The small things, internet edition.

There was something very important and serious and to do with the world that I was going to tell you, and now I can’t remember what it is.

(Picture me now screwing up my face and squinting at the screen and trying to pummel my brain into action. Stanley the Dog looks slightly astonished.)

As it is, I do my morning’s work for HorseBack UK, and then settle to my desk to do my paid work, and once that is over, I start thinking about going down to the field for evening stables and that’s about all I’m capable of. I do wonder sometimes about those people who do three jobs and bring up a family and do good works and, oh I don’t know, make a garden or are brilliant at housekeeping. As always: awe and wonder.

Oh wait, I know what it was. It was about the lovely serendipitous things which happen on the internet. I bang this drum quite a lot, since the only publicity the internet gets is how wild and ghastly and untamed it is, filled with people who threw away the edit button. In this version of events, it is peopled with brutish trolls and shameless self-publicists, and everyone should just shut off those horrid social networks and read an improving book.

I’ve never believed that. It’s just that the trollish tendency are those who make the most hullabaloo. I like looking at the light side, and there is so much light. Not only is there kindness and generosity and support, but there are delightful stories, which make one smile. It might not be building the Hadron Collider, but bringing a shaft of sunlight into a stranger’s day is not nothing. (It goes back to my theory about the small things.)

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about the wonderful Rebecca Curtis. In it, I mentioned the brilliant Lucinda Rusell, who trains in Scotland and whose horses I follow closely. In reply, I got this, from one of the Dear Readers:

‘I am lucky enough to own a former Lucinda Russell racehorse. He's a total pipe and slippers chap - I can quite see why he didn't make it on the track - he'd be far too polite. I can actually imagine him saying “No, after you dear chap, you go ahead of me since you're in a hurry.”

‘He and I get along brilliantly together - not least because I was never meant to be a winner either and fortunately am not burdened by a competitive spirit. Indeed - if he and I do a 16 fault showjumping round, I will still come out of the ring rejoicing because “did you see the way he jumped the water tray? He was wonderful!”’

I love this for several reasons. One is that I keenly identify with the thing about jumping the water tray. Yesterday morning, I fell on my mare’s neck in delight when she took three steps backwards off a soft cue. (In the kind of training I’m doing, the crest and peak is when you can ask a horse to do something almost by just thinking it. The merest flick of the eyes, a tiny movement of the finger, a shift in the body, and they respond. The softer the cue, the better you are doing.)

Two is that I now have a new equine gent in my head, with his politeness and his after you and his pipe and slippers.

Three is that whenever I hear a success story involving an ex-racehorse, I want to hang out more flags. One of the hobby horses on which I gallop about is my loathing of the prejudice against thoroughbreds in general and racehorses in particular. Nuts in the head, people say, as if they know every single equine who ever touched a racecourse; can’t do a thing with them.

I’ve never understood this, since racing horses, from as young as the age of two, put up with astonishing things that the doziest old cob might spook at. They are clapped and roared by huge crowds; they travel routinely to strange places where jockeys they’ve never met sit on their backs; they are welcomed back into the winner’s enclosure with flapping flags and swelling crowds and even the fanfare of trumpets, in the big races. The flat ones are loaded into starting stalls which could have been designed to go against every single instinct of a flight animal. Every time I watch a race I marvel that such wildness and speed should be combined with such graceful fortitude.

And four is that my secret dream is to adopt one of Lucinda Russell’s ex-racing horses myself. Late at night, I wander over to her website and see what she has available for rehoming. Of course, I have my hands and field full with Red the Mare and her two girls, so it’s not practical just now. But in my dreams, I have four paddocks filled with spring-heeled thoroughbreds, all impeccably mannered after their start in the Russell yard, dreaming of their former glories at Ayr and Cheltenham and Perth. The fact that one of the Dear Readers has put this dream into reality gives me more pleasure than I can say.

Actually, after all that, it wasn’t that important and serious, what I had to tell you. It was just charming and pleasing; a small thing which cast a long shadow of delight. But it is those small things of which ordinary, good lives are made. Perhaps that is quite important, after all.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack UK morning:

This fella is quite new. He’s called Mikey, and he has ambled his way into my heart:

Back at home, there are THE FIRST DAFFS:

Stanley the Dog is still celebrating the coming of spring with a very large stick:

Myfanwy the Pony enjoying her breakfast:

The girlfriends:

Usually I like to put up pictures of Red looking incredibly beautiful. But I love this dozy old donkey face, and especially today, as it shows how relaxed and dear an ex-racing mare can be:

Little bit more demure in this one, despite half a bale of hay hanging out of her mouth:

Tired after a long day, and I am convinced this post shall be littered with spelling mistakes. Forgive.

In memory of Campbell Gillies

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I was going to write such a light-hearted blog today. I spent two hours up with my mare and my dog and the funny little Welsh pony, working, playing about in the field, grooming everyone, doling out love and carrots, getting my hands filthy after keeping them clean and posh for the five days of Ascot. I was going to give you some more thoughts on the brave Black Caviar and the mighty Frankel, the two stars of the show.

Then I sat down and turned on Twitter and heard of the sudden, shocking death of the young jockey Campbell Gillies. He was twenty-one years old and he suffered a fatal accident whilst on holiday.

Here was a young man of great physical courage, who risked his life and limb every time he went to work. People sometimes forget that about jockeys, as they easily carp and criticise when a bet goes south. Those who ride horses for a living get to do a job they love, with beautiful and bold animals. On the other hand, their life is exceptionally hard and rigorous.

There is the endless travelling, the battle with weight, the need for exceptional physical fitness. Their muscles are like steel hawsers and they must keep them that way. They will often get up before dawn to ride work, then travel to one or two race meetings, and return home in the dark. They might have the joy of riding a winner, but they might have to boot some badly-schooled old dope through the mud and the rain.

Not every day is the glory of Ascot or Cheltenham; there are miserable wet Wednesdays at tiny tracks in front of four men and a dog. I remember years ago going with my dad to Huntingdon, where the fog was so thick that we watched the horses set off and disappear into a wall of mist. Everyone went back into the bar, had whisky macs, and came back out six minutes later to see the field straggle out of the gloom and past the winning post.

There is the politics of dealing with the owners, some of whom want to give their own instructions, not all of whom understand enough about racing to understand why their dear old slow coach will not win everything in sight. Often, in these cases, it is the poor jockey who gets the blame.

And, of course, there is the jeopardy. Shoulders dislocate, legs snap like twigs, bones and sinew groan and crush under the weight of a falling horse. Jumping at speed is the most hazardous, but even on the flat accidents can happen. I saw the brilliant young jockey, William Buick, have a hideous fall last week at the royal meeting.

The irony is that a young man who pursued this tough life should die in the benign circumstances of a Greek holiday. It was his one week in the sun, and it seems particularly horrible that it should have ended in such senseless tragedy.

His greatest moment came in March this year, giving the lovely young hurdler, Brindisi Breeze, a storming ride up the Cheltenham hill to victory. In a double sorrow, Brindisi himself was killed in a freak accident only a few weeks ago, when he jumped out of his paddock in the night. The yard of Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore, where the horse was trained and where Gillies worked, must be in a very dark mourning today. There is no consolation in this kind of loss.

There is a family in grief, and, in weighing rooms around the country, an empty peg. Campbell Gillies was not only a really talented and hard-working man, but much beloved by his fellow jockeys. A true gentleman, they said of him; a legend, never a dull moment, always a smile on his face. One headline said: racing in mourning, and that is not to overstate it. Too much goodness and talent snuffed out; so much promise lost.

One must not fall into cheap sentiment or easy anthropomorphism, but the horses he rode will feel the gap too. Gillies loved them and worked with them every day. Equines may not love in the way humans do, but they have their own horsey hearts. (There is even some recent science showing that horses recognise their owners’ voices; there is, if not love as we understand it, trust and bond and attachment, something, perhaps, as profound and important as what we know as love. My mare certainly cantered to the gate when I returned from my trip to the south, shaking her head at me as if to say: where have you been?) My guess is that the thoroughbreds whom that young fellow knew and rode so well will sense his absence.

Death is the final mystery; no one really knows what happens after. I do not have a heaven, or believe in an afterlife, although I do know that the dear departed live on in the hearts of those who loved them. But sometimes I wish I had that simple belief. I wish there were some great racetrack in the sky, an eternal Cheltenham hill, where Campbell Gillies and Brindisi Breeze could gallop together always. Perhaps, in some sort of way, in the memories of those who saw them on that triumphant day, there is.

 

This lovely picture accompanied the tribute in the Racing Post, taken at Lucinda Russell’s yard:

Picture by John Grossick.

And with Brindisi and Russell, on their lovely day of victory:

Photograph uncredited.

 

Today’s pictures are of Scotland in the sun. I nearly did not put pictures, it seemed insensitive after such sad news. But I suppose it is a life must go on thing. I hope that was the right decision:

My girls:

The hill: