We are not in Kansas any more. Or, an unexpected day of loveliness, and the first life lesson of 2015.

A very kind friend offered to feed the horses this morning and I was not booked to cook my mother’s breakfast, so I had the most fabulously luxurious lie-in, catching up on my December sleep debt. I never lie in, as horses do not understand about weekends or national holidays. It was the most glorious start to 2015.

Then there was a feast of racing. Many of my old friends were out, and some new ones too, celebrating their birthdays. (All thoroughbreds are like the Queen. They have two birthdays. Their actual date of birth, and the 1^st of January, when they all turn an official year older.) I was beside myself. Everything in the garden was as lovely as human and equine wit could devise.

Then I got an email.

The red mare was lame.

Despite the fact that Rock on Ruby, one of my favourite fellows, was about to dance up the Cheltenham hill, I threw aside everything and rushed down to the field. Sure enough, there was a very doleful girl, head-bobbingly lame and extremely needy. She buried her head in my chest as if I could make it all go away.

I hate lameness. I feel it as if it is my own leg that is damaged. I also hate seeing all that majestic power and strength hobbled and confined.

I set about some equine detective work, feeling for heat, running hands down tendons, examining the sole of the hoof. We did hosing, stretching, and gentle experimental walking. The dolefulness increased. There were little pleading creases of worry and plaintiveness above those liquid eyes.

Whilst I had a little think, I decided to cheer her up by giving her a full body rub. She is a duchess and deserves nothing less. I’d also been inspired by a fellow horsewoman to experiment with the pressure of the rub – good, firm, no messing versus light, feathery fingertips.

I got so carried away I did this for an hour, until she fell asleep. That should help with the serotonin levels, I thought.

In the end, I decided abscess was the most likely answer, so I got poulticing. The moment she was all wrapped up, my little drama queen lifted her head, gave me a cheerful look, and went off for a browse in the set-aside, still a little footy, but a hundred times better. Thank you, she seemed to be saying, that was what was required.

Then I made her the most delicious feed on earth, with mint and nettle and dandelion and Echinacea for her immune system, and lots of extra treats, and left her contentedly eating under her favourite tree, all fixed up.

There is something almost holy in putting a sad horse to rights. She just wanted her human, and she got me, for two whole hours. It was not what I planned for today, but it turned out to be an oddly lovely start to 2015.

I write a lot about love being actions, not words. Anyone can spout fine words. I spout fine words like nobody’s business, my trusty thesaurus by my side. But proper, real, earthed love is doing, not talking. I did love today, and my good mare reminded me of the importance of that. So, it turns out that the first day of the new year began with my best beloved professor reminding me of yet another profound life lesson. She is so clever.

As I came back into the house, smiling and contented myself, Judy Garland was singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I could hardly believe it. It felt like magic.

I had rushed out in such a hurry that I’d forgotten to turn the television off, and The Wizard of Oz had succeeded the racing. There was adorable Judy and enchanting Toto, and we were not in Kansas any more.

I’m watching it now, as I write this. Stanley the Dog is dozing on the sofa. He got incredibly bored during the whole rubbing and poulticing process and had buggered off to pay a new year visit to my mother. (On account of his ability to open every door he has ever met, he just lets himself in, and my stepfather rings up to let me know he has arrived and then I go and collect him, like a mother picking up a child after a party.)

The Munchkins are now singing Follow the Yellow Brick Road. I’m not sure a day ever turned out more serendipitously perfect.

I hope that all the Dear Readers had a dazzling start to the year. Perhaps you too got a great gift in an unexpected package.

 

Today’s pictures:

I’d love to say that 2015 started off with this glancing sunshine, but in fact it was overcast, with gales and threatened rain. These sunny shots are from a couple of days ago:

Happy New Year

I had a whole, big, end of year blog for you, ready to go. It ran around in my head, filled with life wisdom and vital perspective and tremendous observations on the human condition. In the absurd echo chamber of my mazy head, it was an absolute cracker. (Quite frankly, as I think up these things over the brushing of the teeth, I sometimes astonish myself with my own cleverness. Then the flappy wings of hubris falter, and I crash down to earth, as I fail hopelessly to translate the spurious brilliance to the page.)

Then I thought: bugger that for a game of soldiers. What I really need to say today is -

THANK YOU.

This year has been The Year of the Horse. Some of you may not be quite as entranced and fascinated by the equine mind as I am. You have had to wade through endless adorations of the red mare, long shaggy horse stories, furlong by furlong rehashings of the races which have made me shout and weep. There has been self-indulgence, windiness, and far too much galloping off on tangents. I have teetered on the edge of sentiment, and gazed into the abyss of hyperbole.

And yet, rather like the red mare herself, who sometimes has a look on her face which says Just let the old girl get it out of her system, you have walked kindly and generously beside me. You have left comments of sweetness, funniness and wisdom. You have shown kind hearts, generosity of spirit, and bottomless patience. You have a particularly lovely habit of sharing my triumphs as if they were your own. You also forgive my failings in a quite astonishing way, and bolster me when I feel my frailties.

Perhaps what I love most of all about the dear Dear Readers is that you disprove the easy assumption that the internet is a place of wild intemperance, stupid shouting and general bad manners. I loathe assumptions. I am suspicious of received opinion and I detest intellectual laziness. (I know that sounds very pompous and hard line, but it is true, and this is the place for truth.) As you will know, to your rueful cost, I get furious when people make horrid, ignorant remarks about thoroughbreds in general and ex-racehorses in particular. I love Red the Mare for many reasons – her great beauty, her comedy skills, her intense sweetness, her talent for stillness, her politeness, her cleverness, and her glorious, duchessy sense of self. But one of the things I love the most is that she disproves all those idiot stereotypes with every beat of her heart and every point of her toe.

In the exact same way, I glory in the daily proofs left by the Dear Readers, proofs that the kindness of strangers really is kind, that courtesy may survive in the rush of technology, that the wide spaces of the interwebs may be peopled by the good and true just as much as the bad and meretricious. It is not all narcissism and trolling. It is real and actual and oddly comforting. It may be a place of safety and refuge as much as an unpatrolled wilderness.

Perhaps you do not know quite what it is you do when you type out a quick string of words and leave your comments. It’s just the tap tap tap of fingers on a keyboard, after all. It almost certainly does not take you very long, before you go back to your jobs and your families and your lives. But what you do, in that brief, shining moment, is restore my faith in human nature. Pretty much every damn day. Which is a fairly remarkable thing. And that is why I say thank you.

Looking back on a year is always bittersweet. I know that some of you have had losses and struggles. I know also that you have dealt with them with stoicism and grace. The Dear Departeds stay stitched into battered hearts. I marvel often at the great, gutsy, never-say-die hearts of the thoroughbreds I love so much. I’ve watched many races this year which have been won not on talent or tactics, but raw, cussed, dogged gallantry. The heart takes over from the legs, the head, the everything. But the human heart is a pretty spectacular thing too. It gets bashed and bruised and chipped round the edges. It survives disappointments and alarms and grievous losses. Somehow, against all the odds, it goes on beating. It, like all the things I admire the most, keeps buggering on.

Happy New Year, my darlings. May your champagne be cold and your beloveds be beloved and your hopes be merry and bright.

 

My Lovely Ones:

Obviously, Red the Mare and Stanley the Dog are animals. They have no English. They do not understand the concept of time. But if they did, they would wish you a very Happy New Year too, because you have spent 2013 saying so, so many lovely things about them. So, you know, a woof and a neigh and a shake of a hoof.

*Official GOING TOO FAR klaxon sounds, and I move quietly to the exit*

New Year’s Eve; or in which I remember how to do the Reel of the 51st.

I was going to do a whole, portentous This Was The Year That number. I was going to talk of losing my dog and gaining my mare, of the unexpected love for Mr Stanley, of missing my dad; all boilerplate end of year emotional manipulation, in other words.

But bugger that for a game of soldiers. I’ve just got back from reeling practice and I’ve got to wrangle my hair and put my eyeshadow on. We are actually having a party. We never have parties, and certainly never reeling parties. But tonight we shall be doing the 51^st, Aberdonian style. (Look it up; it has the most moving genesis of any Scottish dance.)

I shall not, you will be glad to hear, be wearing a big pouffy dress and a tartan sash. I’m going for a draped, faintly 1942-ish black and white number, and a lot of fire engine red lipstick. And possibly kinky boots.

I hope that, wherever you are, you have a properly happy New Year’s Eve. I hope you drink too much and make rash statements and grandiose gestures and bad jokes. I hope you are merry and blithe. You are a bloody wonderful bunch of Dear Readers, and I could not be without you.

 

Pictures today are of my precious herd:

Happy New Year.