Horses and family and convoluted hazel

The Co-Writer does this week’s Speccie diary. I am pretty impressed. Not only is it quite a thing to be asked, but it’s such a very, very difficult medium to master. You have to write six or seven pithy paragraphs, on different subjects, although a theme may develop. The tone is almost always wry and faintly ironical. There is one regular Spectator diarist who takes himself so seriously that I always think it must be Craig Brown, doing a little spoof. It’s an oddly British sin, taking yourself seriously. I suspect that it is not nearly so frowned on in France or Germany or America, although I may be falling into the trap of cultural assumptions.

As I read it I think: I would be absolute buggery bollocks at that. The Co-Writer gets to talk about her husband being on national television, and having dinner with famous historians. The absolute high spot of my week was getting my mare to walk nicely through a gate.

I sort of itch to have a go, though. My dander rises. This would be my diary of the week:

 

(At this point, you have to imagine silence de glace. Fingers absolutely motionless on keyboard. Eyes taking on glazed, faintly panicked look. Nothing.)

I have no Andrew Roberts to fall back on, it turns out. It’s a bloody good thing that Fraser Nelson is not on the blower night and day, offering me a commission. I would have to admit defeat, or crank out something blah and second-rate.

Instead, I have this lovely medium, where I may write what I choose, go where I like, muse on what I wish, in as many paragraphs as I like.

As a faint thaw comes, not enough to get all the snow off the ground, but enough so that movement is possible, I do serious work with my mare. A lot of it, after a bit of a lay-off due to the elements, is getting her to pay attention to me. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal, although it looks like nothing. I am her person, her good leader, and she needs to acknowledge that fact.

When you take a horse out of the field, it will generally look about a lot. The head goes up, on predator alert, the body is braced for strangeness. This is a perfectly natural reaction, and even looks rather marvellous – the ears are pricked, the eyes are bright – and lots of people would not correct it.

But I want her focused on me, not the bears in the woods. So every time she looks one way, I lead her the opposite way. I move, fast and firm, in small circles, reverses, figures of eight. After a moment, I have her absolute attention. If I move a step, she moves a step. We are in sudden, singing harmony. There it is. The head comes down, the eyes soften, the ears relax. By the end of the session, I have taught her to follow me with her head without moving her feet. Left and right, we swing back and forth, like a little metronomic duet.

The thing I love about this kind of horsemanship is that it is all about the small things, and you know I revere the small things. There is no punishment. If she does something I do not want, I gently correct her, usually by turning her in the tightest of circles or backing her up. When she does what I ask, she is lavishly rewarded, so that she feels inordinately pleased with herself. She is a creature who loves to please, which makes my work vastly easier.

It’s a theory which goes along the lines of making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy. I think it could be applied to almost all areas of life. To an observer it would look as if I am hardly doing anything. Yet I am laying great, lasting foundations, which shall underpin our entire relationship, and keep us safe and happy. There are no fancy gadgets or complicated manoeuvres; just time, and patience, and thought. Oh, and love, of course.

By the end, she has had to concentrate a lot. I give her a pick of grass in the wild ground near the woods, and then I take her back into the field and set her free. She hasn’t done this much work in a while, and the sun is shining, and she has spring fever suddenly in her. She takes off with a vaulting leap, flies her tail like a flag, and gallops away to join her herd, calling for them as she goes, as if to say I’M BACK.

When she reaches them, she dances about, does a couple of pirouettes and a Spanish Riding School of Vienna leap. Her girls look at her, nod, and go back to eating their hay. This kind of exhibition is one of the purest expressions of beauty I have ever seen and I laugh and whoop out loud. The pleasure that horse gives me is beyond rubies.

There is further high excitement because the family is arriving for Easter. The Older Niece and the Man in the Hat are driving up the M6 as we speak. The Older Niece puts a picture on Facebook of her dog, in the back of the car, with a rather plaintive expression. The caption goes: Are we there yet?

I rush to the village to get lamb and haggis and a steak pie for strength. As always, I have a perfectly splendid time with the butchers, of whom I am excessively fond. Then I go to the flower shop for hyacinths and tiny delicate ferns and little dark plum carnations, for my Easter table. I love the ladies in the flower shop, because they laugh at my jokes. A smart gentleman arrives, with purpose. ‘I’ve come for the – what’s it called? – convoluted hazel,’ he says.

I laugh out loud. The ladies say, ‘I think you mean the contorted willow.’

‘I think convoluted hazel is much better,’ I say.

Great branches of the stuff are produced and it is very, very convoluted indeed.

And then I come back and arrange everything and feel a flush of achievement. Even Stanley the Dog looks quite impressed. It’s not international historians, but it is my own, small, good day.

 

Today’s pictures:

When I say Stanley the Dog was quite impressed, what I really mean is that he lay down on his sheepskin and went to sleep:

This is a bit more like it:

The clever girl, who got five gold stars this morning:

Happy Easter.

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Cooked lunch at my sister's house for eighteen relations, from four months to seventy-something years old. There was a huge amount of family sweetness.

Sample conversation:

Very small blonde person, extremely seriously:

'I had chocolate.'

Me:

'You did?'

VSBP:

'Because it's CHRISTMAS.'

Me, to her mother:

'She really doesn't know if it's Christmas or Easter.'

I made: medallions of pork in lemon and basil sauce; new potatoes with butter; slow roast tomatoes with garlic and basil; slender baked strips of aubergine and courgettes; tiny green peas with olive oil, mint and crumbled feta cheese; roasted sweet potatoes and carrots; and green and cannellini beans dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and a hint of crushed garlic, and which I must admit is Sarah's special recipe. I was beautifully assisted by my younger niece, who appointed herself to the job, because, as she explained to everyone else, she is the only one who knows not to take it personally when I SHOUT in the kitchen. It is just the perfectionist genie getting the better of me.

Before:

 

 

After:

Then I drank several glasses of white wine to recover and admired my mother's excessively elegant silk shirt, in a huge swirling paisley pattern that reminded me of Marrakesh in the 1970s.

When I got home, I found that my dear friend Sophie, who lives all the way out on the west coast of America, had sent me a picture of the hot cross buns she made with her own bare hands. I was so impressed I stared at it for some minutes in heartfelt admiration.

Now I am sitting quietly in my room, while the dogs slumber on the sofa, and the dying light comes in through the Venetian blinds:

It was a lovely day. I'm not generally one of those people who gets misty-eyed and sentimental about families. I can be quite shockingly cynical about the whole shooting match, when the mood takes me. We, like all families, have our fights and irritations and misunderstandings. But today harmony fell on everyone, and it was very touching to see all the generations together, and I felt glad and lucky.

I hope you all have a very, very happy Easter.

Good Friday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Today is the goodest of Good Fridays. Practically my entire family is here, all the babies looking particularly sweet and fetching, and everybody wreathed in special Easter smiles. (I should point out that we are not The Waltons, and this smiling business does not always obtain.) It is a perfect Bobby Dazzler of a day, the sun shining gaudily out of an azure sky.

I went to the village to run errands, ostensibly to get pork, hot cross buns, and a newspaper. Those were my three things. I have been on an anti-stuff jag lately, partly because of the recession, partly because I fret mildly about landfill, partly because I already have too much stuff, partly as a responsible economy drive. I don't know if it was the sun, or seeing all the happy family faces, or just weeks of not shopping, but I suddenly had a Nicole Diver moment.

I came back with: a white hydrangea in a pot as a present for my mother, gaily coloured rubber ducks for the children, bunches of tulips and roses, two little blue plants whose name I now cannot remember, sirloin steaks for lunch (from happy Aberdeen Angus cows who live about three fields away, thus pleasing my need to buy local), great bunches of basil and watercress, eight hot cross buns, a lovely white heather, and a glorious plaid blanket from Johnston's of Elgin. All of this was very, very naughty. There was no call for any of it. I suppose I could say I am doing my bit to keep the creaking economy going, and supporting my village shops, but really it was just about pure, naked pleasure.

I wonder too if it carried a slight edge of defiance. I was told yesterday that there are people I know who think my life is a waste. Apparently, it is so peculiar for a women to choose to live without a husband that she must be pitied. I sometimes think I can bear almost anything except pity. I know that there are people who crave it, blowing every tiny set-back into a three act drama, so they may receive a chorus of poor yous. For whatever reason, I do not. If anyone says 'poor you' to me, I go very gruff and reply that I am not living in the Congo. The irony of all this is that I spend half my time feeling slightly guilty that I am so blatantly, unfairly lucky. I have all my arms and legs, I have utter freedom, I have time and solitude, both of which I crave, I do a job I love, I am surrounded with the love of family and friends, I have beautiful black dogs who make me laugh, I can type, and I live in the middle of one of the most glorious landscapes on earth. But apparently, because I neglected to marry, it is all a WASTE.

So, in true philosophical fashion, I went shopping. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. I have roses. Sometimes, as the tremendous Miss Gertrude Stein once said a rose is a rose is a rose. Sometimes it is the floral equivalent of the red banner of everyone can just bugger off and mind their own business.

And really, no stupid chatter means a damn, because it has been such a glorious day.

I woke up and I saw this:

And a sky the colour of this:

And my dear little garden looked like this:

(How could anyone pity someone who has such a fine dry stone wall? Really?)

And I bought this:

And this:

And this:

And these:

And then I arranged them so they looked like this:

And this:

And, meanwhile, the dogs were doing this:

(Notice slightly cross 'when are you going to stop faffing around with boring flowers and find me a nice stick to catch?' face.)

And this:

(Notice contrasting oblivion to floral matters, and instead utter concentration on finding most comfortable position on the sofa.)

And my dear old mum gave me these:

And soon the children will be playing with these:

(All profits from which will go to the RNLI, because one must never forget the lifeboats.)

And somehow, all of that made me remember that people will say what they will, and I must let them, and none of it matters very much, not when there are days of dogs and roses.

In which I put on my Easter bonnet

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I have no idea what an Easter bonnet is, or why people wear them in the first place, or even if people do actually wear them, but just the phrase makes me feel festive and foolish. There is much excitement in this house as half the family is about to appear, bringing many delightful small people. Because my family is so diverse and extended, there will be many steps for me to see: stepsister, step-brother-in-law, step-niece, step-great-nieces, and three step-great-nephews, one of whom is very tiny and I have not yet met. My sister and I are busy planning lunch for twelve on Saturday. I write and rewrite menus, and contemplate ideal gustatory combinations. Outside, the sun is shining on the snow and the wind has come up out of the east and is howling at the windows. I am in high holiday mood.

Every year it comes as fresh amazement to me that we are so far behind the south. I hear rumours from below the Watford Gap of daffodils and primroses and pansies. Every magazine is filled with special Easter pictures of nodding daffs and bashful tulips and general flower life of all sorts.

This is what we have here:

Isn't it tragic? This is what will be the daffodil avenue, one day in the imagined future:

With dog, of course. That is my older niece's dog, and I like putting pictures of her up here, just in case the lovely niece might wander into an internet cafe in sunny Thailand and have a small yearning for home, and want to see whether her girl is having a good time without her. So, Tara, these are just for you:

You can see she has a thing for very big sticks. The dog, that is, not the niece.

Here is the whole pack, together:

Observe the blueness of the sky. It might not feel like spring, but the sun is shining.

As if to compensate for lack of daffs, the viburnum is doing its very best in my poor winter-ravaged garden:

And a brave hellebore attempts to raise its head:

And the magnificent Scots pines continue to mesmerise me:

Look at those different kinds of green. It's dream green; it's uber-green; it's Platonic green.

And I get views like this:

And this:

And this:

There are some days when I think that is all I really need. Well, that, and a very dry martini.