No blog today.

The most interesting thing about my week off the internet is that I appear to have reset my brain back to the longform. The clever neurobiologists discovered, not that long ago, that the brain remains plastic even into advanced age. As I understand it, this means that one may develop new neural pathways at the drop of a hat. Or: one really can teach an old dog new tricks.

One of the things I have noticed in the last couple of years, as my love of the web grew stronger, was that my attention span became a little hazy. The internet is a starling place, filled with scattered, shiny jewels – look there, and then here, and then over there again. Even a short tabloid-ish article is full of links, inviting one to change the subject before the piece is even read. Sitting down to long, sustained reading became less attractive. I craved distraction. I would actually say to myself, when my work was finished: ‘Ah, now I can read the internet.’

Last night, I almost panicked because I could not find my book. (Stanley the Dog had hidden it under the bed.) When it was restored to me, I was in clover. All I wanted was to read five hundred pages about the politics of the 18th century. HURRAH.

So, today, I’ve finished my HorseBack work, and I’ve posted a little story about the red mare on her dedicated page, and I’ve had a quick look at Facebook, and my internet work is done. There is no mental momentum for the blog. I would normally apologise for this, but I’m so delighted with being restored to a good old habit that I won’t. I know you will understand anyway.

Instead, here is a link to what I did do on the internet today. It was a fine morning with fine people and I’m quite pleased with these pictures: https://www.facebook.com/HorseBackUK

 

One good thing.

I like it that people tell me stories. Apparently, I have that kind of face. (I never really know what this means.) A woman in the street told me her story on Saturday, of pain, of loss, of redemption, of pride. A veteran of the King’s Troop told me his this morning. It was filled with darkness and there were tears, the pain near the surface. HorseBack has taught me to put away the pity face. I keep my expression entirely still and do nothing but listen. I am privileged to hear these stories, although they are sometimes hard. I think: if the men and women can go through it, the least I can damn well do is listen. I have learnt not to gather the information into a tight ball of sorrow and regret, but to let it flow through me, like a river. The water is sometimes turbulent, but as long as it keeps moving, it is all right.

I see to my mare’s foot, shrug off the cold and the rain, do my HorseBack work, edit my book, have a losing bet. I think of that gentleman from this morning, and all the things he has seen, and wonder that there can be instant communion between two complete strangers. There is a loveliness in that. The story was a sad one, but I am glad it was told, and I am proud it was put into my keeping.

I’m a bit glitchy and scratchy at the moment. It’s the weather, I think. (It’s not the weather, but that will do for an excuse.) When I’m like this, I need one good thing every day. If there is one true thing, then the hours are not wasted. The glitches and the scratches will pass.

This morning, I saw another veteran work a horse in the round pen. It was her first time, and she was uncertain and a little nervous. She did really well, but she came out concentrating on her mistakes, rather than what she had achieved. That will change, over the week, and I know that she and her kind horse will make a fine partnership. I said, gently, a little hesitant, because I don’t like telling people what to do, but thinking perhaps it was worth breaking this rule on this occasion: ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Think of all the wonderful things you did right.’ She blinked. I could see the critical voices quarrelling in her head. I know those voices. I think: I really must learn to take my own advice.

One good thing a day. That’s all it takes.

 

Here are some good things, which no amount of weather could dim:

The more you give, the more you get.

Everyone says, looking at the sky, British stoicism in their voices: ‘The snow is coming.’ It’s hard to believe as I stand in the warm field with my dozy mare. The sun on her back has sent her into a dream of pleasure and everything about her is soft and relaxed. All is good in her world.

I run up to HorseBack to do my work there. One of the lovely things it has taught me is not to be afraid of people with damaged bodies. I used to have an embarrassed terror of what I once called disability. I didn’t know where to look or how to act. I tried so hard to be normal that I fell into a high-voiced phoniness, overcompensating to beat the band. Now I’m so used to it that I genuinely don’t notice it. The prosthetic is registered, and after that I just see the person. There is no voice in my head shouting, at crazed Basil Fawlty pitch: ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T MENTION THE LEG.’

Volunteering for a charity can sound terribly pious and po-faced. Oh, oh, look at me, doing good. In fact, I think it’s one of the most selfish things I’ve ever done. I do get the gift of feeling I’m putting some tiny thing into the world, but the gift is much, much more than that. My mind, which I had not even realised was closed, has been cranked wide open. I have listened to stories and heard perspectives and seen attitudes which I would never have known otherwise. I may now converse with any human missing any part of the anatomy without falling into a sinkhole of terror that I shall say the wrong thing. These people turned me authentic where I was once artificial. That is one of the greatest presents you can give to a human being.

I think a lot about language. Language is one of my great loves, my enduring delights. I never lose my awe and wonder at what words can do. They are worm-holers, time-travellers, scene-setters. Tiny black scratches on a page can take you to 19^th century Russia or 25^th century Mars. They may transport the reader into other minds and other worlds. Those scratches may cause water to come out of human eyes, or provoke laughter to make the stomach ache. They can enlighten, soothe, galvanise, reassure. The act of writing itself can release anger, cure angst, calm a harried mind. Write it down, write it down, sing my better angels. These little words I play with every day make a record of my love for my dear red mare, so that when she is only a memory I shall still have her with me. She will always exist, in the language of Shakespeare and Milton.

Because of going to HorseBack every week, I don’t use the word disability. It’s not out of some mealy-mouthed political correctness. It’s because I have come to realise that it is not the right word. Language matters. These men and women are the least disabled people I have ever met. They might have been blown to smithereens by roadside bombs, but they can still climb Ben Nevis in the rain and the murk. They work with horses and make unrepeatable jokes and carry themselves with no trace of self-pity. They do bear scars in their bodies and in their minds which mean that they may struggle with things which other people might take for granted. Just because I do not focus on their wounds does not mean that I do not appreciate the challenges they face. But disability is not the word. I prefer to describe the thing as it is. There is a limb missing; the fingers are gone; the Post-Traumatic Stress includes hyper-vigilance and agoraphobia. I don’t think that one word, that single label, is insulting or demeaning or belittling; it just doesn’t tell the thing like it is. The choice is my own, and it means something to me. It’s a decision, not a judgement.

Oddly enough, as I was writing this the telephone rang. It was a nice man called Pete from Action Aid. Apparently I have been supporting Action Aid for twenty-two years. Pete, who sounded as if he was not born when I set up my first direct debit, had amazement in his voice. (I had a rueful moment of thinking the astonishment was that anyone could be that old.)

I remember the impulse as if it were yesterday. All my life, I have carried the hum of First World guilt in my ears. I shall never quite understand why I had the luck to be born in a liberal democracy with running water and a temperate climate and a roof over my head. In a shameless manner, I thought that if I whacked some money each month to a good cause then I might ease that guilt. It was not the most salutary reason in the world, but, anyway, Pete seemed pleased.

He was ringing to tell me about disaster prevention and told me of a family in Vietman who had spent three days on the roof of their house as the flood waters rose. Could I spare another two pounds a month so that they could have an early warning system? Yes, I could. How can I say no to two pounds when I am about to shell out fifty times that for some hay for my horse?

HorseBack, however, has nothing to do with assuaging guilt. There is no consciousness of others not having the fortune I have. It’s part of my life. It’s hard work. Far from feeling saintly, I sometimes get scratchy and manic and even grumpy about the demands on my time, even though it’s entirely my own choice to do it. It’s an eye-opener, a mind-expander, a weekly perspective police. I don’t feel like a good person when I am there; I am far too busy being interested and laughing my head off and listening to things I should never hear anywhere else. I canter about and make bad jokes (‘Are we playing innuendo bingo?’ I hollered, at one point this morning) and frown as I try to get a good angle with the camera and give my favourite horses a good scratch and catch up with the returning veterans.

I suppose I sometimes feel useful, part of something bigger than my own small self, but mostly I feel galvanised. There is a reason that people say there is a paradox in volunteering. The paradox is this: the more you give, the more you get. It’s that damn simple. And I love it.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack UK course, this morning. All these veterans have gone through life-changing injury, physical and mental. They have seen things no human eye should see. Until they came here, most of them had never even met a horse. And here they are:

At one point, I started faffing around with angles, trying to get arty. These pictures are not technical successes, because the focus is all wrong, but I rather love them anyway:

Back in her quiet, sunny field, the duchess is enjoying her Thunderbrook’s. This is a top-quality feed which I have shipped in at vast expense, by couriers who believe I live in the Highlands, however often I tell them I don’t, so that they can charge me an extra premium. I don’t care. Only the best is good enough for the red mare:

The peace is coming off her in waves. She is my own little Zen mistress and she was at her most Zennish today:

Meanwhile, Stan the Man is HUNTING. Again, not the best picture I ever took but I like it because you can see the determination. He is a very busy dog. Some days, he can’t even stop to say hello because he has jobs to finish:

The red mare takes a journey.

Today, I had the dazzling good fortune to take the red mare up to HorseBack to work with Robert Gonzales.

I knew that I was at the very beginning of my journey, and I understood, humbly, that I was in the foothills whilst he bestrode the mountain peaks. Even so, when he took the mare in hand and showed me all the things that I had been getting wrong, in the gentlest and politest way possible, I did feel a moment of chagrin. I’ve been learning this new kind of horsemanship with the dedication of someone taking a university course, and I had felt that I had made some strides forwards.

In fact, I saw at once that I had been mimsing about. One of the things my father disliked most was mimsiness, and he was a horseman to his bones, and I should have damn well learnt that lesson by now. I’d been staying in a safe comfort zone, and letting the mare get away with things that I should have corrected. I write a lot here about rigorousness, but I had sadly lacked rigour.

When I had got over the bruise to my amour-propre, I felt excited, because a new door had been opened, and I could step through it. We’ll go on learning and I’ll go on getting better, and when you start from such a low place, the only way is up.

The mare, once she dealt with the slight shock of having someone work her who really was not messing about, had a lovely time, and when her lesson was over, rested happily, ground-tied, whilst the ex-sprinter Brook went through his paces. When they were formally introduced, she took to him with a faint degree of shamelessness, breathing into his nose and batting her eyelids at him. Often, when two strange horses meet, there is a degree of squealing and tail-swishing and a little dance as they work out the hierarchy. There was none of that. Just a gentle, questing hello, as if he were an old friend she had been missing. It was very touching.

Apart from not being firm enough, I think I have let emotion get in the way. The thing I notice about Robert is that he brings a delightful, calm neutrality to each horse. He does not get frustrated when they do the wrong thing, just keeps on persisting until they give him the right answer. When that answer comes, he does not, as I am prone to do, shriek and whoop and fall on the horse’s neck. He merely exudes a quiet satisfaction and gives them a good rub.

The love I have for this mare gets in the way of working her well. She does not really need human love; my bursting heart is all to do with my delight, not hers. She wants a place of safety and a sense of ease. My new resolution is to leave not only my worries and tensions at the gate when I work her, but to leave the love there too. I may indulge that when we have finished. It’s one of the hardest lessons in the world to learn, but I must learn it – it’s not, not, not all about me. It’s about her. That is the very least she deserves.

Oh, and PS. I was so inspired by this revelatory lesson that I cast away any shyness about saying the thing. I looked the great horseman right in the eye, smiled my goofy smile and said: ‘Robert, you are a giant among men.’ And that is no more than the truth.

 

Today’s pictures:

Resting, after work:

Despite being in a new and antic environment, she settled very well, just casting the odd look out of the door, where she could hear the rest of the herd moving about in the fields:

It was quite tiring:

I love this picture for about eighty-seven reasons. First of all, you are popularly not supposed to be able to do any of the things that we are doing here with ex-racehorses. One is standing quite happily by herself, with no human constraint, whilst another horse and several humans are working away about her. The other is going easily on a loose rein in a rope halter, stretching down his neck to find the place of softness, whilst his human rides him bareback. He is also in the middle of doing an exercise which he would never have learnt in his racing days, of yielding the shoulder, so he is having to concentrate very hard. Despite that, the softness is there. I also love the  look on the mare’s face:, a little bit dozy but a little bit thoughtful, as she processes everything she has just learnt:

Oh, those hot-blooded thoroughbreds, those crazy ex-racehorses; can’t do a thing with them:

She worked so hard she actually got sweaty, which is not what normally happens, so on went her cooler, making her look like a proper show pony:

I didn’t take any pictures of Robert working the mare, because I was avidly absorbing everything with my human eyes. Here he is with Brook, waiting for softness. He’ll wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. As long as it takes. That patience is one of the great lessons I take from all this. You can’t rush this, or skip parts, or think that half a loaf is a good enough. You’ve got to wait for the golden moment:

I try not to fall into anthropomorphism, but my idiot brain says the mare is flirting. I don’t blame her. Brook is a very handsome fella, as well as a very nice one. Actually, she is not really flirting, she’s just saying hello. But there did seem to be some sweet sense of recognition in her. They are related, after all. You have to go back four generations on his side, and three on hers, but there it is – Northern Dancer, in black and white, the grandaddy of them all. Maybe that good Canadian blood really is thicker than water:

Thank you to HorseBack, and thank you to Robert. It was a huge day.

A glimpse of the mountain peaks.

I am in a slightly overwhelmed state. The regular Dear Readers will know that one of the things I love most is watching people who are really, really good at something. I adore brilliance. I doff my hat to it, and observe it with awe and wonder.

Today, I saw a horseman so good that it was like watching Nijinsky dance, or Olivier act, or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello.

I was doing my work at HorseBack, cantering about as usual with my camera, thinking of the Facebook posts I would write. I was very excited that Robert Gonzales had come all the way from California to share his knowledge and wisdom with us, and at first was only concerned with capturing the best shot. But after a while, I realised that something so rare was happening that I dropped the camera and merely stared with my eyes. At times, I could feel my mouth dropping open in cartoonish amazement, or my face falling into a foolish grin of pure delight.

Sometimes, at HorseBack, I hear stories from the veterans of the extremes of human experience, so bad and so far from my imagination that I can feel the very atoms of my body rearranging themselves, as if in outrage. Today, the atoms were on the move from the experience of seeing something so fine, so light, so ravishing, that it had a visceral effect of joy instead of sorrow.

What was it, this brilliance? It was so subtle that I can hardly capture it in words. It does not have soaring words to go with it, although it was a soaring thing. It was to do with steadiness, attention, timing, feel, a beautiful sure touch, a sense of something authentic and enduring. It was smooth and certain; there were no jagged edges. The thought was all about the horse, and getting that equine mind to a soft and easy place.

I thought I’d been doing pretty well with my red mare. I’d had moments of pride, which sometimes slipped into hubris. Now, watching the real thing, I realised that I was like a pub singer compared to Caruso.

That’s not the worst thing. I do not feel discouraged or downcast. At least the pub singer shows up. I feel humble, set in my correct and lowly place, but inspired to keep on going down this long and winding road until I can get within hailing distance of that kind of excellence. It will always be ahead of me, way out on the horizon, but if I could just catch a glimpse, I should be happy.

I love that there are people in the world who do such glorious things with horses. I love that the word they use the most is softness. I love that they are fascinated and enchanted by the equine mind and give it the respect it deserves. Until now, I’d only seen them on the small screen – old footage of Ray Hunt and the Dorrances, the documentary about Buck Brannaman, the brilliant training videos of the gentleman I take my instruction from, Warwick Schiller. But I’d never seen it in life before, and, up close, it is quite another thing. It is like a ravishing dance, and it made me smile the goofiest, happiest, most blissful smile in the world.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just time for two, since it’s been a long day, and I’m good for nothing now.

The magnificent Mr Gonzales, with Brook the ex-sprinter. This does not look dramatic, but it was one of the most striking aspects of the whole morning. It was simply standing and waiting for the horse to soften after a bit of work, standing and letting the new piece of learning soak in, staying quiet and still until the head came down and the muscles in the neck relaxed and the eyes went soft. Sometimes it took a moment; sometimes it took many minutes. It was the unforced, patient waiting, the sense of having all the time in the world, the offering the good horse the space to work it out with no pressure on him that was so very lovely, and it was oddly emotional to watch:

My furry, muddy, red mare and I have miles to go before we sleep. (The woods are lovely, dark and deep.)

But we shall prevail. Because we might have our hopeless moments and our bad hair days and our one step forwards two steps back, but we are triers. Like dear old pub singers everywhere, bellowing out ersatz versions of The Streets of London, we show up. Which must be half the battle:

A good day.

Today, I gave everything I had to HorseBack, and I have hardly anything left for you. I’m very sorry about that.

It was a fabulous day, on about eighteen different levels, and I stretched every sinew. It sometimes strikes me as curious that this voluntary job is the hardest writing I ever do. I have to pay tribute to extraordinary human beings, without falling into whimsy, or sentimentality, or hyperbole. I have to remember always the power of the simple declarative sentence. I have to try to translate experiences which are on the very edge of my imagination. Imagination is my business; that muscle is pretty strong. Yet, often, the stories I hear leave me behind, panting like an unfit pony.

The words I write for HorseBack are for many audiences – a general interested public, people who might raise funds or donate money or offer grants, professional organisations like Combat Stress or BLESMA who may send participants on the courses, stalwart supporters like Help for Heroes, new partners like the Venture Trust or Retraining of Racehorses. I write to raise awareness about the coils of Post-Traumatic Stress, and the long road to recovery from life-changing injury. But most of all, I write those words for the men and women who have served, who face challenges I shall never know, who have sacrificed much, who have to find a new road to walk.

They do not like to be thought of as heroes. I have learnt that lesson well. They want to be seen, I think, as the complex, complete, sometimes contradictory human beings that they are. They don’t want to be herded into a neat box with a label slapped on them. It’s really easy to pin a medal on someone’s chest and then forget about them. Then what? is always the question. It is a question that HorseBack tries to answer.

Inventing a fictional character out of whole cloth is a piece of piss compared to trying to capture all that. I have the language of Shakespeare and Milton at my disposal, and still I fall short.

But, like those men and women, I go on trying. Respect is due, and the only coin I have is prose.

 

Today’s pictures:

I got all poshed up with the kind Stepfather’s proper camera instead of my own ancient, battered article, and of course it was far too much kit for me, and I found out too late that I had the focus wrong most of the time. For some reason, this feels like a lesson in life and makes me laugh quite a lot. I do regret that I did not capture better pictures, because the two days have been so majestic, but I must be philosophical. These snaps will give you some idea:

I’m intensely fond of the horses I see at HorseBack, and always enjoy spending time with them. But there was a moment tonight when I came back to my own mare, to settle her for the evening, put out her hay, give her an extra special feed and rug her up against the coming snow, when I realised that nothing else would do. She is my people. She knows me so well and I know her so well and our hearts are stitched together by time and daily routine.

I’d been a little on show, meeting fascinating new people and trying to show them my best, most glittering self. I’d attempted, as Britons always do in company, to be funny. I’d wanted to be articulate. Back in the muddy old field, none of that mattered.

The mare does not care whether I am witty or whether I have hay in my hair (some had to removed, this morning, to much merriment). She brings out my best self without my having to do a thing. With her, I just am. Which is why I call her my little Zen mistress, and why I stand under a tree, stroking her dear face and saying out loud ‘I love you’, even though she does not speak English and does not know what those words mean. When we are together, we are all love. That is the gift she gives, freely, every single moment I am with her. It is beyond price.

Different fields.

In complete contrast to yesterday, I wake up determined and galvanised. I have huge amounts of work to do, and I’m running at full stretch. There is no time for moods.

The day goes well. I do a long stretch at HorseBack. There is a film crew there, making a short feature about the rehabilitation of Brook the ex-sprinter, and the parallel journey of our veterans. I want to cover every angle, so instead of my usual time-starved gallop in and out, I clear the day. Amazingly, in my lunch break, I run home and manage to fit in an incredibly productive stint of book. This reminds me that quite often the more you have to do, the more you can do. I have a shining feeling of achievement, instead of my more accustomed muddly sense of never quite having enough hours in the day.

I feed the mare and apologise to her for my absence this morning. (A kind friend did the early shift, as I was off with my camera.) She is forgiving and does not hold it against me. I mix her up an extra special tea and give her some love and stomp off to the shop to buy my own food.

In the shop, on the front page of one of the newspapers, is a gleaming picture of Amal Clooney, with a headline saying something like Queen of the Golden Globes. She is immaculate – beautiful, elegantly dressed, carrying that indefinable air of intelligence. Her many accomplishments are listed in the field of human rights law.

In the old days, I would have looked down at my own hands, filthy from feeding time, and plucked the little wisps of hay from my scarf, and contemplated my catastrophic hair day (on account of being out in wind and snow) and felt entirely inadequate. How could I, so scruffy and goofy and perennially trying to canter about in forty different directions, ever compete with such a composed, brilliant creature? I would have compared, because that is what much of the media encourages women to do, overtly or covertly. We poor ordinary females must look at the famous, glittering, magazine women, and wonder why we fall so short. (And there is an answer, say the avid advertisers – buy our miracle cream, and you too can marry George Clooney and save the world.)

Now, I don’t compare. I have my field, which is a literal, muddy one, and the dazzling Amals of the world have theirs. Comparisons are almost category errors. The part I really like about getting older is understanding that there are dreams which can be gently, quietly let go, without regret. I’ll never learn to dress like Ava Gardner or write like Scott Fitzgerald or be an expert in human rights, and that is quite perfectly fine. I need to find my own small field and plough it well.

Not comparing does not mean not striving. I strive like buggery. I want to get better – at prose, at horsing, at life. I want to learn more, open my mind more, comprehend more. I want, perhaps most of all, to gather the art of growing comfortable in my own skin. I can admire the brilliant women then, without being intimidated or diminished by them. I can be truly glad they are there.

The regulars amongst the Dear Readers know that I swear by the perspective police. Today, I listened to two veterans, telling their stories. These tellings were not grand-standing or show-boating. We were all going about our work, and the tales came out, naturally. One was about service in the Balkans, and the things seen. (I can’t actually write them down; they were too bad.) One was about being blown up by the Hyde Park bomb. Two minutes later, we were making bad jokes and shouting with laughter, because that is what these men and women do. They see the unseeable, experience things which stretch the civilian imagination to its breaking point, and then they make jokes about it.

They don’t like it when I write that I look at them in awe, because awe is not what they want. They want, I think, simple, ordinary humanity. But all the same, they have my awe, and they remind me constantly of the virtues of stoicism and resilience and damn well getting on with it.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack runs a Youth Initiative, with which some of the veterans help out. It was this virtuous circle that was being shot in the afternoon, after Brook was filmed in the morning. One of the things I love most is watching people being really, really good at their job. This crew was good. I don’t know much about film, but I could see their qualities - from their concentration, their attention to detail, the way their minds never stopped working.

Despite my tremendous resolution about not making fruitless comparisons, there was a moment when I observed the stills photographer, with her years of experience and her good eye and her proper bit of kit, and felt a tremor. I ruefully looked at my own camera, with its ingrained mud from falling in the field, and its cracked screen from the time I dropped it from the horse, and thought of my own lack of technical skill. I love taking pictures, but I don’t really know how to do it. Every so often, I get lucky, and capture a moment, but it’s sheer chance.

And then I decided not to mind. My pictures are not for exhibition. They are not professional. They are idiosyncratic and sometimes a bit out of focus and the light is nearly always coming from the wrong direction, but I love them because they are mine, and they record those small things which bring me joy.

Here was the scene today:

This is what I mean by capturing a moment. This photograph has no technical merit. It’s all over the shop. But the smile on that young person’s face is worth more than rubies to me: