Three Cheers for Sir Henry

If I were a mystical, I would say that all the good ones are being gathered. But I’m not. I am an empiricist, a rationalist, mostly. I don’t have deities or afterlives. I believe in love and trees and the earth and these hills and the human heart. I will talk of the soul, but only in a strictly metaphorical way.

And yet, that is the sentence that comes into my head.

Sir Henry Cecil, one of the mightiest titans of the turf, has died at the age of 70.

Henry Cecil was not like other trainers. He wasn’t like anybody. He was a dandy, famous for his shoes. He loved his roses as much as he loved his horses. And how he loved his horses. People said that for all his technical ability and his lifetime of racing knowledge he had something extra, something beyond easy definition, something that could not be measured or quantified.

They say, of the great jockeys, that horses just run for them. It’s not a question of perfect position or being strong in a finish or even having good hands. It’s something in the spirit that communicates itself to the animal, so that it will give its last bit of strength and will and heart. Sir Henry Cecil had that.

You only had to watch him with his horses to see it. After a great race, with the crowds going wild, and commentators scrabbling for superlatives, Frankel would come back into the winner’s enclosure, every inch of his mighty thoroughbred blood coursing through his fine veins, his head up, his flight instinct on high, and Sir Henry would run his hand up and down the champion’s mane as if he were a dear old dog. There was something in those long, elegant fingers that communicated in equine: understanding, admiration, love, and something else, for which there is not a human word, something which only the horses knew.

I remember him very vaguely from my childhood; a tall, smiling, shy figure, other-worldly, faintly removed from the ordinary things of life. His brother was my father’s great friend, and David Cecil and my old man are buried next to each other in the quiet green of the old churchyard at East Garston. But I really remember him as everyone who loves racing does, everyone who has watched it over the years, as a quiet idiosyncratic gentleman who had some indefinable genius in him, who, despite being the ultimate professional, was never ashamed to show emotion as one of his beloved charges reached the highest heights.

What he did with Frankel was extraordinary. For all that horse’s outrageous talent, someone had to turn him into a complete racehorse. Perhaps only Cecil could have taken the tearaway, who used to trash his box in the early days, pulling mangers off the walls, and made him into the polished creature who could settle so well, even amidst the hurly burly of racecourses heaving with fandom and an almost hysterical excitement.

It was partly that settling, that learnt ability to be calm and biddable during a race, that meant Frankel had enough energy left in the final furlongs to make top-class horses look like selling platers. To educate any horse takes patience and work and dedication; to educate Frankel, and turn him into the greatest thoroughbred of a generation, is the mark of a legend.

What is so lovely about the story of that particular man and that particular horse is that it is filled with irony and triumph and redemption. Henry Cecil went through his dark years. There was a time when everything was in danger of falling apart. The horses went, the winners dried up, but one of the few owners who stuck with Sir Henry through the thick and the very, very thin, was Prince Khalid Abdullah. From that act of loyalty came the defining moment when a raw two-year-old called Frankel was sent to Warren Place. The rest is, literally and for ever, racing history.

Last summer, I drove the three hundred and fifty miles to York, to see Frankel take on his greatest test. He was up in distance for the first time, and, for all his stellar qualities, there was the quiet doubt whether he would shine quite so brightly over those two extra furlongs. ‘And here,’ said Simon Holt, a sort of thrilled trepidation in his voice, ‘Frankel is going into the unknown.’

The Knavesmire that day was mobbed. In the pre-parade ring, young children were staring at the great horse, their mouths open with awe. Frankel cantered down to the start on rising wings of applause, as collected as a dressage horse. He was so relaxed in the race that the commentator actually said: ‘Frankel has gone to sleep at the back’.

Rounding the corner into the long home straight, he was running, as always, straight as an arrow, his fine, intelligent head stretched parallel to the ground, his dancing, raking stride lengthening effortlessly over the emerald turf.

The world went still for a moment; Frankel seemed suspended in space and time. And then Tom Queally let him go, and he sauntered - mightily, easily, gloriously - past the best of his generation as if they were standing still.

‘They can’t get him off the bridle,’ shouted Simon Holt.

There was always something imperious about Frankel, and he was truly an emperor that day. He came back to shouts of acclamation and love such as I’ve never heard on a racecourse since the old glory days of Desert Orchid. It is rare that a flat racehorse generates such adoration. They are fleet thoroughbred flashes; here for a couple of seasons, then gone to the hallowed halls of the great breeding operations where they may pass their brilliance on. They do not stick around for years as do the National Hunt horses, who become like old friends, lodged in people’s hearts.

But Frankel was not only admired and lauded, he was really loved. And the love that shining afternoon on the Knavesmire was as much for the man who taught him and cared for him and made him as for the astonishing animal himself.

Cecil had a long connection with Yorkshire. He was welcomed there as a native son, and that day he was greeted like a returning hero. He had been undergoing severe treatment for his illness and had not been seen on a racecourse for weeks. But he was determined to travel north for that great race, and he was determined that the Yorkshire crowds of whom he was so fond should see that wonder horse.

And so there he was, thin and frail, his voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible, but with a smile that lit up the whole county. ‘It's great for Yorkshire,’ he said, as waves of joy still rippled round the paddock. ‘They are very supportive of racing and they deserve to see him.’ Asked how he felt, he looked up at the sky, thought for a moment, smiled, almost to himself, and said, with a quiet wryness in his lost voice: ‘Twenty years better.’

And then someone shouted ‘Three cheers for Sir Henry,’ and hats went in the air, and the sound nearly blew the roof off the County Stand, and Frankel lifted his head to listen.

Three cheers for Sir Henry, indeed. We were lucky to have him, and we shall not see his like again.

 

(I generally do not put up pictures which are not my own. Copyright is a serious business and must be respected, and this photograph belongs to the exceptionally talented Edward Whitaker. But I had to give you the man and his greatest horse, and I hope that on today of all days, Mr Whitaker will forgive me.)

Guineas Day; or, in which the titans make my heart beat faster.

Two years ago, on the day of the Guineas, I was outside with my family, looking at my favourite mountain shimmering and lucid in the spring light, and feeling quite disconnected from the outside world.

I remember well the vivid feeling of unreality. The children were laughing and playing; the grown-ups were laughing too, but in a different way. It was ten days after my father died and I did not know what day of the week it was.

So it was that I completely missed Frankel’s demolition job in the great race.

The next day, I drove south for my dad’s funeral. Still in the same humming limbo of unreality, I arrived at Tebay, my traditional half-way stop, and called my mother to say I was not dead in a ditch.

‘Did you see that?’ she said.

‘See what?’ I said.

‘Frankel,’ she said.

I did not know what she was talking about. I had turned away from flat racing, deciding the soul had gone out of it, that it was all about money now, with the rolling billionaires throwing their cash about and buying winners. I had decided that I hated that there was no longer any room for the small owner, the little yard. It was all about the clash of the big boys, and I felt there was something sad in that.

‘I’m not going to tell you if you did not see it,’ said my mother. But I could tell from her voice that it was something out of the ordinary. Her voice was vibrating with delighted disbelief.

I turned on the television for the 1000 Guineas, and, at that very moment, they showed a replay of the 2000 from the day before. The sun was blazing down on the Rowley Mile, so bright and dazzling that it made the very racecourse itself look not quite real, which chimed with my mood.

The stalls clapped open, and a horse in the familiar Khalid Abdullah colours surged out of them. I remembered those colours from the days when I was in love with Dancing Brave, when my heart thrilled to his every mighty hoof-beat.

The horse blasted away from the field, in the impossible light. The sun was so insistent that it threw motes and beams into the camera lens, so that at times you could hardly see the runners. They were cast in silhouette, their shadows chasing along the green turf behind them.

Frankel picked up speed, his stride lengthening and deepening.

‘At half-way,’ shouted the commentator in disbelief, ‘Frankel is almost ten lengths clear.’

I watched Frankel in urgent fascination. No horse does this in the Guineas and survives. The best of his generation were scrubbing and scrabbling in his wake. You could almost catch the sense of disbelief in the chasing pack. Afterwards, several of the jockeys said that they truly thought he was the pacemaker.

The mighty horse, oblivious to everything but the exhilaration of his own speed, floated over the dips and deviations of the Rowley Mile as if they were not there.

‘FRANKEL CONTINUES TO BE IN A MASSIVE LEAD,’ bawled the commentator.

Tom Queally sat motionless, letting the horse flow under him.

‘At the bushes, Frankel is fifteen lengths clear.’

At this point, Queally began to move a little in the saddle. The horse seemed to do something extraordinary. He almost started to dance.

A usual horse, even a very good one, would begin to tie up at this point. To have gone at sprinting speed over the first half of that searching mile would surely take its toll. To be out in front for so long would cause even a brilliant beast to wander about a bit, to think too much, to shorten stride.

Not Frankel. Straight as a die, with his tail lifted in triumph, he kept on galloping to the line. It was a display of pure speed and talent and exuberance such as I’m not sure I ever saw on a racecourse before.

And there, in a quiet hotel room, heavy and tired with grief, I fell in love with racing again.

Today there are two more mighty fellas, stepping up to the mark. There is the lovely Dawn Approach, whom I followed all last season with increasing joy. And there is the big, bonny, bold Toronado, who was good at two, but has developed into something altogether other at three.

I love them both, but my beating heart belongs to Toronado. I think he might be something very special indeed.

Even as I write this, I feel my heart banging away in my chest, in anticipation, in eager delight. It’s a privilege to watch animals as beautiful and brave and bold as this run over the storied turf of the Rowley Mile, where Charles II invented the Sport of Kings.

Whoever wins this afternoon, I shall take off my hat and make a salute. I shall feel lucky to have seen it.

I have a feeling that it will be a race to remember.

 

No pictures today; I have to study the form and read the Racing Post and make my bets. There is just this, which still, two years on, makes me doubt the veracity of my own eyes:

 

Farewell, Frankel; in which I say goodbye to a true champion

I’m going to say something controversial. I wrote yesterday, in the heat of emotion and adoration and nerves, that Frankel does not have an off day.

I think that yesterday he had an off day.

He has just won his fourteenth race, out of fourteen. He is confirmed as the greatest flat horse my generation has ever seen. He retires, unvanquished. Every inch of newsprint this morning is about the power and the glory, so it seems churlish and grouchy even to think of such a thing as an off day. But in my mind, it makes the champion more supreme. Even when not at his crest and peak, he can still dish out a beating to the second best horse in the world.

It is easy to forget how good Cirrus des Aigles is, because he is an older French horse, and we do not see him on our television screens here. On the latest official ratings, he stands on 130, at number two, a full four places ahead of the legendary Black Caviar. He came to Ascot in the form of his life, having destroyed a high-class field over the Arc weekend, cantering away on the bridle. He is a mudlark, relishing the testing ground over which Frankel was untried.

As well as Cirrus des Aigles, there was Nathaniel, fourth best in the world, brought to his peak by John Gosden, who is himself galloping towards the trainers’ championship.

Just to emphasise how difficult the task was, Frankel is in his pomp over a mile. This was only his second go at ten furlongs, and even though he made it look like a party at York, leaving Group One horses labouring in his wake, in testing ground a mile and a quarter will feel like further. Finally, Frankel is a big, heavy horse. In life, he is actually finer and lighter than he seems on the television, but he is still broad and strong, packed with muscle. Whilst his strength would help him go through the ground, he could not bounce over it as a lighter-framed horse might.

When he appeared in the paddock, he was wonderfully relaxed, ambling round like a dopey old Labrador. He used to get in a state before his races; Sir Henry Cecil has taught his horse the art of switching off, so all energy is saved for the race itself. But I started to wonder if Frankel was not a little bit too relaxed. For the very first time, he did not have the white foam of sweat that he always shows between his back legs.

This worried me. The irony is that sweating there is considered a very bad sign indeed. A bit of warmth on the neck is fine, but the hindquarters are a danger zone. I have even heard people say it is a mark of suspect temperament. Frankel always does it, and he always wins. The lack of the trademark white patch scratched away at the back of my mind.

He also looked a tiny bit starey in his coat. This is not surprising at this time of year, as the autumn weather descends, but I missed the gleam and sheen that I saw at York.

He flopped out of the stalls, in a heap, so Tom Queally had to shake him up as if to say, come on fella, this is business. Then Frankel showed his usual smooth power, gunning round the field with his finely balanced stride. Cirrus des Aigles was running on like a tiger, with plenty left, and for the first time this season,  Queally had to pick up his stick. Frankel did not float away, as he has done in the past. Yesterday, he could not rely on sheer class, he had to show his heart as well. He put his head down, dogged, resolute, and flashed past the line a couple of lengths in front.

In the end, the victory was more emphatic than the bare distance suggests. In the end, he won cosily; nothing was ever going to catch him. It was not the demolition job that we have seen from him in the past, but in some ways it was more glorious for all that.

I think he had come to the end of a long season. I think that he is such a fine, brilliant horse that he may have got a little grumpy with the cold and the wet. He will have been working in the gloomy October chill of East Anglia, where the winds whips straight across from Siberia. It may be sacrilege to say so, but I think, yesterday, the grand emperor was a tiny bit out of sorts. 

But that is the mark of a truly great horse. Any racehorse will have its mysteriously brilliant day. Sometimes they just run into form at a precise moment, which is why you’ll suddenly have a fifty to one outsider streaking home. All horses have their off days too, which is why you see hot odds on favourites go nowhere. Earlier in the afternoon, Opinion Poll, heavily backed for the long distance race, was practically pulled up. The historic ones are those that still go on and win, even when the stars are not aligned in their favour.

Even when Frankel is not at his rampant best, even when he may be feeling a little bit blah, as we all sometimes do, he still pulls it out of the bag. All the great ones have lost; even Mill Reef, Nijinsky, Dancing Brave had their defeats. At the winning post, Frankel has never seen the back of another horse; he does not know what losing is. Fourteen out of fourteen, on different ground, under different conditions, and over different distances, ten of those in Group One races, is an outrageous record. They all came for him, and they all were denied.

In some ways, although I rather longed for an imperial procession, I’m glad he had to scrap for it. We saw yesterday not so much a king, as a streetfighter. It made the drama more complete. It made me admire and love him more, not less. That horse is not a machine, or a freak, as some people say; he can go out with a chink in his armour and still prevail. Even when not at his singing, shining best, he can still beat the finest the world has to offer. Because along with his talent, and his grace, and his romping, raking stride, along with his power and brilliance, there is a brave, beating heart, that does not know how to give up.

And talking of hearts, the other one that is stout as the old oak of England is that of Sir Henry Cecil. There he was, frail and pale, bashing away at a horrible illness, but still pulling off the training performance of a lifetime. To keep any top class horse sound over three seasons is achievement enough; to hit fourteen out of fourteen, at the very highest level, is the stuff of dreams.

As Sir Henry spoke to the clamouring crowd of press, as the cheers and trumpets rang out behind him, his voice was thin and hardly audible. He nodded seriously, as he spoke the bare facts. ‘I can’t believe,’ he said, ‘in the history of racing there has been a better horse.’

There, in their swansong, in the midst of a sea of joy, stood Cecil and his lovely champion, the old fighter and the young warrior, a perfect picture of grace under pressure.

And that, that, was why I cried.

 

Today’s pictures:

The sun came out, and Scotland put on a show:

My little herd. Not quite world-beaters, but champions all to me:

How I found Red this morning. She can stand for hours and gaze at that view:

With just a hint of the look of eagles:

Serious Pigeon:

And in perfect profile:

The hill:

The final Frankel Day

It’s Frankel day. Normally, I wake on Frankel days like a child at Christmas. I am light with excitement. This morning, I overslept and woke heavy. I had been up half the night checking the weather forecast at Ascot, working out millimetres of precipitation in my mind. The connections were to walk the course to see if the ground was safe. There was uncertainty as to whether Frankel would even run. Sir Henry Cecil would not risk his wonder horse in the mud, and it gets famously boggy at Swinley Bottom.

To take my mind off it, I went up to see my own horse. I reminded her that she was Frankel’s second cousin once removed. She did not seem that interested. She laid her head on my chest and dozed off. She was in that kind of mood, sweetness coursing through her blue blood like wine.

Back at home, with three hours to go, I discover that Frankel will run. Then, the terror strikes. I had been rather cavalier about him running on soft ground; now doubts began to swarm. He’s won on it before, but not since his very first race, when he battled to see off Nathaniel, the horse who has come closest to him. It was easy ground at the Lockinge, early in the season, but, despite the torrential summer, Frankel has mostly had the good going.

Oh, I told myself, the people who know always say that the great horses will go on any ground. Frankel is such a balanced horse, so strong, so deep through the girth, with such a powerful, rhythmic stride, an almost skating movement that dances over the turf, that he can deal with anything.

But the haunting spectres still come. Rhythm wins races, and rhythm is Frankel’s special subject. He never deviates; he has a smooth, unrelenting cruising speed; he is as regular and pitiless as a metronome. It is that astonishing set-your-watch rhythmic action that breaks other horses’ hearts. What if, round the back, running down into that heavy ground, he loses his stride? What if the shock of the mud sends him off balance?

Don’t be absurd, says my hard, practical head. Frankel is a stone better than the next best horse. A stone. He is the greatest racehorse in the world, on official ratings. Tom Queally could do handstands on him and he would still win. He will cruise to the front and pull away and keep his crown; the doubters will look like monkeys.

All the same, this is a delicate Thoroughbred, for all his might and power; it is racing, where anything can happen. The excitement builds, but there is fear in it too.

I think, as I wait for his last ever appearance on a racecourse, why it is I love him so much, why he is so viscerally thrilling. I always wonder this, every time he runs, every time I wake with the twist in my stomach that announces Frankel day. I usually run out of adjectives.

It is that great, dancing stride. It is one of the most beautiful, pure things I’ve ever seen. It is the astonishing sense of floating over the green sward, combined with the powerhouse engine, hammering away like an industrial machine. To see grace and power together in this way is a rare thing indeed.

It is that every inch of him is lovely, from his great, muscled body, to his fine, wide head, to his deep, intelligent eye. When he stops, and pricks his ears, and lifts his head, and surveys his crowd like an emperor, he has, as my mother always says of the great ones, the look of eagles.

The best horses have something extra about them, something that can hardly be defined. Racing people call it presence. It is as if they are somehow aware of their greatness. As the crowds whoop and cheer, making a noise that should send any flight animal running for its life, Frankel takes it in as if it were merely his due. He used to be a bit spooky and highly-strung, in his early days. His adoring admirers, massed in ranks of joy, are aware that a racing horse, hopped up on the finest Canadian oats, may be startled by too much raucous clapping. When he went down at York, the crowd were tentative at first, not wanting to upset him. The slightly subdued cheer was rather touching, as if they were holding back, from politeness. Then, when they saw that the champion was almost basking in it, they let rip, and Frankel nodded his head in acknowledgement, and bounced over the turf as collected as a show pony.

When he comes back into the winner’s enclosure, there is no restraint. Trumpets sound, three cheers ring out, hands are red from clapping. He does not turn a hair. If ever there were a time for a horse to freak out, that would be it. Frankel’s presence is such, his seeming knowledge of his own brilliance is so ingrained, that he really does appear to know all this jubilee is for him.

But perhaps, most of all, it is his effortlessness. Tom Queally has not had to use his stick once this season. He hardly has to ask a question. He just shakes up the reins a little, and the horse responds instantly, powering forward, leaving good Group One horses labouring in his wake like selling platers. The best have gone up against him and been found ordinary. Everyone else is scrubbing away from the two furlong pole, and Frankel is running for fun.

All horses have their off days. There are times when they get out of bed on the wrong side, and they just do not run their race. No one knows why. There is an intrinsic mystery to the breed, which is why people say there is no such thing as a sure thing in racing. Frankel is as near to a sure thing as you will ever see. Commentators shout in disbelief as he pulls away from top class fields. ‘They can’t get him off the bridle,’ cried Simon Holt in astonishment, as Frankel tore over the Knavesmire.

‘Everything, for him, is so easy,’ said Willie Carson, at Ascot.

It is that easy, effortless, shining brilliance that sends shivers up the spine. It has such fineness, such purity, such sheer singing delight that it brings tears to my eyes. Not since Dancing Brave has anything given me so much untrammelled pleasure.

This afternoon is a risk. It is why I want to write this before the race. It is my final salute. I don’t want to see my great hero brought low, but he owes us nothing. He has lifted so many spirits, given so much joy. He is the best in a generation; he has nothing left to prove. Win or lose, and I still say win, he is the champion of my heart.

 

At Ascot, this June, in a lovely shot by Getty Images.

There will be regular pictures later. It was a pretty day, and the mountain has reappeared from the cloud. But for now, it is all about Frankel. He is the mountain.

Random Friday

Here is a random Friday for you:

1. I’ve been a bit tense and unsettled this week, not sleeping that well, and not getting things done in the way I would like. I thought it was the weather, perhaps. Sometimes I just have a bit of a scratchy week. It’s just a thing, not a three act opera. But last night, I discovered what it was. I have been missing my dad.

The missing comes and goes. Sometimes I remember him with smiles and ease; I laugh when I think of him. Some days I accept quite naturally that he is not here any more. That is life, that is how it goes. And then, usually out of the blue, there are moments of absolutely streaming fury and grief, a feeling of utter unnaturalness, as if the fact that he died ripped some ghastly tear in the space time continuum and spun the universe off its axis.

The violence of this feeling takes me by surprise. It comes up right from the gut. It is elemental and overwhelming. The only thing to do is to let it have its course. I shout and cry a bit, and then it’s all out, and I can move on.

Today, after the swamping tears, I feel lighter and more human. I move through the drear weather with a feeling of being present in the world.

The missing is strange because sometimes I don’t know I am doing it. I suppose one misses the dear departed always, really. The trick is to fold the lack into one’s daily life, to find a good place for it. Because I like reasons for things, and places for things, I think I should almost schedule a moment of missing into each week, so that it does not build up and whack me round the head. There should be a moment at four in the afternoon when I stop the clocks.

This is absurd, of course. There is no order to it. He was a lovely, flawed, funny, brave man, and he lit up every room he entered, and a light has gone out. Of course I miss him. He was my dad.

2. The thing, conversely, that is making me laugh the most this week is that the Etonians have gone viral. Some funny schoolboys have made a video in the Gangnam manner (I am far too great-auntish to know what this is), taking the piss out of themselves. The Lovely Stepfather is sometimes concerned about toff-bashing; I think he finds it rude and intellectually lazy. I could tell him this morning that the toffs were fighting back, through the medium of dance. He looked slightly surprised.

Over at The Guardian, one writer was very snarky about the whole thing. In the comments though, the paper’s Dear Readers were rather staunch, pointing out that it was a cheap shot to bitch up young schoolboys, however rich their parents might be.

Go and look for Eton Style on the You Tube. It’s a perfect diversion for a rainy Friday.

3. The Health Secretary surprised me this morning. In the 8.10 interview on the Today programme, he was asked about his personal belief that abortion should be outlawed at twelve weeks. This is not government policy, and he voted for it on a free vote, but still, that really is something the people have a right to know about. He was asked, most politely, three times, to cite the ‘evidence’ that he said his decision was based upon. He would not answer the question. He said that talking about this would only get him into trouble.

People who know Jeremy Hunt say he is a nice man. He does not have a good public image though. Quite apart from questions of humanity and morality and honesty, surely sheer strategy would tell him that dodging such a question would not endear him further to the population.

I’ve banged on about this before, but I genuinely don’t understand why politicians can’t see that not answering the question makes them look absurd and shifty and rather ill-mannered. Michael Heseltine used to deal with it brilliantly. He would roar with laughter and say: ‘John, you can’t possibly expect me to answer that.’ Quite often, he would say why. He was honest and humorous about his refusal to answer, and the interviewer would move on to more fertile pastures. Now, the operatives revert to po-faced talking points, as if the audience will be too stupid to notice. It is patronising and wrong and I wish they would stop doing it. If only so that I don’t have to shout at the wireless each morning: ‘ANSWER THE SODDING QUESTION.’

3. I’d slightly forgotten my technique, on awful weather days, of looking very closely at the small things of beauty, so as not to be overwhelmed by the dirty brown hideousness of the day. Even Scotland, with her vivid colours and her mountains and forests, cannot look lovely with the weather this stinking. The country looks drowned and defeated. But I managed to find some lovely lichen and some fallen leaves and a bit of moss to get my aesthetic hit. You shall see in the photographs. It brings me back to the little things, which are of paramount importance, especially if the big picture is murky, literally or metaphorically.

4. I think, about once every hour, of Frankel. I think of his brilliance, his grace, his power, his intelligence, his beauty. I think of all the hearts he has lifted. I think of Sir Henry Cecil, who says the horse is his inspiration.

I think: I hope it is not raining at Ascot.

5. Interestingly, despite all the pundits and prognosticators calling the American election as tight as a drum, with Mitt Romney moving ahead in some polls and the slow economy still a drag on the President, William Hill has Mr Obama at five to two on. In racing terms, this is a prohibitive odds-on favourite. Mitt Romney is two to one against. I wonder: does Mr William Hill know something that Mark Halperin and Joe Scarborough do not? (I’m still quite cross with those fellows for being smug and patronising about the whole binders of women thing.)

6. As I write this, I gaze out of the window. The sky is the colour of old washing and the trees are gloomy shadows and everything is wet. I think it is time for chicken soup. This may be the only answer. Also: chocolate. I hate saying that because it’s a lady-cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason, and that reason is that they are often true.

Chocolate it is.

 

Today’s pictures:

Red’s View, drowned in the rain. There should be a whole mountain there. WHERE IS THE MOUNTAIN???:

Moody trees:

But then I saw the silver birch wood was actually looking ravishing, so I took about twenty pictures of it, to cheer me up:

Back at home, there was the old iron fence and the fallen leaves:

The canopy of limes:

One leaf:

Rickety shed:

MOSS!!! I love MOSS:

Leaves and lichen. All the Ls:

The herd was in a surprisingly happy mood, considering. Autumn the Filly:

Myfanwy the Pony:

That nose wrinkle is because she is doing her little whicker of hello. Kills me every time.

Red the Mare:

The good companions:

If we just close our eyes will the weather go away?:

Regal Pigeon:

No hill today. Lost in cloud.

Happy Friday.

Angst; or, sometimes I really think I should not be let out of the house

WARNING: this is all about me.

I’m generally a little leery of writing too much about myself. Heavy use of the first person singular can fall into narcissism and solipsism and other unattractive isms. On the other hand, a bit of personal revelation can be good, because of the Me Too factor. I sometimes think that Me Too are the happiest words in the English language. You are not alone; you are not the only freak or fool or goofball. Your flaws may come out in public, without having to wear the hat of shame.

It’s a fine line though, and I walk it warily. Balance must be struck.

All this started because I was thinking of human contradiction. It is a subject that fascinates me, mostly because it is so common and yet always seems slightly unexpected. There is a desire for people to be consistent. There is also the giving of labels. Sometimes it seems that the world wants you just to be one thing; into your neatly marked box you go. You may be the brain or the beauty, the jock or the geek, the loner or the life of the party. People often appear confused or even cross if you are more than one thing at once.

Generally, I like to think of myself as fairly strong-minded. (This may be a polite way of saying: stubborn as a mule.) It is partly because this is a muscle I had to build up, on account of not doing the expected thing. I am a forty-five year old female with no desire for husband or children; I live alone, from happy choice. This is, even now, considered very strange indeed. A highly educated man once said to me, in blank astonishment: ‘But you have a womb; you must use it.’ We are still in family viewing time, so I’m not going to mention the filthy rejoinder that went through my head.

It is quite difficult for women to buck social expectations. One is either sad, or bad. Women who refuse to breed are variously selfish, unnatural, misguided (poor pretty pink things who do not know their own mind) or just plain bats. A hundred years after the Pankhursts fought for autonomy and the vote, a lady without a gentleman is seen as a pitiful creature. I always think of Jennifer Aniston in this regard. There she is, lovely, highly successful, with her own production company and one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time, but her life is reduced to the tired headline of Sad Jen and Her Search for Love. (This narrative is being interrupted at the moment, as she appears to have become engaged, but the yellow papers seem convinced that it will not take, and soon she shall be Sad Jen again.)

Since I took the road less travelled, I had to learn to shrug off the epithets. I had to teach myself not to mind, to understand that people will think what they will and that is their business, not mine. Each to each, I chant to myself, in the echoing halls of my cussed mind.

Then, every so often, I tumble into a craven state of caring horribly what people think, and it never ends well. This happened last night. I went for a dinner with some of the HorseBack people. I am used to seeing them in working conditions. There, I am easy as a fish in water. I wander about with my notebook, fall in and out of happy conversation, make jokes, am my utter self. But suddenly, there was a social gathering, and I lost my rhythm completely. I became unaccountably shy; talk came out in fits and starts. I heard myself mouthing platitudes, and being faintly dull. (Dull; one of my absolute terrors.) At one point, I even did an innuendo. I never do innuendo. What was I thinking? I wanted to be Dorothy Parker and instead I was channelling Terry Thomas. Now they are going to think that I am a sort of low rent Leslie Phillips.

I had angst about it for two hours afterwards. I said out loud, in the kitchen, to the dog: ‘Why did I say that?’ I felt like hiding under the bed.

There are several things about this. One is, almost certainly no one noticed, and I have created a drama in my own head, out of whole cloth. The second is that it always astonishes me that I mind so much. These moments of angst litter my entire adult life; I can almost list them for you.

I suppose it makes sense that these are people I admire and I would like them to think well of me. But how is it that I can take on an entire social construct, the one that says all those horrid things about women who do not have families, and yet fall down the rabbit hole of panic if a bad joke comes out wrong?

I start to think that I am actually very poor in social situations generally. I had another moment of crassness at dinner last Saturday night. It was with a group of people I had not met before. I felt the same constraint; I opened my mouth and something idiotic came out. I longed to be suave and charming and instead was awkward and faintly vulgar.

I realise that what I really like is seeing people in an informal way. A quick cup of coffee, a dropping in, a chance encounter; these are the easy ones. Put me in my best bib and tucker, make me sit up straight and put my lipstick on, and it’s a fifty-fifty chance that I shall screw up. Either I get over-excited and talk too much and too loudly (I have a fatal tendency to yell), or I am suddenly seized with bashfulness and can hardly form a sentence.

I especially like seeing people when there is some form of doing. The Beloved Cousin and I have easily our best conversations when we are cooking supper. The Sister and I do our finest talk when we are walking the dogs. If I am working with my horse, I appear to be able to do seamless chat at the same time.

I suppose there is something entirely unnatural in sitting round a dinner table, or standing at a cocktail party (my absolute number one worst social gathering). Humans were not really evolved to be Oscar Wilde; it takes a lot of work and concentration to acquire epigrammatic social polish.

The angst slowly subsides. Quite soon, it shall go back into its box. Happily, I am diverted by it being Frankel week over at the Racing Post. They somehow managed to get an entire troop of Household Cavalry to ride out this morning in Frankel’s colours. It is one of the funniest and loveliest and most unexpected things I’ve ever seen. There are delightful photographs of the fine sight all over the internet. Lucky Frankel, I think: there is a fellow who does not know the meaning of the word angst, nor needs to.

Vaguely, I wonder if I shall ever achieve a decent public deportment, or if I can train myself not to care. There really are more important things to worry about, like the polar bears and the national debt. How lovely it would be to reach the stage of accepting that sometimes I am an idiot, and that people may just take that as they will. Perhaps that shall be my next project. Because, as every fule no, we single ladies must have a project.

 

Today’s photographs:

Weather too beastly for the camera. The dour brown rain falls and falls. Instead, here is a quick selection from the archive:

A Dear Reader asked about this next view, and I rudely neglected to answer. (More low-level angst.) It is the sight I see when driving home over the Cairn O’Mount. I used to think it was the cairn itself, but in fact it is a granite tor called Clachnaben, which is Gaelic for Mountain of Stones. Even though it is still a twenty minute drive from this point to my front door, I can see this in the distance if I walk up the rise behind my house:

 

Important chicken picture for the Dear Reader who loves the chickens:

My happy herd:

Herself is a bit grumpy today, because of this weather. The raindrops gather in points at the end of her mane and drip onto her delicate skin and annoy her. I give her extra breakfast and love to compensate. The little Welsh pony, on the other hand, is merry as a grig, on account of her tough mountain blood, which allows her to laugh at the elements. The American Paint, in her laid back way, just puts her head down and gets on with it.

And the glorious Miss Pigeon, who has had good news from the vet. One more check on Friday, but I think we may bash on together for a while yet: