A long week, and I have no words left. Here are some pictures for you instead. The polar plume seems to have blown itself out and the oystercatchers are singing like drunken sailors and it feels as if spring has finally sprung. I’m just waiting for the swallows now, and the thing will be complete.
I was going to do something perfectly horrid today.
Yesterday, two things occurred to upset me. Both were very small, hardly visible to the naked eye, but they left me wounded and unsettled. As I swung into my usual tired old technique of calling in the Perspective Police and talking myself down off the ceiling, I hit on the solution. I would use words. Apart from love and trees, words are my solution to everything. Write it down, write it down, sing the voices in my head.
So, I wrote it down.
It was quite late at night, and I wrote it as a blog. I did not name the people involved, and I believed I was bending over backwards to be fair and not to impute beastly motives where there were none.
In fact, I had to admit to myself this morning, I was indulging in a perfect festival of passive aggression. I was still so sore as I wrote that I was doing that ghastly thing of seeming reasonable, when, in fact, underneath, the six-year-old in me was wailing: BLOODY PEOPLE, WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SAY SOMETHING NICE?????
Even as I faced the twisted motives behind my apparently rational post, I raced around like a rat in a trap, trying to work out a way of not being passive aggressive, but still telling you the story of what had happened.
But here is the thing. Even if I worked out a way of taking the heat out of it, keeping it as vague and anonymous as possible, putting on my rational, disinterested hat, I was still flailing about, trying to punish because I had been hurt. I was not disinterested; I had skin in the game, and that skin was singed.
Fuck it, I thought. Be a grown-up. Be a decent human being. Adult humans get hurt all the time, take it on the chin, refuse to turn the thing into a three act opera, and, most of all, do not feel the need to tell everyone on the internet.
Adult humans also make choices.
I am not nearly as nice as I think I am. I really would like to be nice, an adjective I do not disdain but crave. I am capable of niceness, but I can think some unbelievably crushing and uncharitable and mean thoughts. I like to think that I don’t judge or harbour prejudices or indulge in ad hominem attacks, but when my skin is thin I can bitch someone up to beat the band.
However, in a slightly hello clouds, hello sky way, I do aspire to niceness. I really admire nice people, because I think it’s a fairly hard state to maintain in a very shouty world.
Today, I had a proper choice. I could be a passive aggressive horror show, OR I could be nice. I chose niceness.
I spent four hours doing things which were not for me. Several people have asked me for photographs of the last few days at HorseBack. My usual response is: yes, yes, of course, just let me find a moment, give me a few days, it’s all a bit chaotic, I’ll get back to you. Then, I don’t get back, because I’m sitting at my desk panicking about the two absurd books I am writing and being entirely unable to make the time to do anything else.
Today, I made the time. The whole process takes ages, because of course I can’t just whack a few snaps into a Dropbox album and send them off, but have to edit and re-edit, choose all the best ones, then change my mind and choose other ones, make manic decisions about whether I should saturate the colour or put them into black and white, crop and re-crop and I don’t know what. I’m not a good enough photographer to take a picture and let it be; it must be doctored. These were lovely people, and I wanted them to have photographs worth of them.
I started at three-thirty this afternoon, and I’ve only just finished. There are ninety-nine pictures which are now fit for public consumption.
I’m still a bit bruised from yesterday, and I’m taut as a violin string from a day of non-stop work. I did not even ride the mare this morning, but merely gave her love and food and went back to my book. (The agent is not yet quite happy, so I am still polishing and rubbing and shining, like an out-of-control fifties housewife who has lost her valium.) But I’m really, really pleased that I decided on a constructive act instead of a destructive one.
God, I wanted to be horrid. I was so cross I wanted to tear the buggery house down. But I built a little shack instead. I did the photograph albums, and they are downloading now and will soon wing their way off to their recipients. I don’t always manage it, but however wet and weedy it sounds, today, I chose niceness.
Today’s pictures:
Here are some of the photographs I sent out into the ether:
A lot of these pictures were for Robert Gonzales and his lovely wife Patricia. Robert, as the Dear Readers will know, is the great horseman who was visiting us from California. I learnt more about horses in three weeks of watching him than I could put into words, and I know a lot about words.
He is not only a fine horseman, he is a great gentleman too. He would not write something beastly mean on the internet, under the guise of being rational and reasonable. I should think of his example.
In the last picture, he is waiting for the horse to soften. He can do this for half an hour at a time, as long as it takes. ‘Wait for the softness,’ he says. ‘Look for the softness. Let them find the softness.’
I can learn from that too. It’s not just for the horses. It’s for the poor old humans too. Next time I get bent out of shape, I’m going to wait. For the softness.
Oh, and PS. To the Dear Reader who said nobody needed my permission, you are quite right. I phrased it poorly, and have been filled with angst that I sounded like some ghastly, wafty, de haut en bas creature. What I should have said is that I often need permission. When a best beloved admits to faults or doubts or muddles or confusions, I find this enables me to confess my own inadequacies without terror. I need a permit; I need my passport stamped.
I’m working on this. One day I shall cross the border without passport control. I’ll hang out more damn flags on that glorious day.
In the meantime, I’m sorry for the confusion. It’s the kind of mistake that fills me with rue.
Or so I thought.
In fact, it turns out that the tools make all the difference.
I take a secret pride in putting up reasonably decent photographs, although I know nothing about the technical side of photography. I have tried reading those special magazines but my brain just goes phhhtt. It’s something about the acronyms and the clinical language and the thicketty prose. I get lost and then I get cross. I hurl the thing aside and think: sod it, I’m just going to point and shoot.
For many years, I’ve had a delightful Olympus PEN. It has seen me straight and seen me curly, and it has put up with an awful lot. It’s been dropped in the mud so many times and tumbled from the back of the horse so often that it is all cracked and scratched and little threads of Scottish earth are ingrained in it. I lost the lens cap some time before the Old Queen died, and so the lens is always a tiny bit smeary. Some of the functions frankly no longer work.
But I hate the notion of disposable things, and I’ve never been one of those crazed people who always has to upgrade to a new model. I have one bog-standard mobile telephone, nothing smart about it, which I hope will last for years, and I’m cherishing this dear old computer, so it, too, might stay the distance. I quite liked that my camera was a bit bashed and battered, as if it and I had been in combat together. After all, Cartier-Bresson did not need any bells and whistles. He shot pictures for the ages with his trusty old Leica. But then, he was Cartier-Bresson. I am no Henri, nor was meant to be.
In the end, the camera made up my mind for me. The crucial battery charger went mysteriously missing. It’s probably in a field somewhere. (I carry it around with me, in case I have a battery emergency, which I thought was a good plan until I could not find the thing.) Ah well, I thought; it’s time.
Because I love taking photographs, and because I am in charge of the HorseBack Facebook page, where I must make an effort to produce something reasonably professional, I had thought I might grade up to a proper SLR. The Olympus is one of those three-quarter cameras, not quite as posh.
But I’d tried out my stepfather’s Nikon, and had not got on with it at all. I looked about on the internet, and all the high-end cameras were so expensive and so foreign to me. I decided to stick with the one I knew and loved, even though it felt a little unadventurous. I would effectively be getting a replacement, not something new.
I had not taken in the fact that the good people at Olympus have been very, very busy in the six years since I last bought a camera. The new PEN is a completely different beast to the clunky old thing I had before. It is ravishingly beautiful, small, tight, light, pleasingly retro, and neat as a pin. The shutter makes the loveliest sound I have heard any piece of equipment ever make. I found myself snapping away just to hear the delightful old-fashioned clunky click.
And, oh, oh, the pictures. Suddenly, everything is sharp again. There is depth of field and all sorts. I can do everything on automatic, which is good for a dolt like me. I really can point and shoot. The camera does it all for me, in the most charming and helpful way. It almost feels like cheating but I don’t care, because the results are so lovely. I feel like I’m back in the hunt.
I do love recording this beautiful place, and my beautiful animals, and my beautiful hills. Now, instead of struggling with old and creaking equipment, I can see every gleaming detail of the moss and the lichen, so that I look at them anew, and remember why I love them so. I suddenly realise that I had lost some of my joy in photographing things, because I was always having to edit and delete to produce a half-decent result. Now, I have my mojo again, thanks to my little Bobby Dazzler. I almost want to send a thank you letter to the brilliant boffins at Olympus, and the kind people at Curry’s, who put the marvellous article in their sale so that I got a raging bargain, and sent it out to me post haste. I am rejuvenated. Snap, snap, snap, eh Mr Gibbon. I am so happy I feel like doing a little dance. I may, in fact, do a little dance. Perhaps for the red duchess, as entertainment while she eats her tea. She’ll like that.
Today’s pictures:
Never were those two words typed with so much joy. Just look:
And, as if all that joy were not enough, THE FIRST SNOWDROPS ARRIVED. Too, too much:
The only thing about the dear PEN is that it can’t quite deal with very dense colours. I noticed that with my old one, and this is the same. I imagine that is where the SLR might beat it. You can see that the intense whiteness of the snowdrops is almost too much for it. But it’s such a tiny drop in the sea of loveliness that it seems almost churlish to mention it.
Down at the field, the duchess was sweetly and gently and politely waiting for her tea, and graciously posed without complaint whilst I faffed about with my new toy instead of mixing up her Thunderbrook’s:
That’s her sweetest, softest face, the one she wears when she is utterly at peace and all is well in her world.
And this is her I’VE GOT MY HAY face. There’s no special filter or effect on this picture. That really was the colour of the Scottish light at 4pm:
And one more of Captain Handsome, because one can’t have enough handsomeness:
And one last one before I really must stop -
Is there tea yet?:
Oh, and as if that was not enough happiness for one day, Teaforthree, one of the horses I love the most, won the Hunter Chase at Bangor with a glorious combination of composure, enthusiasm, strength and diamond-sharp jumping. He was given a beautiful ride by Jamie Codd, as quiet as a tranquil sky, trusting the clever old fellow to see his own stride at each fence, seeing him to the line with hands and heels. It was a shining sight, man and equine in perfect harmony, and it made me smile and smile and smile.
I do not necessarily think of myself as a tremendous grafter, but I must admit that this week I have worked my arse off. Red mare, secret book project and HorseBack: all got hours of my time, every inch of my brain, and every ounce of my effort. I did rather yearn to take a day off and go to Perth to see the races, but I doggedly stuck to my desk, and I do feel an exhausted sense of achievement. Even with the help of my trusty iron tonic, I am shattered.
As a result of all this frenzied activity, I’m afraid I have rather neglected the blogging, which has been spotty, to say the least. Even as I write this, my gnarled fingers stutter and fail over the keyboard.
So today I’m doing something I never do, which is giving you a link to another area of my work. As some of you know, I run the Facebook page for HorseBack UK, and take all their pictures and write all their prose. I’ve been madly organising the photographic archive this week, which has almost finished me off as I have a very trigger-happy shutter finger, and there are so many magical moments to record, and as a result a stupid number of snaps to edit and collate.
I gathered together a huge selection of HorseBack photographs today, and I wanted to show them to you. My photography skills are very amateur, in all senses of the word, although the root I like to emphasise is the Latin for love. These pictures are not the most technically accomplished you will ever see. But I do feel quite proud that in some of them I managed, more by luck than judgement, to capture some moments between humans and horses that make me smile and smile and smile.
Have a happy Friday, my darlings. And, as always, thank you for bearing with me.
Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152351999335568.1073741944.197483570567&type=1
One quick, illustrative picture for you.
The amazing woman on the left is a military nurse. She has seen service everywhere from the first Gulf War to Bosnia to Afghanistan. I have not enough hats to take off. The lovely faces with her are two of the sweetest of the HorseBack mares. There is something in this photograph that almost breaks my heart.
