A very brief meditation on an absurd passion.

A quick bulletin, as it is another of those crazy days, and I want to get everything done in double quick time so I can watch the racing and listen to the cricket.

Sudden, pouring, Scottish rain. Gentle horse morning, but no riding as rain has stopped play. Work, work, work. 1178 words of book. The picture becomes a little clearer although I have made life difficult for myself by deciding the whole thing is set in the wrong season. Weather is important in fiction.

Dawn Approach did not win. Toronado finally fulfilled his promise, repaid all that hope and love the Hannons have put into him, all the faith they have kept, and he flashed up on the outside and took the race with a storming late run, by half a length. It was a brilliant, brilliant contest between two titans, and the strong bay horse prevailed on the day. I can’t wait now for the next chapter in that story. There must be a rematch for sure.

But I won my money back because a lovely, rather exciting filly called Ribbons won the 4.50 for the most excellent James Fanshawe. He’s a trainer I admire, and I think he might have a bit of a star on his hands.

She’s a diva for sure. She stopped dead, half way to the start, and her jockey James Doyle had to jump off and attempt to lead her down. She wasn’t having that either. Some poor hapless fellow ran down to wave his arms at the filly in a vain attempt to get her moving, and she stared at him as if she were Lady Bracknell confronted by a handbag. I’m not sure I ever saw such equine de haut en bas.

Once she eventually consented, purely on her own aristocratic terms, to get to the stalls, she went in kindly, leapt out like a running deer, and absolutely took apart a big field, dancing away with the thing as if she had never had a mulish thought in her pretty head. I love her. She’s my new heroine.

Stanley the Dog is happy; all the family is gathering for the highland games; I wish there were twenty-seven hours in the day instead of twenty-four. I have had slightly too much coffee. But the racing is glorious, the cricket is starting, and I feel keenly aware of my luck.

It’s a sort of blanket luck, to be alive when there are such sights to be seen. It’s a very specific luck too: to be self-employed, so I can switch about my schedule and watch it all. Mostly though, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, it’s the good fortune of having passions.

It’s all a bit nutty, my idiotic love for racing; my adoration of these horses I shall never meet, my forensic following of the form, my living through the triumphs and disasters as if they were my own. A nice man wrote, kindly, forgivingly, on my Twitter timeline yesterday that he did not understand a word of my racing tweets but quite enjoyed them anyway. I thought that was very generous.

It did make me feel a bit goofy. I am forty-six, after all, not sixteen. But I read somewhere not long ago that one of the vital ingredients of happiness in life is to have a passion. It’s quite tiring, minding about the things I mind about so much. But it does galvanise. It keeps me alive. It does not let me slip into blah existence, but acts as a roaring shot in the arm. I think I’d rather be a bit absurd than be bored and disengaged. Well, that is my story, and, my dear Dear Readers, I really am sticking to it.

 

Too wet for the camera today; here are a few pictures from the last 48 hours:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack mares:

The mare and her little filly foal. I rather love that I got this picture all wrong and that they are slightly out of focus. Sometimes I am quite fond of my mistakes:

Garden:

My lovely Red, last night, having a good old pick out in the wild grass:

LOVE:

The Older Brother and his Beloved came to pay the dear old duchess a visit:

We haven’t had a good Myfanwy picture in a while:

My most excellent sight dog, sighting things:

Yesterday’s hill. Today’s hill is lost in cloud:

All about Dawn Approach

It is Sussex Day. My heart beats like a big brass drum. Even as I run around, down to ride the mare (our best one yet, leaving me smiling so hard I thought my head would fall off), up to HorseBack for my work there, back to the computer to put on a respectable day’s word count, my mind is filled with Dawn Approach.

I love Toronado. He is just the stamp of horse I like: fierce, clever, strong, burly – a real competitor. At the time of the Guineas, I rather hoped he might stage an upset. But as the season has gone on, my heart, which was won last year by Dawn Approach in his two-year-old incarnation, has gone back to him. It was that awful moment in the Derby, and the courage he showed when he came out so quickly after that debacle, and lit up the Royal Meeting at Ascot. He won that day on heart and character as much as talent, and that is why today I shall be roaring his name.

He has a very slight look of Red. Well, he is chestnut, and he has a white blaze. He is of course related to her through the Northern Dancer line. I can’t tell you how glorious she was this morning; the kindest, sweetest, most relaxed ride. As I slid off and stood with her for a moment, in quiet and gratitude, I told her that I would be watching her cousin later in the day. She nodded and looked at me out of the corner of her quizzical eye. She often looks at me as if to say: I’ll just let the old girl do her thing. She quite obviously thinks that the thing is sometimes a little peculiar, but she is too polite to say so.

Up at HorseBack, the filly foal is galloping round the field as if she is practising for the Sussex herself. In the round pen, men for whom a night’s sleep is a dreamt-of luxury (PTSD, like Macbeth, murders sleep) are smiling with almost disbelieving delight as the dear quarter horses they work with perform quiet miracles for them. It’s a good day for the equines.

But only one equine champion fills my mind now. I want Dawn Approach to blaze, to stamp his class, to make the crowds gasp and roar. He is today’s great love, the one that makes my idiot old heart beat. I shall be shouting his shining name.

 

Just time for some very quick pictures:

This girl was very wonderful at HorseBack this morning. She made a veteran who has been through things I can’t imagine very, very happy:

The foal, going like the blazes:

My ivy. Bet you weren’t expecting ivy:

My champion girl:

Giving me The Look:

The hill:

Happy trails, my darlings. May all your horses win.

Sorrow and glory and all the emotions in between

I wake, and think: it’s Frankel day. Of course, in my mind, every day is Frankel day, but today we shall see him out on the downs at Goodwood, with only the plucky Farhh willing to take him on. Farhh is not a mug, but it’s a long way from the Thirsk Hunt Cup to tackling the best in the world. He’s a good, tough horse though, and a trier, and his heart has not been broken by Frankel, as I suspect Excelebration’s has been. It’s very sporting of his owners to run him, and he’ll chase the champion home with gusto.

Every time I write of Frankel, I try to express why he thrills me so. Today I think: it’s the purity. There is no weak spot, no caveat, no question mark: there is just sheer, untrammelled glory. Even the best horses have off days; Frankel never does. He is never, ever less than blastingly brilliant.

He has never been beaten in his life; he does not know what defeat looks like. He is beautiful and mighty, every inch of him speaking of power and grace. His dancing stride is the most astonishing thing I have ever seen on a racecourse. Crowds stir and murmur when they see him, awed in the face of magnificence, and then explode into cheers of acclaim. His jockey, Tom Queally, says that he has never sat on a horse who wants so much to win. I hate to use the word machine about a delicate, complex thoroughbred, but Frankel is a pure racing machine. It is a privilege to be alive to see him.

This afternoon at 3.10 he will complete his latest victory lap on the rolling green turf of Goodwood, and if Shakespeare was a racing man he would say that gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.

As for my own dancing champion, she is as happy as a nut, because her back has been soothed, and the nicest woman in Scotland arrived to fit her saddle. The moment the perfect bit of kit went on her, Red breathed out a sigh of relief, and came the nearest that horses ever can to a smile. Life lesson, because she always teaches me life lessons: attention to detail. The small things can make a huge difference. ‘How lucky you are in your work,’ I said to the saddle fitter; ‘you go about the country making horses happy.’

Out on the water, two great women won the first ever British gold medal in the women’s rowing, soaring away from the field and winning in a hack canter. I felt again the absurd national pride; I felt proud too that it was women who got the first gold for Blighty. Mrs Pankhurst would be happy, I thought. (The mazy wanderings of my mind are often not really fit to go out in public.)

Suddenly, this morning, I missed my father so much I did not know what my name was. I don’t know why, but he is with me a lot at the moment. Perhaps it’s all the equine life. Perhaps it was watching Tina Cook yesterday, and knowing how she lost her own father in February, and how proud and pleased he would have been to see her win a silver medal on her lovely horse. Perhaps it’s just what happens.

I am not sunk in melancholy, I am mostly fairly cheerful. My heart is filled with wild, untamed love for my mare. The family are gathered; both brothers here, which never happens. The garden is blooming. I have Frankel to watch. But sudden, swamping tears came in the field this morning. I had to walk away from the mare. This is not her stuff, I thought; I must not dump on her. I have a strong feeling that one must never demand of horses what they cannot give. They do not exist to please or fix humans; we are here to care for and tend to them. But she was particularly sweet and affectionate after I recovered myself, and even though that was probably coincidence – when she has her sweet moods, they are quite entrancing – I felt passionately grateful to her. I really wish my father could have met her. I think he would approve.

And now I return to the glory part of the day. If there were a racing Olympics, Frankel would win all the golds. Horses may not be here to please us, but this one has the capacity to lift the most burdened heart. His great, galloping hooves will leave imprints on the memory of everyone who watched him. He is the essence of greatness, distilled in gallant equine form.

 

Today’s pictures:

I love Red when she has this slightly wild aspect:

And the Pigeon, all grace and stillness:

The hill:

And the mighty champion:

Lovely photograph sadly uncredited.