came out and shone down on the land, lighting it with a kind of gentle beam. Look here, it seemed to be saying; look at what I can make the colours do.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Scottish light is not like any other light. It’s part of the reason I moved here. I fell in love with the light. I used to go to Italy a lot when I was younger, and it reminded me of old Italian light. It felt ancient and venerable, and cinematic at the same time. After twenty-one years, that light still astonishes me.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had a lovely meeting with the people I work with. I do about five jobs, and this is one of them, and it gives me a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging. And then, in the afternoon, the tiniest great-niece, who is only six, appeared with the posse to do the horses, and she ran about shrieking and laughing and smiling her head off. We normally have incredibly strict rules at the field about doing everything slowly and carefully, with no sudden movements. The horses had come galloping out of the woods when we called them, so they were a bit hopped up on adrenaline. Normally, I would make everyone lower their energy and beam out calmness to bring the mares down, but I soon saw this was absolutely useless with the tiny person. She was like a little firecracker, and there was no taming her.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And then I looked at the mares, and I saw them all regarding her with the kind of adoring, indulgent looks that old aunts give their favourite nieces, and I knew that it didn’t matter. They stepped carefully round her and did not mind the kinetic energy at all. ‘Let her be,’ they seemed to say. ‘She can shoot off in ten different directions at once and spread joy wherever she goes.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And that was what she did. The moon blazed down on us as the gloaming fell, and the older children laughed and smiled, as if they could remember what they were like when they were that age.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The grand finale of gratitude was when my English tutee arrived to brush up on her Prufrock. She’s got her mock exams coming up and I was getting her ready for them. I felt a huge weight of responsibility to her, to send her into these dreaded exams with a sense of self and a swing of confidence. She’s much cleverer than she thinks she is, but I’m always trying to get her to believe in herself more, to get rid of the blocks that stop her keen instincts and her interesting mind expressing themselves to their full degree.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I think I had a slight sense of doom; that we weren’t quite ready; that I couldn’t help her enough. But she was dazzling. Her insights were startling and her spirits were high and her choices were all utterly brilliant. ‘You are ready,’ I said to her, in delight. ‘You’ve managed to get to the heart of one of the most complex poems in the English language, one which professors and scholars are still arguing over. You’ve absolutely nailed it.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She doesn’t like compliments much. I’ve noticed that quite a few of my young people have trouble with praise. But she looked right at me and she gave a little smile and she nodded her head, as if she finally believed me. I see now why teachers regard their jobs not as a career, but as a vocation. I’m not sure I ever felt such a pure sense of achievement in my life. I think she’s going to amaze herself in those exams. And to feel I had a small part in that makes me happier than I can say.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-42891379496527551732020-01-08T18:01:00.004+00:002020-01-08T18:01:58.936+00:00Gratitude: Day Eight.
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<span class="s1">All right, I give up. When I started this Gratitude Project, I was determined that it would not all be about horses. Even though it’s a private experiment, I knew that some people out there in the world would read it, and I knew that many, many of those people would not be horse people. I would write about life and the universe and everything. It would not all be clip-clop and trot on.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I would not, not, not be a horse bore. After all, my red mare has her own Facebook page, with her own self-selecting band of fans, and I can get all my love and passion out there, in a safe space.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And then I realised that pretty much every bit of my gratitude so far has been to do with thoroughbreds, or my quiet Scottish field, or the sweet young girls who come there every afternoon. It’s to do with Clova the Connemara finally doing a grand, expressive, relaxed walk on a loose rein, and leaving her anxiety behind. It’s to do with watching the little bay mare with her small friend Cara, and seeing the great tidal currents of love that run between them. It’s going down to the field like I did today and finding three beautiful, bright faces looked at me, with their ears pricked and their eyes gleaming with expectation, and the red mare letting out a low, rumbling whicker of welcome. (Oh, my beating heart.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It’s to do with horses I don’t even know, like the ravishing Laurens, whom I cheered on with banshee howls for the last few seasons. I saw a little clip on Twitter this morning of her swinging away on a date with her very first stallion. I loved everything about that clip. She was all polished up, just like a human female going on a first date. She had the smartest blue tail bandage. She went up the ramp of the horsebox without hesitation, and I thought, ‘What a good girl’ with as much pride as if she were mine.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Whenever I go on Twitter now, I almost shut my eyes, because every trending subject is War, or Iran, or Trump, or Airstrikes. I’m a bit fragile at the moment and I can’t deal with the terror of what might happen. (When I woke up this morning, I thought that my gratitude list might have one item on it. It would be - I am so grateful that I am not Donald Trump.) But there is lovely Laurens, going off to her romantic assignment, and I think well, perhaps everything will be all right after all.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Perhaps that is why I am more obsessively focused than ever on my horses. They are a still point in a mad world. They know nothing of geopolitics, or tribalism, or the military-industrial complex. They don’t care where Boris Johnson went on holiday. They have absolutely no opinion about who is going to be the next Labour leader. They are not quarrelling about Brexit or shouting about trade deals or bitching about which columnist has said what. They are not woke, and they have no use for virtue-signalling.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">They are completely and absolutely and utterly themselves. They embody authenticity. They also have a beautiful capacity for peace, in its most profound sense. They teach me to live in the moment when I am with them, to practise a kind of mindfulness I never thought I’d be capable of. And if I do that, they go into a dreamy trance of Zen, and I can feel the stillness and the contentment and the wholeness coming off them in waves. For that second in time, everything is right.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ve got a bit of a bug, so I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping, but this afternoon I tottered down to the red mare and took her out for a gentle ride. I really did feel ridiculously weak, but she carried me kindly out into the big meadow. The sky was clear and singing over our heads and the moon, which only five minutes ago was tentative and new, was almost full. It had on its full face, and it smiled down on us. I’m missing a beloved friend who died not long ago, and I looked up at the moon and thought that somehow he was up there, in the moon, of the moon, belonging to the elemental part of the world. So I said hello to him and told him I hoped that he was peaceful and safe.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And then the mare offered me a canter. For a moment, I hesitated. I really am quite wobbly, and we haven’t done a collected canter for ages. Unheralded, uncharacteristic dark thoughts rushed into my head. What if she trips, or swerves, or something disastrous happens? I nearly said no. Then I thought: you have to be brave and you have to believe, even when you are not feeling very strong. So I let her go, on a completely loose rein, and she found her perfect rhythm and cantered about that field in a glorious, big circle, as if we’d been schooling every day.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Oh, I was grateful for that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">So, I’m afraid there is going to be a lot of horse. That’s just the way I am, and I can’t apologise for that. It’s where my joy lies. But what I do think is that horses are never just horses. They really are metaphors for life. They are all about believing, and being a bit braver than you think you are, and thinking about something bigger than your human self. They are about living in the moment and not rushing to judgement and not taking everything personally. They are about allowing yourself to be creative and to use your imagination and to take risks. They are about connection and harmony and love. And those things are universal, I think. I hope. I believe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-20269779606633542172020-01-08T17:28:00.002+00:002020-01-08T17:28:34.593+00:00Gratitude: Day Seven.
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<span class="s1">Today, I am really, really grateful for my children.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The funny thing is that I don’t have any actual children of my own. I never wanted to have any. This is often presented in the media as a dramatic, headline-grabbing decision. Every so often, the traditionalist newspapers run some tragic article about the freakish, childless females. Then other women get cross, and say it should be ‘child-free’ because words matter. I used to be one of the cross women. I’m not cross any more. It’s just my thing. I knew that bringing up another human being was not my skill set, and I didn’t see why I should make some poor small person suffer because I might regret it when I was fifty.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Well, I’ve had my menopause now, and I don’t regret it. It was one of the sanest decisions I ever made.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">What confuses people is that I absolutely love children. I find them funny and fascinating and they lift my spirits and give me hope for the future. I just wouldn’t be any good at being around them all the time, because I’m an extreme introvert, and I need solitude and quiet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And quite by chance, I got some children after all, in the best possible way. It was the horses that did it. They acted like child magnets. So I ended up with a posse of youthful horsewomen, who come every day and play with my mares. Even on the dourest day, they make me smile. One of them is my great-niece, who is eleven, and today was the last day of her holidays, so she rode her sweet pony and the posse came with and I ambled along behind on the red mare.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was a bitter, windy day, with sudden squalls of rain, but nobody minded. I let all the children go on ahead, and I watched as they gossiped and giggled and told each other their mysterious, childish stories, the ones that grown-ups will never quite understand. And I felt ridiculously lucky.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It’s lovely being the aunt, and being the Chief of the Posse. I don’t have to tell them to do their homework or brush their teeth. I have the luxury of being the person of fun, so I can have silly jokes with them and let them tell me stories of the teachers they don’t like and I get to be the keeper of their secrets. I do give them a bit of a life lesson every so often, and they politely pretend to be interested. (I try to think of all the things I wish I had known when I was twelve, and I tell them that.) I try to make everything as lovely for them as possible, and then, when my work is done, I can go home and shut my door and be quiet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think that if I did not have these young ones in my life, I might be a bit sad. The hopefulness and the eccentricity and the wild imagination of youth is a beautiful thing. It stops me getting too lost in the stern, rule-based world of the adult, and it makes me believe in the future. It’s a great luxury and a great privilege to spend time with my dear little ones, and I never take that for granted.</span></div>
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<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com119tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-39914725776891486442020-01-06T18:01:00.002+00:002020-01-06T18:01:42.805+00:00Gratitude: Day Six.
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<span class="s1">I hit some kind of weird wall yesterday, which I can’t quite identify. A lot of people I know are struggling a bit at the moment. The news seems so overwhelming just now, and even if you try to avoid it, it sneaks in through the cracks. The mad sabre-rattling with Iran, the untamed fury of Brexit, Australia burning: every headline makes the heart shudder.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Today, for no known reason, my ship steadied. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Today, I decided I was going to be grateful for life. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful for the life and spirit in my sweet young band of horsewomen, who are still youthful enough to think that everything is worth smiling about. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">A friend lost his heart horse today, and so I’m keenly grateful for the life in my mares, for their beauty and funniness and kindness. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful for the sky above, which had ten different colours in it as we rode this afternoon. It was deep indigo in one place, and a bright rose in others. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful for the living moon, which beamed down on us. I’m grateful for the life in these Scottish hills and trees. Even at this time of year, when everything is sleeping, there is still a sense of the living earth, of all the slumbering plants getting ready to start growing again in the spring.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that even when life feels a little bit of an upward haul, there is still beauty in everything. Sometimes, you just have to squint a little to see it. But there it is, humming away, singing its song.</span></div>
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Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com77tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-52878829342124182332020-01-06T17:12:00.000+00:002020-01-06T17:12:17.910+00:00Gratitude: Day Five
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<span class="s1">I had a great big gratitude ready to go and then I went home and got cross and refused to write it. There it was, waiting for me, ready to make my life better and improve my mental health and lift my well-being and all the things that gratitude does and I absolutely stuck my toes in.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The fourteen-year-old in me came out. She was bolshy and oddly inconsolable. She has a sort of despair, which I think her contemporary counterparts sometimes have, about the world. She is superteen and hormones all over the shop and everything in black and white and all extremes flying. I’m not sure that I was quite like that when I was fourteen, but my inner teenager is like that. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She also loves a bit of self-sabotage. So instead of doing work and good things like this gratitude list, I sat up all night furiously reading Jon Ronson’s book about internet shaming. It’s a brilliant book, but I have read it before and it’s not exactly designed to spread peace and light. It shines it torch into the dark side of human nature, and I finally went to bed convinced that we are all going to hell in a handcart.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Because of all that, I’m writing this a day late. I’m calmer now, and I can remember the gratitude thing with a more settled mind. I was grateful for coincidence, and for serendipity, and for memory.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had to go to the feed place to get the horses all their delightful food. (I think I’m grateful for that too - to have a wonderful horse shop a charming seven-minute drive away. It’s such a pretty road and the people in the shop are kind and helpful.) I put on Radio Two, because it was the time of day when there is nothing good on Radio Four. I only rarely listen to Radio Two and, at the very moment I turned the dial, there was one of the great, iconic songs of my childhood.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It’s such a funny song, and it’s such an unexpected song, and it’s a song I had completely forgotten about. It’s a man called Gary Shearston doing a cover version of I Get a Kick Out of You. Why did we all love it so much, when I was seven? It’s madly seventies, with a terrific violin section and a bit of cello, and a boom boom boom of percussion after the last chorus. Shearston, whom I had never heard of before, and have never heard of since, was doing that kind of can’t sing singing that was very fashionable then, in the Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan manner. The emphasis on certain syllables is hysterical. ‘I get no kick from coc-AYNE’ he sings, obviously having a ball.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The drawing room of my youth flooded back. That was where we used to listen to music and sing and dance. It’s where my father used to play his tea-chest, and where his friends, Jimmy and Perce, used to come and play the guitar with him. It’s where the parties used to happen, every Saturday night, when everyone from the racing world would roar up in their cars and carouse into the night. I used to creep down in my dressing gown and watch them all, and take a secret sip out of wine glasses left on the low, walnut tables.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There was so much music in my childhood. Bands and musicians would roll up. There was always someone from the Clancy Brothers or The Dubliners or The Seekers. An outfit called The Springfield Revival used to appear, very young and very beautiful, and I fell hopelessly in love with their willowy singer, who was tall and slender and had a smile that could light up the room. There was a serene, shy woman called Paddy Grey who was one of the only people who could bring the crowds in the house to hushed, pin-drop silence, her voice was so mesmerising. And when there were not people playing, Mum would open up the old gramophone and get out all the 45s and act as an extremely elegant disc jockey.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">How lovely it is, to remember all that. And all from one chance song on the car radio, which I only heard because I was running fifteen minutes late to go and get the feed. The world does send its gifts, even when the times feel turbulent. I’m glad that I’ve decided to write them down.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-22545123922356629532020-01-04T19:33:00.001+00:002020-01-04T19:33:19.956+00:00Gratitude: Day Four.
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful today for patience and belief.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Just over a year ago, I took on the training of a Connemara mare for my great-niece. The sweet pony was christened Clova and we all adored her from the moment she arrived and she was so dear that I thought I’d be able to get her soft and relaxed and happy in a heartbeat.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It didn’t turn out like that. She’d had a lot of different homes, as ponies often do, and the move to us seemed to be a bridge too far for her. It was as if she’d given her trust to humans one too many times, and just as she was starting to feel settled, the horsebox would arrive and she’d have to move on. So she had, entirely logically, decided to defend herself from and brace herself against the world. She wouldn’t even entirely trust that my mighty red mare, the most devoted protector of the herd, would look after her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So we had many, many steps backwards. There were times when I thought I’d over-faced<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>myself, and that I would never find the key. I felt a keen responsibility to the very youthful human who was going to ride the little mare, and I was terrified I was going to let her down. (The small human, who has the heart of a lion, was never worried. She had, from the start, more faith in me and more faith in her pony than either of us had in ourselves.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I plugged on through the doubts, trying this, trying that, asking for help, desperately attempting to build belief. And in the end, with a lot of encouragement and advice, I found it. The pony found it. Patience and time and not giving up paid off. This morning, the youthful jockey and her sweet mare galloped up a Scottish hill as if they could fly.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We’ve still got a way to go. Clova can still have her doubts. Her confidence can wobble and she can become slightly overwhelmed. But I think she knows that we are her people now, and this is her home, and the good herd is her herd. And that is a beautiful foundation stone on which to build.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Patience and belief. These are two of the singing virtues that my horses teach me every day. And the mares do have to teach me every day, because I can waver and wobble and forget. So I am grateful to them too.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And I’m grateful to the enchanting children who come and play with the horses, who amuse Clova and remind her that life can be fun, who make the field a place of laughter and merriment and adventure. These young horsewomen are natural believers, and they teach me something every day too.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Belief is hard, I think. It’s too easy to lose faith. You have to push yourself into believing, into keeping hope alive. But what I have found is that if something is worth it - if it’s a heart thing and a soul thing and spirit thing - then I will keep on pushing, however much of a flake and a failure I sometimes feel. That’s why horses are such inspiring teachers. You have to do it for them. They need you to be brave, and because they don’t speak English or have the prefrontal cortex for complex ideas, you can’t explain to them why you think you don’t have it in you.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think children are a little the same. They have the same straightforward authenticity. I can’t let the young ones down, just because I’m feeling a little bashed and bruised and frayed around the edges. So I dig down and scrape up the last remnants of belief and put my faith together with cussedness and binder twine.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And then - then - we are all galloping up that literal and metaphorical hill, as if nothing in the world can stop us.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-75724132021639067792020-01-03T16:53:00.002+00:002020-01-03T16:53:32.796+00:00Gratitude: Day Three.
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<span class="s1">The British famously talk about the weather. Even though I know this is the most terrible cliché of Britishness, like queuing, saying sorry, and enjoying a nice cup of tea, I still do it. I do it at the garage and in the post office and in the shop. Everyone in the village does it. Quite often, they will refer to some mysterious authority. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘They say snow is coming in.’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The ‘they’ is never specified. I often imagine it is some old farmer, a sort of ancient mariner type, who can simply look up at the sky and sniff the wind and know whether it will be sleet or gales.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We also talk a lot in my neighbourhood about our own curious little micro-climate. Our weather forecasts are often dramatically wrong. We regularly have the highest or lowest, wettest or driest. (This actually is probably confirmation bias. I don’t notice when Kidderminster or Ashby-de-la-Zouch is the hottest or wettest, but I feel oddly proud and pay close attention when my village gets the prize.) Famously, when it is pouring with rain down the valley in Aberdeen, or when the entire seafront is blanketed in haar, the sun shines brightly on our little village.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The great irony is that the British always talk about the weather but we don’t really have weather. We don’t have three year droughts or tornado seasons. We don’t have dust storms or ice storms or bitter blizzards which last for days. We tend to grumble if the mercury tips over thirty degrees in the height of summer, and if a little snow falls on London, half the public transport grinds to a halt.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And the reason I am grateful for that today is that the plight of Australia is at the forefront of the national consciousness. A whole country is burning, and it’s almost beyond imagination. I read stories about people sheltering on the beach with their horses and dogs, of a man who went to help a neighbour save his house, only to come back to find his own burnt to the ground, of city-dwellers unable to breathe. I’ve talked to Australians who are in mourning for a whole nation, who fear their beloved land will never be the same again. My heart aches and breaks for them.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And even as I remind myself to be grateful, I go down to the horses and hear myself say, ‘Oh, this wind is bitter.’ A little bit of bitter wind! That is the worst of my weather problems.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">But there was no rain or sleet or snow, so my posse of young horsewomen and I took the mares up the hill. The sky was clear and singing with colour and the hills were indigo in the afternoon light. It’s the funeral today of a dear friend, five hundred miles away in the south. I could not go, so I cantered my red mare up to the top of the hill and I said my own goodbye. These hills are my cathedral, and I’ve committed many spirits to them, when I could not go to the formal service. I did it for my godfather, and a young cousin who died in a pointless accident, and an old cousin who went full of years. I did it for my mum, who refused to have a funeral, so I gave her one of my own. I rode the mare and sang a song and recited some Yeats. It was one of the greatest funerals I ever went to.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And on all of those days, on all of those sad farewells, the weather was kind. The sun shone and the mountains were bright with majesty. There was peace and stillness, so the souls could fly to the heights.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So my gratitude today is to this dear old temperate climate, which never throws too much at us. It’s easy to forget how lucky you are until you see what other people have to face. I’ve never been to Australia, but my heart is there today.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-44478637206977100592020-01-02T21:27:00.001+00:002020-01-02T21:27:35.714+00:00Gratitude: Day Two
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<span class="s1">I had been asked to do a podcast with my friend Jane Pike on creativity. I’m a bit late to the podcast party, but I’ve been catching up like mad. I love the whole idea, and I love the amazing variety, and I love that funny and fascinating people can put their thoughts out into the world. So being asked to do one was rather thrilling. That the invitation should come from Jane was especially delightful.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jane works as a mental coach for riders and horse people in general. She’d observed that what was holding a lot of people back with their horses was not lack of technical skill, but the blocks in the human mind. (It’s all the usual suspects - fear, shame, terror of being judged, the committee in the head which tells you that you will never be good enough.) So she started a programme where people could work on those brutal mental blocks. I adore her wisdom and generosity and good-heartedness, and I find that her teaching helps me as much with life as it does with horses.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And this evening, even though she lives in New Zealand and I live in Scotland, we were chatting merrily away about creativity and imagination and authenticity and courage and letting your inner three-year-old come out to play. All through the miracle of the internet.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The truly wonderful thing is that we have never met in life, but I think of her as my friend. We communicate a lot through FaceTime and messages and the general back and forth which the internet makes possible. If it were not for this astounding technology, she would be on her side of the world and I would be on mine, and we would never know the other even existed. The thought of not having her brilliant mind and her rebel sense of humour in my life makes me sad. But I don’t have to be sad, because there she is, on the other end of a line that travels over thousands of miles of ocean and time and space. That is something to be grateful for.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m also grateful to my red mare. I’m always grateful to my red mare, because she is so beautiful and comical and interesting and fine, and because she teaches me something every day. Today, though, I’m grateful to her for a very specific reason. Because of her, I have made connections with human beings I would otherwise never have met. This is true in my real life, and it is true in my internet life. She’s been like a little heart connector, busy introducing me to new people and new ideas and new groups. It was because I needed to be a better person for her that I sought out Jane. It is because of her that strangers have become friends.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The older I get, the more I think that connection and love are everything. And because this grand thoroughbred canters about the internet - she has her own Facebook page, as she is too marvellous to be confined to a small Scottish community - she connects me with minds and hearts all over the world. That really is something quite extraordinary. And I am more grateful than I can say.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-9003031330998676932020-01-01T17:29:00.000+00:002020-01-01T17:29:24.397+00:00Gratitude: Day One
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<span class="s1">I’m absolutely hopeless at New Year’s resolutions. I have a cussed streak which makes me kick against anything obligatory or mandated. But this year, I would like to make a change. I’m conscious that I have so much good fortune in life, and I don’t want to fritter that away with pointless worries and thoughtless frets and negative thinking. I like to think that I’m a roaring optimist, and so, in some ways, I am, but I am keenly aware that I have a fatal tendency to run doomsday scenarios in my head. So I spend lunatic amounts of energy worrying about things which have not happened and which might never happen.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ve been reading a lot about gratitude over the last few years. I understand its power and I understand that it is a discipline which can change your life. Yet I never quite practise it. I throw a sop here and there to the gratitude gods, but I don’t devote myself to their service. And I think I would like to.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m rather cautious about doing this on the blog, because I fear it may get frantically dull. I really am grateful, almost every day, for my fingers and toes. Especially my fingers. They are typing these words now, at seventy words a minute. Imagine that. They really are my life and my livelihood. I think I might be grateful to them every day. There may come a moment when you wish I would shut up about my damn fingers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">There will be other regular loves. I love my opposable thumbs. I’m idiotically grateful that I have legs which can walk. They carried me down to the field this afternoon, where I stood with my mares and breathed in their peace and life in the gloaming. I looked up at the new moon, and I was grateful for the moon, and the sky, and Scotland, and the stillness, and the beauty, and the fact that I don’t live in a noisy city.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was grateful for my eyes, which allowed me to look at the beauty. And come to think of it, I am grateful for the people who invented spectacles and the people who make spectacles, so that I can see the beauty in clear focus.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was grateful for my funny lurchers, bounding about with merriment and joy. Even though one of them ate a whole camembert this morning. I was looking forward to that nice bit of cheese. But it is only a bit of cheese.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that I can sit in my quiet room with heat and light. I think I might be writing that sentence quite a lot in the next year.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful that there are kind people on social media and that there is racing on the telly and that there is good in the world. I’m grateful that there are dedicated humans out there who have rescued the Duke of Burgundy butterfly from extinction. I didn’t even know there was such a butterfly until today, and I did not know that it was in mortal peril. And now I know that thousands of devoted souls have worked to save it. That really is something.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m grateful for my mind. I’d like to expand it this year. I’ve got an idea that I should try and learn something new every day. I’m not sure whether this will be possible, but I’ll give it a go. Today, I learnt about the butterfly and its saviours. (Yesterday, I learnt that some horses are prone to holding their breath, and that you can get them to relax and breathe by using the canter. That is a rather niche fact, but it is the kind of thing that gives me pleasure.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Perhaps the new thing every day might stop the gratitude list from growing stale and dull, but I still think there may be rather a lot of repetition. Because of this, I’m going to start it quietly. The blog had rather gone into hibernation anyway, and I’m not sure how many people come here any more. So I feel that I can write things here which are almost private. I need the discipline of publishing, but I don’t want to be stymied by the terror of boring an audience into losing the will to live.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">So, if you are reading this, it will be our secret. Who knows? It might be more fascinating than I think. I’ll obviously try not to be a crashing bore, but I can’t make any guarantees. And if you are kindly accepting that risk, then I am grateful for your forbearance.</span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-32831171226015042842019-12-27T18:13:00.001+00:002019-12-27T18:25:00.707+00:00 Life Lessons Can Come in the Most Unexpected Ways.<style type="text/css">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The day after Christmas, I did something wrong. It was also pretty stupid. I do wrong and stupid things all the time, but this one was in public.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I idiotically waded into a fox row.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There is a barrister on Twitter whom I follow. He tweeted something about having killed a fox. It sounds almost impossibly thick of me, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. He has always seemed an intelligent and humane man, so I think I assumed he was either exaggerating for shock effect, or had done it to put a wounded animal out of its misery, or was protecting his chickens. It was the responses that drew my attention. They were all very much on the side of the fox. And this triggered something deep inside me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I know now what I did not know then: it was a core belief. A very kind person sent me a fascinating article about this later in the day. Core beliefs are ideas that are so much a part of you that, when they are challenged, your brain feels it like a physical attack. Your amygdala fires up, and you go into the fight reflex, just as if you were protecting yourself from a marauder with a gun. This is why you sometimes react disproportionately to something which, really, in the wide scheme of things, does not matter that much.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">One of my core beliefs, I realise, has always been that foxes are bastards. I had never examined this or challenged this. I grew up in the countryside, and had seen the pitiful corpses of chickens and bantams after a fox had been. Everyone around us had such stories. I knew also of the tiny lambs carried off by what I grew up to see as ruthless predators.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Another of my core beliefs is fairness. To my childish mind, it was incredibly unfair not only that foxes picked on vulnerable creatures who had absolutely no chance of fighting back, but that they did not - or so I believed - kill to survive, but for pleasure. Why else would they kill every single poor chicken, but take only one?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This childhood belief was bolstered, as I grew older, by the fatal outrider of confirmation bias. I only paid attention to stories about foxes behaving badly. There! I thought. See! They are the serial killers of the animal world. The shining knights in armour were the beleaguered farmers, desperately trying to protect their flocks and fowl from a wily enemy. The stories we tell ourselves are crazy powerful, and this one had an almost mythical strength in my mind.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Everywhere I looked, it seemed, there were defenders of the fox, taken in by the fluffy cuteness, whilst nobody seemed to be standing up for the chickens and the lambs. And that was what was I believed was happening on Twitter, as the furious hordes weighed in.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve been struggling this Christmas. One of my oldest and dearest friends died suddenly not long ago, and I’ve been wrangling with my old companion, grief. There can be a fury in grief, but I told myself I had no anger at the unfairness of a light gone out too soon. I was going to mourn my friend in a straight, honest way. I would look the sadness in the whites of its eyes, and accept my own vulnerability. Of course, it’s never as simple as that. I don’t think I was doing good, straightforward grieving at all. I was pretending that I was managing, when in fact I was drowning, not waving.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And all that hidden, denied anger over the profound unfairness of a wonderful person taken from the world found its release on social media. (There are several levels of stupidity in what I did, but to march into a public row when I was missing a layer of skin was possibly the most foolish. I’m far too sensitive at the best of times, but in sorrow I have absolutely no defences against anything.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">So I said something asinine about not understanding why everyone was defending the fox when foxes are the Charles Manson of the animal kingdom. What about the chickens? I said. Then, in the middle of what I did not realise was an amygdala hijack, I compounded the error by adding two tweets on my own timeline. I deleted them all once I realised my absurdity, but I think I said something about how I did not understand why people were allowed to dislike any animal except the fox. You can not be fond of cats, I said, but you have to love the adorable fox.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">As you can see, pretty much everything I wrote was factually inaccurate. I was also anthropomorphising, a sin I sternly try to avoid in all other circumstances. But my blood was up; my core beliefs had been threatened by the crowd; I was beyond rational thought.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">What happened next was horrible at the time, but is really interesting to me now. The mob - and that was what it felt like - turned on me. It felt like they were the foxes, and I was the chicken in the coop. I was 'disgusting' and 'moronic' and 'a revolting hypocrite'. This was partly because of the Charles Manson thing, I think, but also because of the context. It read as if I was cheering on the bloke with the bat. I believed, in my folly, that I was sticking up for the chickens. (You can see from this how clouded my brain was.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I felt stunned and flayed and frightened. I tried to gather my wounded wits. I remembered that I had seen a truly beautiful thing on Facebook not long ago. A gay man was attacked by a women who made a violently homophobic remark. Instead of scolding her or shaming her, he met her with extreme empathy and kindness. By the end, they were friends, and she was no longer making horrible remarks about homosexuality. The power and grace of that response, and the courage too, stuck with me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I could not reply to all the angry strangers, but I did engage with a few. I took the kind gentleman (I wish I could remember his name) as a model. ‘Thank you so much,’ I wrote, pushing myself to be genuine and not passive-aggressive, ‘for pointing that out’ and I went on to find something good in the fury. There were good things, if one bashed through the abuse. There was passion and honesty and directness, so I emphasised those. I admitted my tweet was badly-worded and impulsive, which it was, and I ended up in harmony with a vegan who started off being incredibly angry, and ended up being gentle and courteous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Among the rage and the insults, there was good information. Inspired by this, I went and looked up some facts about foxes. One of the good arguments was that they are only following their natural instinct when they kill, and that to give them human intentions of ruthlessness, or murderous glee, or evil cunning was a category error of the worst degree. And that is quite correct. My core belief, which I had never tested, was wrong. I learnt something about the natural world.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think I will always feel sorrow and pity when I see a group of decapitated chickens, but I won’t ascribe it to some malicious delight on the part of the predator. Pretty much everything I said yesterday was wrong. It’s quite painful to let go of a profound belief, but it’s liberating too. And I can still believe in fairness, I just don’t have to lay unfairness at the feet of the foxes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Nature, after all, is red in tooth and claw, and that is a reality, not a moral choice.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">What I also learnt was to think before I type, most especially in times of vulnerability. I had been trying to protect myself, as I navigated the stormy seas of painful emotion, and instead I laid myself bare. I ruined my own Boxing Day, which is usually one of my favourite days of the year. I managed to feel a wash of joy when the beautiful, bold Clan Des Obeaux won the King George, but the bruised, battered feeling of having been set upon returned almost at once.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I was upset by the venom and the intemperate language, and I was also upset by my own wrongness and folly. The fury that rained down on me, I saw, was because those other people probably had their own core beliefs threatened. I kept thinking - why can’t they just tell me they don’t agree, or they think I am in error, rather than calling me names? I see now that this is the red mist of the amygdala, which goes straight for ad hominem. It is the most ancient part of the brain, and the least under the control of modern humans. It does not deal in ‘Perhaps you might find you are mistaken’. It goes straight for ‘You are a truly bad person and must be destroyed.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I rather wish the people who turned on me in outrage might read this, so they can see that, although their methods were brutal, they did teach me a lesson. They taught me not to go on the offensive or the defensive, but to part the curtains of pain and see whether there is a greater truth. Which, of course, there was. I’d been trading in non-truth, in this particular area, and now I am enlightened. They won’t read it, because they don’t follow me. They are part of the wider Twitter universe, and they will have moved on to the next big story by now. But I’d like them to know that they did me a favour. Another of my core beliefs is of the absolute majesty of good manners. I have discovered that sometimes a bit of rudeness can shock open the hard nut of an entrenched belief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I write my mea culpa anyway, even if it will only be read by seven people and a goat, because here is yet another of my core beliefs - you have to embrace your mistakes. You have to lean into them, you have to bash through the humiliation, you have to make amends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I also learnt something beautiful, in all my wrongness. I learnt that there is a huge amount of kindness and restraint in the turbulent waters of the social media. There must have been many, many people among my three thousand and something followers who thought, ‘Goodness, she’s got in a frightful muddle on this one.’ Only one of them (one!) was critical, and that criticism was very mild. The others either politely ignored my raddled thinking or could see that I was not quite myself and held their fire. Many, which is astonishing, were gently sympathetic, as if they could tell that I'd got myself into a fix of my own making.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I have not said much publicly about my lost compadre. I do not want to make a parade, and also I have this powerful feeling that it’s not my grief to write about. It belongs first to his family, and there is a matter of privacy and respect. It is, truly, not all about me. I always want to write about everything, because that is how I make sense of the world. It is how I have always mended my broken heart. But this was not my story to tell. (I mention it cautiously here, because I think it’s an important strand in this parable, for about three different reasons. It’s an example of how grief can make you clumsy, and how denied parts of sorrow will find their route out in curious ways, and how just trying to be stoical and British does not always work.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I had, however, referred to it in oblique ways, and I think my thoughtful, good-hearted Twitter band must have sensed there was something going on. So they gave me a pass on the moment of fox madness. And that in itself is a truly remarkable thing, and something that touches me very much.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There, it is all out now. I wish I had been able to make it pithy, and funny, and wry. But it wasn’t really any of those things. It prompted a new perspective, and a great wash of tears which I had been bottling up inside, and a rueful, relieved acknowledgement of my own flawed humanity. So perhaps Boxing Day was not ruined after all. One learns good life lessons in the most unexpected ways.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-87969814424925585582019-10-30T09:57:00.000+00:002019-10-30T09:58:48.837+00:00The Russian.<style type="text/css">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">A Russian philologist wants to be my friend.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I stare at the request on Facebook. The first thing I think is: mafia. Isn’t that terrible? I don’t think War and Peace, or The Cherry Orchard, or Torrents of Spring. I don’t think of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, or of the 1812 Overture, or of anything by Rimsky-Korsakov. (I don’t actually know any music by Rimsky-Korsakov, but it’s the most brilliant name in all of classical music and I just love typing it.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I am appalled. I have accidentally become a Russian bigot. And after everything I tell myself about not making assumptions. There is lovely Eugene the philologist, and I at once think that he must have done something extremely dodgy in oil and gas. It would be like him looking at me and thinking that because I am British I must be a football hooligan and drink tea all day and hang upon every word of Nigel Farage. Only worse.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m making a bit of a joke to cover up how appalled I really am at my own thought processes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And here is the even more terrible thing - Eugene looks incredibly nice. He is young and smiling, with an open, friendly face. There are pictures of him with an extremely pretty and equally smiley young woman. (Just the kind of thing, says my subconscious, which is <i>still </i>on the dodgy oil and gas kick, that a mafioso would put up, to throw people off the trail. The real Eugene is probably about sixty and lives with his mother.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I want to say - ‘when did we all get so suspicious?’ - but it’s not we, it’s me. I can’t shuffle this off onto the universal we. This is my own shocker. And it’s not only suspicion of strangers, it is a peculiar and particular national stereotyping. I don’t look at all French people and think: garlic, Sartre, cinq à sept. I don’t think that they are all intellectual snobs who practise infidelity like the old time religion and smoke forty Gitanes a day. I don’t look at the Italians and think ‘mafia’, even though <i>they invented the mafia.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">What the hell is going on?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I suppose it may be the wicked work of the availability heuristic. I love the availability heuristic and speak of it often. (You can see what fun I am at parties.) I don’t love it for what it does, which is bad, but for how it sounds on the ear, which is good.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The availability heuristic makes you believe what you last heard and what you most heard. That’s why if you do hang upon the words of Nigel Farage and his cohort you probably believe that all the problems in dear old Blighty are due to Johnny Foreigner coming over here and taking our jobs and stealing our women, and that the moment we get rid of those pesky Eurocrats we benighted Britons shall be free. I watch a lot of news and I’m very interested in American politics, so I see a lot of Putin. I see him with his glassy face-lift and his dead, assassin’s eyes and I think of his days in the FSB and I know perfectly well that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I think of all his cronies and how they got their money and I don't think it was by working hard and going to bed early.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And I know someone who knows someone who was married to one of the oligarchs, and I know that this someone had to take six bodyguards and four black Range Rovers every time she wanted to go to the shop for a pint of milk.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The last time I was in London, there were new Russians everywhere and there was something about the way they spent their money which made me uneasy. (It was very weird. They were all young men in extremely sharp and slightly too shiny suits, and they lounged about, smoking cigarettes and casting sidelong glances at the women who passed by, and they gazed at their spanking new Ferraris and Porsches with lascivious eyes. I was brought up to dislike overt adoration of money, and they made me very, very uncomfortable.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">So those are my availability hubristics, and they are all bad. The days when I used to go to see Uncle Vanya at the Donmar and Ivanov at the Almeida are far behind me. In those days, I thought all Russians had poetry in their soul. I thought they were the most romantic and the toughest people on earth. They could sing ancient folk songs with tears in their eyes but they could still survive Stalingrad and the war and the long years of Soviet oppression. I remember a friend of mine coming back from a train trip to Russia in the late eighties and saying that every time he got off the train he would be approached by enterprising, youthful Russians, beaming at him and saying, ‘Hello, young Western peoples. You sell shoes?’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">They survived the queues for bread and the no shoes and the daily terrors of dictatorship. They somehow kept their spirit when they were surrounded by drabness. And they still had poetry in their soul. What people could do that?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And now, because of Putin and the thugocracy, the first thing I think is mafia. That’s my own cheap laziness, but it’s also their fault, those thugs that run Russia now and who are always in the news. And maybe it’s a little bit the fault of the news itself. They don’t tell us the good stuff any more, if they ever did. The newshounds are too interested by the strange president with his unreadable face and the billionaires who own half of Mayfair and the shady men with the polonium near Salisbury cathedral. And who can blame them? Those are incredible stories. But they are not the only story.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This is the second time this week that I have had to talk myself down from the window ledge of false assumptions. Being back on the blog is very good for my self-awareness. (Although it’s slightly tiring, finding out that my flawed self is so very flawed.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I feel better, so I decide I shall be friends with Eugene and stop jumping to such horrid, unfair conclusions about someone I have never met. I think: I’ll just look up Cherkasy University, where he studies. Just to see. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Cherkasy University looks enchanting. The students appear to do wonderful things with folk architecture, and flora and fauna, and differential equations. Everything looks very sunny.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ll just see where it is, I say to myself, imagining it to be in some glorious, wild part of the Urals.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s in Ukraine.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Eugene is not a Russian at all. He’s a plucky Ukrainian, who almost certainly would like the Crimea back. He’s not a front for the old and gas hoods, or a mafia bot who wants to be friends with me because he wants to steal the election. He is a saintly freedom fighter standing up for his beloved homeland.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve never met a Ukrainian in my life, but, in my mind, it appears, they are all plucky. And patriotic. And ready to fight for liberty. I’m sure that if I dug a little further, I’d probably find I believed they all played the balalaika and were cheerful in the face of adversity.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And there I was, all this time, thinking I was a lovely small-L liberal, with my open mind and my ability to see both sides of the argument and my refusal to give in to stereotypes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This not making assumptions business is going to be harder than I thought.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">PS. I suddenly realise that just because you go to university in the Ukraine, it does not mean you are Ukrainian. It's perfectly possible that Eugene comes from Vladivostok. In the end, it doesn't matter, because he's taught me a most valuable lesson. </span></div>
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<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com197tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-63481193354930687562019-10-29T13:06:00.001+00:002019-10-29T13:06:36.148+00:00An Unexpected Poet and a Meeting in the Woods.
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I call, merrily, ‘Goodbye, Gilly. Lovely to see you.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I wasn’t at all merry an hour earlier. I woke up, as I sometimes do, with a sense of pressure and portent. I usually put into action a potent combination of hippy dippy and spit-spot to deal with this waking doom. Some days it is easier than others.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m wrestling with a big piece of work, which is in danger of winning the fight. I have lost all faith in my elected representatives. The Brexit omnishambles makes me want to chew my own arm off. And I made the mistake of watching some American political programmes last night, and came face to face with the latest Trumpish incarnation. (I often think of the brilliant and extremely naughty Evelyn Waugh line about James Joyce and Ulysses. ‘You can hear him going mad, sentence by sentence.’ Mr Trump makes Joyce look like an amateur in the bonkerness stakes.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and I’m in the middle of the dear old menopause, so there are hormonal storms which blow up out of nowhere.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Which is why, this morning, I had to bring all my Mary Poppins and all my Blitz spirit and all my All You Need Is Love to bear. I had to hunt for the silver linings like a truffle hound. I had to go out and forage for the good stuff.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This blog is called The Small Things for a reason. It is in the small things that I find my daily salvation. And today I found my first consoling small thing on Twitter, of all places.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Someone had retweeted a poem by a man called Nick Asbury. It was so good that I didn’t have any words for it, and I live by words. All the usual superlatives I use - brilliant, dazzling, stunning - somehow felt gaudy and gimcrack.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I went and investigated this Mr Asbury. It turns out that he has written daily poems about the news, and Brexit, and the current political madness. That sounds rather mundane and demoralising, but he’s somehow turned base metal into gold.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I can’t even begin to express how human, funny, melancholy and lyrical the poems are. He’s taken some of the things that make me feel slightly sick every day, and turned them into the stuff of dreams. I know a bit about writing, but I have no idea how he does that.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And, as if the universe was giving me an extra present, it turns out that there is also a Sue Asbury, who makes ravishing pictures which match the poems in spirit and soul. So there is prose beauty and visual beauty.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t understand, I thought, how I have lived in the world and not known about the Asburys.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The sense of doom lifted. There is goodness and fineness out there, if only one digs a little. And I went out into the woods with a little lift of hope in my heart. The dogs ran about in their usual giddy way, filled with the hilarity of living, and the sun was shining and the air was clear and the colours were gleaming and beaming. I made some videos for the writing group I run. ‘Get momentum into your sentences,’ I said. ‘Give them somewhere to go. Let them dance.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I thought about my own sentences. I thought of letting them run across the open plains like Mongolian ponies. (My current favourite writing metaphor.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s all right, I thought. I shall make it through this day. It won’t be a masterpiece, but it is saved. The Asburys saved it, and the Scottish sunshine saved it, and the woods saved it, and the lurchers saved it; all the small things saved it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And that was when we saw Gilly. I was absurdly pleased. Gilly is a very big, extremely handsome and comically friendly dog. We see him often in the woods, and he likes to play with my boys whilst I have a chat with his human. This morning, he was not with his usual person and the smiling woman walking him looked slightly surprised when he bounded up to me and I greeted him with cries of joy. I explained how we usually see him with his other human. Her face cleared, as if reassured that I was not a complete freak.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And we talked for a moment, about our dogs, about how funny and sweet Gilly is, about the bright autumn weather and how lucky we are to have it. The smallest of small things. We did not speak of the meaning of life or the secrets of the universe. It was a tiny, ordinary interaction, a matter of quick minutes. But it meant something. It was a little fillip, a reminder that not everyone is shouting and arguing and accusing each other of treachery. Some people are walking their dogs and being polite to strangers in hats.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And that was why, when I waved in farewell and called out, ‘Goodbye, Gilly,’ I said the words merrily. You can’t just expect loveliness to be there, waiting for you each day, when you wake from troubled dreams. You have to go out and find it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-50071208627257649132019-10-28T12:51:00.000+00:002019-10-28T12:51:03.863+00:00In Which The Asda Man Teaches me a Life Lesson
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the things I really enjoy in life is thinking that I am a pretty decent person. I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me. I sit about and say to myself, ‘You know, you really are quite decent.’ I would be incredibly happy if, after I died, someone said, ‘She was pretty decent and she tried her best.’ I’d also like it if they mentioned the hats. I’m very proud of my hats.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And here is one of the things that pretty decent people don’t do: they don’t make assumptions. My dad taught me that, not by word but by example. He took people exactly as they came. If they made him laugh, he loved them. If they didn’t, he didn’t. (He didn’t hate them. I don’t think he was capable of hate. But he could not love the bores.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This morning, I realised that I make assumptions all the time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’d just got back from the farrier when the Asda man arrived. He is one of the very nicest of all the Asda drivers and I was pleased to see him. The sun was shining and we smiled madly at each other and talked about the autumn colours. Darwin the Dog and Stan the Man, equally delighted to see this beaming human, came out to say hello. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There was something about the way the Asda Man spoke to them and handled them that struck me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">‘You really know dogs,’ I said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Oh, yes,’ he said, smiling more broadly than ever. ‘I used to work dogs.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Working dogs well is one of the skills I admire the most in the world. I am slightly in awe of people who can work dogs. So I shot my eyebrows up into my hat (today, a rather fetching Scottish bonnet sort of article) and asked him more.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It turns out he used to work attack dogs for the Ministry of Defence.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Attack dogs! For the MoD! That is so hard core that I practically fell over.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish I’d had time to ask him more, but all the groceries were unloaded by this stage and he had to go to his next delivery. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">We beamed at each other some more. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">‘I’m always pleased to see my regular customers,’ he said, and I felt the human warmth coming out of him like sunshine on a dark day and I wondered how many people he touched, every single day, with his kindness and his friendliness.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But here is the assumption part. I was profoundly surprised by his revelation. I realised that I didn’t expect someone who drives a delivery truck to have been a hot-shot attack dog supremo. Which means that I must have a whole subliminal box-set of expectations about the kind of people who deliver goods.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I sternly asked myself: what are those assumptions? Well, I suppose it’s a comparison thing. It’s not performing brain surgery or doing physics. It’s not one of the headline-act pursuits, like training the winner of the Gold Cup or playing Hamlet at the National Theatre.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Now I stop to think of it, I realise that it must require a fairly demanding set of skills. You’ve got to be able to deal with difficult people, and be prepared for emergencies, and keep calm and carry on. I imagine it requires an ability to improvise. You’ve got to work those funny little hand-held computers and not panic when the machine says no. If you are really good at it, like your man today, you will make it more than just a job, and sprinkle a little happiness wherever you go.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And I had just put it down as one of those ordinary, everyday jobs that I don’t stop and think about for a single second.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There was nothing ordinary or everyday about that gentleman. He was rather an extraordinary human being, and he’d clearly led an out of the ordinary life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And he taught me a lovely lesson. From now on, I’m going to treat everyone as if they were a professor of neurobiology or someone who knows every last thing about trees. There is no such thing as the ordinary or the everyday. Everyone has surprising talents and remarkable character traits and unexpected back-stories. And everyone is more than the daily work they do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think that I knew that in my head, but did not quite feel it in my heart. My subconscious was stuffing complex human beings into neat, reductive boxes. That is not what my father taught me. I know better now.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-55443080794888250232019-10-20T11:22:00.001+01:002019-10-21T15:29:04.421+01:00Farewell to Wicklow Brave. Or Thoughts on Life, Death and Horses.<style type="text/css">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Last night, on an American racecourse, a bold and beautiful Irish horse died.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Wicklow Brave was well named. He was brave. He was also supremely idiosyncratic and wonderfully characterful. He had a mind of his own, and no human appeared to be able to make it up for him. And when he flew, he flew.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">In what nobody knew would be his final race, he was in the lead, looking as if he would surely win, when he fell at the last. It was one of those nasty, awkward falls, when you just know something is wrong.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Racing Twitter, who had stayed up late, started sending out messages of distress. Because everybody loves Wicklow Brave. He’s won on the flat, he’s won his bumpers, he’s won over hurdles, he’s won over jumps. Very, very few horses win at the festival and win a St Leger, but Wicklow Brave did. He’s one of those standing dishes who seems to have been around forever, and many, many people have taken him to their hearts.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It took an hour before the news came through. He had broken his shoulder and had to be put down.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve never met Wicklow Brave in my life, but I cried for him as if he were my own. Across the ether, many others were doing the same. He really was adored, and the good and generous tributes came galloping in.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And then there were the batsqueaks of objection, of criticism, the first stirrings of fury. ‘I hate the jumps’. ‘This is why I can’t watch racing’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I understand this well. When something so heartbreaking happens, I always think I can never watch again. It sounds mad to those who don’t follow racing, but these horses feel like friends. You fear for them, hope for them, cheer for them and cry for them. The loss of someone like Wicklow Brave makes me wonder whether the angry voices are right.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And that’s when I have to take a deep breath, leave emotion behind, eschew magical thinking, and come back to reality. Statistics are complicated things, but here’s something I read - in one study, horse owners reported that 63% of injuries happened in the field at home. Here’s another: two horses die every week on the roads. So my sweet ex-racing mares, dreaming in their Scottish fields, their speedy days only a distant memory, are still at risk of death or catastrophe, much like their cousins on the racecourse.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Here are the other things I worry about, every day - a sudden colic, an inexplicable grass sickness, a false step when we are cantering down the valley, a foot in a rabbit hole. Nobody sees that on the telly, and nobody will say they hate seeing horses being kept by a middle-aged woman in a squashed hat and ask for it to be banned. This is, I think, because humans are emotional creatures, prone to category errors, and desperately bad at calculating and understanding risk. (This is why so many people, including me, are afraid of flying, despite the poor rationalists repeating the numbers, over and over. I read once that you are more likely to die by donkey than aircraft. How the donkey would kill you was not explained.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I have to think of all this and try to sort it out in my head because I love thoroughbreds and I love the people who love thoroughbreds. Racehorses were my entire young life. They were my north and south, my east and west. My father, who rode and then trained jumpers, was not a monster who ran his horses to death for money. Nor were the funny, kind, eccentric, generous people who came to our house in the Lambourn valley. They loved their horses and cherished their horses and admired their horses and wept for their horses. I saw my father inconsolable when he lost a great fighter. But I also saw the stoical, determined resolution the next day, when first lot had to go out and life had to go on. There was a sort of earthed, countryman understanding of life and death. Dad, and the men and women he worked with, paid tribute, marked the loss, felt the grief, and knew they had to keep going for all the other horses who relied on them.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think too, at times like this, of horses in the wild. They have a flinty ruthlessness that comes from fifty million years of evolutionary biology. They will leave the old, the halt, the lame, and move on. That is how horses survived over the millennia. In some ways, I think they understand mortality better than we humans do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And yet, for all that flintiness, I have watched my own red mare grieve for a fallen companion. This sounds like the worst kind of anthropomorphism, but grieving is the only word I can give it. She stood guard at the place where her friend died for four days, lifting her head, watching intently, whinnying. And on the fifth day, as if she understood and accepted the loss, she moved away and put her head down again to graze. Loss is loss; respect is due; and life went on.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">So, what do you do, if you love horses and you love racing and you find yourself sitting on a Saturday night, writing stuttering words about the death of a horse? Do you turn your head away in disgust and resort to words of fury? Do you condemn the whole game? Do you rage and blame?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Or do you choose to cling to the positive?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Wicklow Brave is gone. Depending on your belief system, he has returned to a peaceful nothingness, to that place he was in before he was born, or he is running free over celestial plains. I mourn him and salute him and think of all the people who loved him and looked after him every day, the ones who will miss him most. I think of how funny he was, and how brilliant, and how not quite like other horses. I think of how well remembered he will be, and how well his loss is being marked.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Does that matter? Well, if you go to see Oliver Sherwood, he’ll take you up on the gallops and show you the tree that they planted for Many Clouds. The whole string rides past it most mornings, and the riders smile and remember. And I think that does matter.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I will go on watching. I grew up in this game and it’s too far in my blood ever to get it out. Every time I turn on the racing, I have my father with me. I will go on watching and I will remind myself that British racing is the best-regulated in the world and that the horses get the finest care. I’ll think of all the people I know in racing and how much they love their charges and I’ll think of all the happy yards I’ve lived in and visited, where you can feel the contentment in the air. I’ll try to stay on the rational side of the street: all horses can have accidents and die, it’s just that with racing you see it on the television. It happens to famous, beloved horses in front of a crowd. That’s the difference.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think of what is most important, which is the living. I write about living horses every single day. I sometimes write about the household names, but mostly I tell simple stories of my red mare and her little bay friend. I do this for love, and sometimes for self-indulgence, but also because I’m always trying to learn more, to move forward, to be a better human for those enchanting thoroughbreds, to understand more of their horsey minds, to venture across the species barrier. I find that writing it down helps to keep me up to the mark. And I like to dispel the disobliging myths about thoroughbreds in general and ex-racehorses in particular, so that more people will realise what wonderful, kind, versatile creatures these animals are.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think, at the last, of all the times I’ve watched Willie Mullins horses go round the pre-parade ring at Cheltenham. The atmosphere at the festival is so thick you could cut it with a carving knife, and even the most experienced horses can get a little rattled by the noise and the energy. But, almost without exception, the Mullins horses mosey on round with their heads low and their ears soft and their necks relaxed, as if they were going for a nice walk at home. That’s a true testament to a happy yard and a whole lot of devoted humans. I know, from everything I’ve seen and heard of Wicklow Brave, that he had a great life. And that, I think, in the end, is what is important. I choose to remember the life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com122tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-31755527358441356602019-10-06T13:06:00.002+01:002019-10-06T13:06:23.113+01:00Enable
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Out in the world, far away from the Brexit shouting and the political shenanigans, there is a horse called Enable. Today, she is going to go out onto the smooth green turf of Longchamp to try and make history. Few horses have won the Arc De Triomphe twice. No horse has won it three times. Enable is going to give it a shot.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">What can this possibly matter? It’s only a horse; it’s only a race. But there is something about this horse and this race. There is something about this mare and this team and this jockey. There is something about this moment. ‘She is Enable,’ says Imran, who looks after the great thoroughbred and rides her every day. He smiles, as if there is nothing left to add.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">What is it about Enable? Well, to start with the obvious, there is the beauty. She does not have a delicate, show pony prettiness. She has the grand, blooming beauty of a powerful athlete. She is all muscle and sinew: she is absurdly strong in the shoulder and magnificently deep in the girth. When Frankie Dettori asks her to go, she lowers herself and lengthens her stride as if she is defying the laws of physics. She pins her long, elegant ears back to her head in the classic pose of the boss mare, almost shouldering lesser creatures out of the way. The moment she passes the post, she pricks those ears and lifts her head, ready for her close-up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There is also the brilliance. Most talented horses, even the great champions, have an off day. There are those mysterious times when they simply do not run their race. Nobody really knows why. Enable always runs her race. She always pitches up, swinging. She’s won her last fourteen contests, including a clutch of Group Ones. And she hasn’t done it the easy way. She’s travelled the world; she’s done it on different ground, on different courses, over different distances. Last year, she went to the glorious jamboree that is the Breeders’ Cup, and, in a land that practically invented razzmatazz, she dazzled the Americans. ‘They treated her like a film star,’ says Frankie, and she did not disappoint.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Then there is the courage. Enable has not always floated to victory. She has scrapped for it too. Last year, she won the Arc by a whisker when she was only 85% fit. This year, she threw herself into the heat of battle with Crystal Ocean, officially the best horse in the world at the time, and almost cowed the colt out of it. I think she broke his heart that day, through sheer guts and an inexorable will to win. She’s got raw bravery to go with her brilliance.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">She has a dazzling array of enchanting qualities, the sort of things you would look for in a human. She is eternally enthusiastic, relishing her work, banging at her box to get out in the morning. John Gosden says that she always wants to go with the first lot, ‘so you don’t make her wait for second lot’. She has a bright aspect and an intelligence you can see at the races, as she comes into the paddock with her head held high, surveying the crowd as if she knows they are there for her. ‘Look on my works, ye mighty,’ she says. ‘Hello, mere mortals.’ Some horses, even the great ones, don’t care for the hullabaloo; they are flight animals after all. But there are some, and Enable is one of these, who seem to soak it up, to feed off the energy, to understand, somewhere in their horsey heads, that these teeming humans come in peace. And, rather amazingly, for a steely, finely-tuned athlete, she is a very nice person. ‘She’s so friendly,’ says Imran, beaming.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">In racing terms, she is the ultimate. She has dazzling tactical speed, which means Frankie can put her anywhere he wants in the race. She is incredibly genuine, so when she asks her a question, her answer is always yes. She is unusually versatile - she can sit off the pace and wait to pounce; she can grab a race by the scruff of its neck and make everyone else play catch-up; she can settle quietly in mid-field and steal through the gaps. Even if she gets caught out wide and has to go round the houses, she’ll still fire her booster rockets and soar to triumph.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">In Dettori, she has the perfect partner. He respects her so much that he wins top races with, as John Gosden says, ‘hands and heels and one flick of the whip.’ He visits her in the mornings, just for a little chat and a Polo. The last time Enable and Frankie were together in public, this professional sportsman - one of the greatest jockeys ever seen, with a racing brain second to none - burst into tears on national television. Usually, Frankie never stops talking, but on that day, he could hardly get a word out. And when he does have the words, the one he uses most often is love.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps that is why today is so special. It is about love, not money. Everyone involved with this mare has plenty of money already. The punters are not going to make their fortunes, because she will go off at long odds-on. There are no franchises, rubbing their hands - there won’t be Enable t-shirts or Enable theme parks. She’ll go quietly off to stud after this and have her brilliant babies and those of us who watched her and cheered her on will be left only with memories.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think the crowds love her because she always turns up for them. She never lets them down. She is all authenticity, in a world of fake news and fake outrage and fake politics. She would not know a shoddy thought or a mean emotion if she saw one. She gleams above us humans, in those mysterious plains across the species barrier, like something pure and true. In a time when gracelessness seems a public currency, she is all grace.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It doesn’t matter whether she wins today. The weight of history is against her. The rain has come to Paris, and very soft ground might blunt some of that invincible speed. It’s the Arc, where anything can happen in the hurly-burly. Fifteen wins on the trot might just be one too many to hope for.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">If she can do it, she will go into the pantheon of the immortals, and I shall shout and cheer and cry. Like Frankie, I love her. But all that matters is that she comes home safely and goes to Prince Khalid’s pristine paddocks and has her fine foals.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Whatever happens, she has left an indelible mark on those who have been lucky enough to see her in action. She is truly a horse of the heart, and she owes no debt. She has given of herself, generously, freely, and she is a champion for the ages.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-535706957508332542019-08-11T15:55:00.000+01:002019-08-11T15:55:03.650+01:00The Joy of Sleep
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I had thirteen hours of sleep last night. <i>Thirteen hours</i>. I can’t remember the last time that happened. I woke briefly in a windy, blue, bleary dawn and rolled over and went back to sleep. I woke later in the morning, and, in a blinking half-doze, let the dogs out. They took one look at the Hebridean weather and came trotting back in again. Just a half hour more sleep, I thought. The next thing I knew it was lunchtime.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The good body, I told myself, really did need a rest. That must have been some sleep debt that I built up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I thought of all the other people running around on not enough sleep and too much caffeine and that faint, humming sense of strain that comes from not listening to the good body. I reckon that’s pretty much everyone in modern life, except for those clever professors who do sleep studies. I thought: no wonder so many of us Britons are rowing about Brexit and shouting at each other on Twitter and forgetting our famous good manners. Our brains, not given enough time to restore themselves in the night, are stretched until they twang.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I am self-employed. I’m pretty rubbish at time management, so I always feel as if I am behind on my four jobs, but, theoretically, I could easily give myself eight or nine hours’ sleep a night. Nothing simpler. I’m not a junior doctor or in the emergency services. I don’t work the night shift or have a small, wakeful child. And yet I don’t. I rub along on about six hours, on average. Sometimes, I have as little as four. On the bad insomnia nights, which greet one in middle age, I battle through the day on two.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This isn’t just bad decisions. (‘You could go to bed now,’ says my sane, adult voice. ‘Just look something vital up on the internet, or make notes for a dazzling new idea,’ says my irrational, luring, fatal voice, and then it is after 1am, and I know that tomorrow is already buggered.) I think it’s the culture. Life now seems about speed and flash and cramming as much in as possible. Sleep is for wimps. Those mistresses and masters of the universe are always telling everyone how they got to the top by rising at 4.30am. I read something the other day about Mark Wahlberg getting up at 2.30am to work out in his gym. And he takes millions at the box office. If I get up at sloppy seven, then I’ve already lost the race.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This holiday, on the lovely, distant island of Colonsay, has been a revelation for me. I was supposed to come with friends, but they fell away. Although I was sad that I would not be in this ravishing place with my best beloveds, I was secretly thrilled at the idea of being on my own.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I used to go away on my own when I was very young. In my twenties, I drove from Los Angeles to Seattle and back again all by myself, and once took the solitary scenic route to the South of France, spending two delightful nights in backwoods hotels off the beaten track, where chickens pecked graciously beside the breakfast tables and the other diners cast me furtive looks, half curiosity, half pity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I did not care. I ate delicious French food and wrote it all down in my Moleskine notebook and pretended to be a white Russian spy or an incognito film star. (I had rather grandiose ideas about myself in those distant days.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The first time I went to New York I was nineteen and all alone. I headed straight for the Oak Room at the Plaza, because that was where Scott Fitzgerald used to drink, and a barman called Mose with a W.C. Fields bottle nose made me the best bourbon sour I ever had. I made friends with a visiting professor of psychology from Florida, in town for a conference. When his<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wife arrived to take him away for dinner, she gave me a kind, concerned look, and said, ‘You take care out there, honey.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Later that night, I ate in one of those Jay McInerney sort of restaurants with a man called George Whipple the Third. (George Whipple III! How on earth did I even know someone with a name like that?) I told him about the kind wife and he shrieked with laughter so loudly that half the Brightness Falls clientele turned round to look.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">‘The Oak Room!’ He stuttered. ‘That’s where all the hookers go!’ The kind lady, we decided, was clearly worried that such a young Briton was already on the game.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">So, I have always gone away by myself, but not like this, and not for many years. And I’ve never gone anywhere where I could simply do nothing. I’ve sat on the beach, staring out to sea, and done nothing. I have luxuriated in my bed as the wind and rain whipped the little white house on the north of this tiny island, and done nothing. I have found a beautiful sun trap and rested in a creaking wooden chair overlooking the hills and done nothing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, not quite nothing. I have read a lot and thought thoughts and cooked food and had two ideas for two new books. But there is nobody to say, ‘Let’s go here, or do that, or plan this.’ There is no rush or schedule or To Do List.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And I have slept. I’ve slept and slept and slept. The good body cried, ‘At last, you are listening to me. And what I need is renewal and restoration.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I think: perhaps I have been tired for the last seven years. Perhaps for even longer than that. Perhaps that’s why I’ve made some rotten decisions and inexplicable mistakes and felt like I am always chasing my tail. Perhaps that is why I have been mystified at all the things I have left undone, or been late about, or simply glossed over. Perhaps that is why I often feel baffled or disorganised or as if I am running on fumes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps everyone, I think, should be sent to a Scottish island once a year, a place where there is hardly any internet, where clocks mean little, where doing nothing is a high art, where the good body can ask for a pause and be listened to. Perhaps it should be paid for by the government. It might save millions every year - the money squandered on lost productivity and NHS bills and unnecessary divorces. (It must be hard to be civilised in a relationship if you are tired all the time.) Perhaps a little island where nothing much happens is the answer to half of modern ills: a gentle place where harried humans can be reminded how to rest, and be themselves again.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com111tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-59854978778159089722019-06-20T13:41:00.001+01:002019-06-20T13:41:13.228+01:00The Story of Estimate. Or, In Which Dreams Do Come True.
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NQBTf2jF2ig/XQt-16tTsdI/AAAAAAAE9dA/NWyJYy5Ql2cEsAzS4D5IH-WOch25QQPxgCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_4813.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1226" data-original-width="1600" height="306" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NQBTf2jF2ig/XQt-16tTsdI/AAAAAAAE9dA/NWyJYy5Ql2cEsAzS4D5IH-WOch25QQPxgCLcBGAs/s400/IMG_4813.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The Gold Cup six years ago was one of high emotion and high drama. I wrote it all down, and I’m so glad I did. I’m reproducing it here, because the story of Estimate always deserves to be told.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s an edited version of a much longer story. Before the Gold Cup, another wonderful filly, Riposte, had brought the house down by winning for Lady Cecil, the widow of the late, great Sir Henry Cecil, who had died not long before. It was the stuff of dreams. The idea that Estimate could then go and win for the Queen seemed a dream too far, on that fairytale day. And yet, in racing as in life, there really are sometimes happy endings.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Here it is -</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">21st June, 2013.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The Gold Cup is the glittering highlight of the Royal Meeting of the week. It is two and a half miles, a colossal distance. Most flat horses are simply not bred to run this far. There was a huge field, although because of the fast ground runners were dropping like flies. The promising High Jinx was out; Dermot Weld decided he could not risk the delicate legs of Rite of Passage. At the top of the market, driven there by a combination of sentiment and hope, was the ravishing bay filly, Estimate.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Estimate belongs to the Queen. Last June, I was there to watch her win the Queen’s Vase to extravagant emotion, in the jubilee year. I fell in love with her then and I have followed her ever since. She is a lightly-built filly; she does not look like a mighty stayer. But she has a dreamy temperament and the will to win, and she is improving all the time.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">On paper, she had something to find. The trip was four whole furlongs into the unknown; on strict official ratings, she was well down the field of fourteen. She would have to produce a rampant career best.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I resisted my stupid soft heart, and tried to find the rivals who would bring her low. Simenon was the danger, I decided, with proven form at course and distance, and the wizard that is Willie Mullins in charge.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But as the start neared, I gave in to the heart and bashed all my money on the little mare. Yes, she was up against the boys; yes, it was a fairytale too far; yes, she had something to find on the book. But blast it, I wanted her to win more than anything, and if anything could find that little bit extra for the big occasion, she could.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">She is such a kind and genuine horse. Channel Four showed a clip of her in her stable, and she was as dopey and dreamy and affectionate as a dear old donkey, nuzzling up to her lass, making silly faces, soaking up the love of her faithful human. It made me more entranced with her than ever. Bugger the book I thought; this is my girl.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And I switch into the present tense, because it feels in my head as if the drama is happening all over again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">As Estimate goes round the paddock, with her owner watching intently, she shows all of her brilliant big race temperament. On a warm day, there is not a hint of sweat on her bay flanks. Then, suddenly, without in any way becoming flighty or over-wrought, she gives two little bucks. They are balanced perfectly on the fulcrum of exuberance and determination. They sketch an arching parabola of intent. My mother and I look at each other, hope rising in our eyes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">‘She’s ready,’ we say to each other, in trembling voices. ‘Oh yes. She is ready.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The late cash comes pouring in, perhaps from the seasoned paddock watchers, perhaps from the sentimental royalists. Estimate shortens in to 7-2, veering violently from sixes this morning. I add my cash to the party. I’ve loved this horse for a long time; I damned if I am going to let my old loyalties lapse. I can see all the doubts for what they are. But my money must be where my mouth is.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Estimate comes out onto the course, all on her own. She canters down to the start with her head high and her ears pricked, collected and balanced, looking around her as if taking in every inch of the fine spectacle. She has a little white snip on her dear nose, and, in my fevered mind, it starts to blaze like a flashing sign.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And, they are off.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The sultry summer’s day turns misty, and, through a sudden murk, Estimate’s white flash shows brightly. She takes up a good position, one off the rail, four lengths off the pace. Ryan Moore lets her down and gets her beautifully settled, so her natural rhythm can assert itself. Her long, narrow ears go back and forth in time with her hoofbeats.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Past the packed stands they go. The faint sounds of whistles and applause can be heard, before they are off again into the country, where the race will begin to unfold.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The massive white-faced German raider is running strongly in front, tracked by the two staying stars, Colour Vision and Saddler’s Rock. Estimate is tidily tucked in behind. Into Swinley Bottom, she is perhaps the most well-balanced of the entire field, happy in her dancing rhythm.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Four out, the field bunches up. ‘There is Estimate,’ says Simon Holt, his voice rising, ‘with <i>every</i> chance.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Jockeys are starting to crouch lower now, not yet kicking on, but indicating an increased momentum. Ryan Moore is rocking Estimate gently into a quicker pace. Colour Vision, who won this last year but has been disastrously out of form ever since, is suddenly full of running. The brilliant Johnny Murtagh is releasing Saddler’s Rock. Simenon is unleashing a withering run down the outside. In the midst of this, in a small pocket of her own, Estimate is quietly running her race.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And then Moore asks the question, after over two miles of searching turf, and Estimate answers. The answer is: 'Yes.'</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">She surges forwards, chasing the mighty grey in the Godolphin colours. She gets past him, inch by inch, but the race is not done. Two big fellas come charging at her: the Irish Simenon, the French Top Trip.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">All three horses are now in full cry. They are so close together you could not put a cigarette paper between them. For a horrible moment, I think that the slip of a girl will be swallowed up by the roaring boys.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">At home, in our house, with the indigo Scottish hills visible though the window and the bluebirds questing at the window, everything erupts. I am on my feet, bawling at the top of my voice. My old mum, who has seen Nijinsky and Mill Reef and the Brigadier, is shouting: ‘<i>Come on, Ryan</i>’. Stanley the Dog, who clearly believes we have suffered some kind of catastrophic event, is howling and jumping and barking his head off. Only the sensible Stepfather sits silent, riveted to the action, a small oasis of calm in the roiling storm.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I look away, unable to watch, convinced the brave filly is beat. It’s too much to ask; it’s too much to hope. She’s never been anywhere near this distance before; only the very best fillies are capable of beating the colts. She’ll fade, fold up, be done on the line.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But I turn back, and there she is, with her little head stuck out, her glorious stride lengthening, every atom in her body speaking of her will to win. I gather one last wild howl of hope.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s2">‘</span><span class="s1">GO ON GO ON GO ON,’ I shout, ignoring the family, ignoring the leaping dog, ignoring everything except the fierce battle of those last, terrifying strides.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Simenon’s determined head comes up to Estimate’s shoulder, the great momentum of his powerful quarters pushing him forward. Will the bloody finishing post never come?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Somehow, somehow, the good filly keeps going. It is as if she is saying to the others: 'No, boys, not today. Today is <i>my </i>day.'</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And there, at last, is the line, and she has a precious neck in hand, and Ryan Moore is crouched up almost at her ears, carrying her over the finish.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">’I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,’ I shout.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">As if my entire family is deaf, I yell again: ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE IT.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">We hug, we jump in the air, we weep lunatic tears of joy.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s just a horse. It’s just an old lady in a lilac dress. It’s just a race. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">On a strictly rational level, it is hard to know which is more absurd: the racing of horses or the hereditary monarchy. But humans are not rational animals. Even in the most empirical of us, the magical thinking sometimes overwhelms. I can’t help it: I love the Queen. I love her for her dignity and restraint and good old British stoicism. I love Estimate, for her sweetness and strength and bloody-minded determination not to give up. I swear she had a Sod You, Boys look in her eye as she flashed past the post. And I love racing, where these beautiful herd animals may show all their mighty, fighting qualities.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And so I shouted and cried and leapt in the air, even though I am forty-six years old and I should know better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The filly came back to the paddock, the Queen walked down to greet her, the crowd went insane. People did not know what to do with themselves. The gleaming golden cup was presented, and the Queen, who really has been around the block more than most, who has been coming to Ascot since the fifties, who knows all about the dreams of horses not quite coming true, stared at it as if she had never seen anything so lovely in her entire life. She looked as delighted and disbelieving as a child. Her fairytale had come to life.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And that, my darlings, was Ladies’ Day at Ascot, when four tremendous females, two equine and two human, wrote a story that will stay stitched into the memory of everyone lucky enough to have witnessed it.</span></span></div>
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<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com79tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-1040158185723114662019-05-31T10:38:00.001+01:002019-05-31T10:38:57.636+01:00My Day of Jubilee. Or, in Which I Finally Run Out of Fucks.
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">Today, my darlings, is my Day of Jubilee. It is my Independence Day. I have finally decided to set myself free.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I realise, at the dear old age of fifty-two, that all my life I’ve been skipping about trying to please people. This sounds rather lovely, but it’s actually ghastly. I worry about what those people think, most especially what they think of me. I empathise so hard with their feelings that sometimes I have to go and have a little lie-down. I try to be the grown-up, not for its own sweet sake, but so that people will say, ‘Look at her, being the grown-up.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s not just near friends and relations. I worry about what complete strangers will think. I want people to like me, even if I think they are idiots. (That may be the very definition of insanity: wanting even the people you don’t like to like you.) I want people to like me on Facebook and Twitter. I want the people who read my books to like me. I want more of those insidious little thumbs-ups. I want huge red hearts for every single red mare post. If people don’t love the red mare enough, the world might stop turning.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">And this very morning, at about 6.22am, I realised that I’d had enough. With one bound, I was free.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, it’s not quite one bound. There has been a lot of practice bounding. There have been tentative steps and small experiments and schooling runs. There has been a vast amount of processing of emotions. There has been gazing at the navel and contemplating the bizarre vagaries of the psyche and trying to answer the Universal Why.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There has been a rather terrifying embrace of vulnerability. There have been admissions of shame. There has been a lot of asking for help. If you are going to change your entire life, I discover, you can’t do it on your own.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Today, the cumulative effect of all that came together in a glorious final act. I was liberated. I did not have to mind any more. I could let all the people - the Norma Desmond people, out there in the dark -<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>think exactly what they wanted to think. I could let them mock or disapprove or sneer. I could let them not like me. (Imagine that!) I could let them laugh at my absurd dreams, my wild passions, my intense loves. Because their dream is not my dream, and that is all right.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m so tired of the slightly sick feeling in the stomach and the ache in the throat when I think that someone is angry with me, or belittling me, or putting me down. I get a hollow feeling, and a pressing on the head, and I carry a low cloud of despair about for thirty-six hours. That is usually how long it takes me to talk myself down off the ceiling. I’m sick to the teeth of talking myself down off the ceiling. I could be doing so many more lovely things with my time.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Even if I turn myself inside out like a pretzel, I’m still not going to please all of the people all of the time. I know this is so Captain Obvious that the captain needs to be promoted to Brigadier, but it’s taken me a while to believe it, right down in my gut. I’m an optimist, so I think I truly believed that if I was fabulous enough, then everyone would get with the programme. It would be a festival of fabulousness and finally, finally, I would be vindicated. I would get the external stamp of approval, and everything would be fine, and I would never feel sick and stupid again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I would not have the terrible crash when my mustang bursts of enthusiasm were met with blank stares. I would not have the smash of shame when my brilliant idea was rejected. I would not have the crawl-into-a-cupboard-and-die feeling when I expected a red rosette and got given a dunce’s cap instead.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This morning, as the birds sang their dawn song, I saw that I’d got everything the wrong way round. The only stamp that counts is the one on the internal passport. The only control I have is over myself and my own decisions. I have to let all the other people go. I have to let them dream their own dreams and do their own thing and believe their own beliefs. Some of those will clash with mine, and some of them won’t. But they are not my business.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The strange thing is that I learnt all this from my red mare, and from the people who have helped me along that grand, thoroughbred journey. I’ve learnt that to get her right, I simply had to turn myself into the best human I could be, the steady, reliable, imaginative human she needed, and the rest would take care of itself. That’s how I ended up riding through the Scottish hills with a single finger on the rein and a song in my heart. It’s the same with ordinary life. I’ll go on trying; I’ll do my best; I’ll run my own race. And some people will love that and some people won’t.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I have finally, finally, run out of fucks. I’ve given so many, for the wrong reasons, to the wrong ends, for the wrong people. The box is empty now. That’s it. I’m done.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-23143975614725903782019-04-16T11:35:00.000+01:002019-04-16T11:35:44.538+01:00A Big Day<style type="text/css">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Today, I sent off a manuscript to my agent.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I’ve had so many crashes and smashes in my writing career that I had almost given up on the traditional publishing route. I could not deal with the whole dog and pony show, the reliance on whim, the alarming shifts of the market. One day, what you are writing is in fashion; the next, everyone wants something and someone quite else. The endless returning of each manuscript for the endless rewrites started to feel not like work, but like purgatory.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So I thought I’d be a literary entrepreneur. I started publishing my own, idiosyncratic horse books on Amazon. I would press the miracle button and my books would be amazingly available from New Mexico to New Zealand. I began an online writing service, where I acted as a coach and mentor and editor. I could reinvent the entire process, and I would never, ever have to have a meeting again. (I am a fairly extreme introvert, so I absolutely loathe meetings. I am crap at jolly working lunches. I am catastrophic at selling myself in any way.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And then, out of the blue, my agent suddenly got in touch and asked about the novel for which I had entirely given up hope. It sat, huge and pointless, in my bottom drawer. It had been rewritten so many times, but it was never quite right.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Astonishingly, she had not forgotten about it. She had been talking of it to complete strangers. Incredulous and invigorated, I got it out and dusted it down and had a look at it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Usually, when this happens, the book feels old and stale. It had its moment, and it missed it. This one, however, still hummed and thrummed with life. I could see the places and see the characters and see the slightly eccentric world I had created. I fell in love with it, all over again. As I worked it and worked it, I felt hope rise in me. When I got to the last chapter, I made myself cry.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Well, I thought, if it makes me cry, then it might make the Dear Reader cry too.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For four days after finishing this latest edit, I sat with my bad critics, my voices of fear, the gremlins in my head. They had a tremendous party. They told me that it would be the same old, same old. It would be the burst of hope, followed by the crash of disappointment. The complete strangers would have met another agent, with a more thrilling manuscript. The market would shift, yet again. The manuscript would be sent back. My heart would break. The window of Waterstone’s would seem like a bitter dream.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Don’t expose yourself to that, said the gremlins, shrieking with drunken laughter. Do you really want to fail, for the hundredth time? Run back to your comfort zone, and stay there, with a nice bottle of gin.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Finally, I summoned the Fuck It voices. I love these voices. They really don’t give a stuff. They say, ‘Fuck it, if you don’t try, you’ll never know.’ They say, ‘Sod the world, it’s your book, and it’s beautiful, and you love it, so send it.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So, half an hour ago, I dug myself out of my hole, put my Fuck It hat on, and pressed send.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Off it has flown, my great big book, into the open spaces where critical eyes may gaze upon it. It’s galloping now, over the prairies, across the Steppes, and who knows where it may find itself?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And what if the worst comes to the worst? What if the computer says No? Well, I can still press the miracle button and some lovely reader in Albuquerque will be my very own Waterstone’s window.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365244084462704027.post-66744633189201871192019-03-27T21:06:00.000+00:002019-03-27T21:06:06.020+00:00The Gift of Helpless Laughter.
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vVmvYzk3IXg/XJtpJqGQfSI/AAAAAAAErf8/DF4AWLyWQi07yKTVJSUtFoLbsfgUPZLOwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_2161.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1352" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vVmvYzk3IXg/XJtpJqGQfSI/AAAAAAAErf8/DF4AWLyWQi07yKTVJSUtFoLbsfgUPZLOwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_2161.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the oldest and dearest friends rang this morning. She is the Indispensable Friend. There are a very few that I absolutely could not do without and she is one of them.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">We talked about many things. Then we recalled one of the more absurd stories in our past. She had met a tremendously dull, slightly creepy European aristocrat. He was one of those ones whose family takes up about six pages in the Almanac De Gotha. He almost instantly proposed. (We were in our twenties, and we would do anything in those days, but this was quite weird, even for us.) The Almanac De Gotha is not her book, and he was not her person, so she politely said no.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">A while later, she was having lunch with a tremendous old gentleman who really did adore the Almanac De Gotha and dreamed of having forty-seven quarterings. I never quite worked out what quarterings were, something to do with very grand coats of arms, but this gent knew all about them and loved them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">My friend told the story of the creepy aristo and the proposal. The old gent sat bolt upright. In our memory, he banged his fist on the table. ‘You must marry him <i>at once!</i>’ he cried, as if refusing such an offer meant the end of the world as we know it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">We laughed a lot as we remembered this. My friend said, ‘Just imagine if I had married him. My poor children would have spent the rest of their lives looking for their chins.’</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">This is not funny on paper. In life, it was hysterical. The thought of those poor chinless half-Euros tickled us until we could hardly speak. We took the joke and ran with it. We went through every single lost item scenario and applied it to the search for a chin. ‘I know I had it somewhere,’ we stuttered. ‘Now, what did I come in here for?’ we said, imagining that moment when you walk into a room and you can’t remember what you were looking for. Oh, yes: <i>chins.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">See? It’s just not funny. But it was so funny to us that we wept with laughter. And I came inside after my walk in the woods and thought: write that down. I want to write it down because my memory is shot and I won’t remember it in five minutes, let alone in five months. I want to write it down because that kind of helpless laughter at a not funny joke is the absolute crest and peak of perfect friendship.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I often vaguely take it for granted, thinking that everyone has it with everyone. But they don’t. It’s rare and precious. It’s that melding of minds, that finishing of each other’s sentences, that starting to laugh before the line is half-uttered. It’s the thing that can pull me out of the doldrums, give me sunshine on a rainy day, allow me to survive the Brexit madness. Whenever things seem too mad and bad, I can pick up that telephone and hear that voice and the world steadies on its axis.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s a gift. It’s the gift of laughter and joy and complete understanding. I write it down because I want to put it in the box where the cherished things live. On a dark day, when I can’t find the light, I can come back to this and read and smile and be reminded.</span></span></div>
<br />Tania Kindersleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18355967725006605825noreply@blogger.com14