The crying stage.

I’m in the crying stage. I’ve been through shock, irrational fury, stoicism and looking on the bright side. Now every word, every memory, every small thing makes me cry.

This is good. The tears have to come out or they get stuck inside and turn angry and bitter.

The difficult part is not the tears, it is that this stage makes me feel as if I have been stripped of a layer of skin. I have absolutely no defences against the slings and arrows, and find normal conduct a strain, like walking uphill in a headwind. A well-meant suggestion feels like a shattering criticism of my entire self. The usual rough and tumble of other people living their usual lives makes me feel as if I have been hurled into a rioting crowd. A careless word or a sharp tone of voice are like red-hot brands on my paper-thin skin. An oversight feels like arrant rejection. A mild demand feels like a roaring sergeant-major is sending me up Everest without oxygen.

I don’t like wimpishness. I don’t like the stripped skin part because it reduces me to one of those weedy drama queens whose company is so exhausting. I don’t want to be that person. I want to butch up. But butchness will only return with time and I have to bloody well wait it out. I have to go slowly. This part cannot be rushed. This pisses me off quite a lot.

I suddenly think those clever Edwardians had it right when they went into black for six months after a death, and then lavender for the next six. It was a subtle, tacit sign to say Handle with Care. Many people are afraid of grief, and desperately want one to get back to normal. This is kind and faintly callous at the same time; it is very human and entirely understandable. The singed spirit does not want pity or even sympathy. The yearning heart does not need everyone to walk on eggshells. Solemn faces are not required. Jokes and laughter are essential. But gentleness and kindness and thought are needed and not everyone has those immediately to hand.

Some people are naturals with grief just like some people are natural with horses. I am passionately glad for those people. Oddly enough, today the best and most shimmering of them was the lady in the Co-op. Our Co-op is a small shop, and I know quite a lot of the people behind the till well. There is one I especially like and this morning she spoke the most beautiful and soothing words. They were so fluent, so authentic, so poetic that it was as if she had rehearsed them for this very moment. She had no fear and she had no pity. She had understanding, and a generosity of spirit which shone out of her like starlight.

Not everyone gets it. Why should they? But I cherish the ones who do.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just two today. They are of the person who gets it most of all. She is all gentleness and peace and understanding. She was as tender with me today as if I had been made of glass. Horses are famously telepathic and thoroughbreds especially so, because of their high sensitivity and intelligent. But this has taken it to a whole new level. I think she has been secretly watching Spinal Tap, and has decided to crank up her loveliness to eleven:

Showing up.

The Sister says: ‘Did you ever write that book about what to do when your dad and your dog die?’

My beautiful black dog died four years ago, on the night of my father’s funeral. I really, really wanted to read that book but it did not exist, so I said I would have to write it myself.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘yes, I did. It’s not called that any more. But I did write that book. It’s with the agent now.’

‘And what do you do?’ says the Sister. ‘And when your mum dies?’

‘I learnt what to do from the red mare,’ I say, not even bothering to explain this slightly odd conclusion. ‘She taught me about the ordinary virtues. For the ordinary griefs you need the ordinary virtues. Not brilliance or charm or charisma or talent, but reliability, consistency, kindness, firmness, fairness, steadiness. That’s how you train a horse, that’s why you can get on the red mare and canter about on a loose rein.’

She had just done that, in the open field. She had only ever sat on the mare once before. Red was so happy and relaxed that I had no qualms. I cantered her round the wide spaces of the set-aside first, to check that everything was all right. It was so all right that I threw my arms in the air and whooped into the low cloud and, under me, that mighty horse just kept on rolling, as collected and contained as the ambassadress to Paris. Then The Sister did it.

‘Look at you,’ I shouted. ‘Just look at the two of you.’

The Sister used to be a top show rider and side-saddle diva and some of that never quite goes away. Now she was riding the red mare cowgirl style. For half an hour, in that green field, everything was all right. There was no grief, only this horse, these humans, this landscape, this joy.

‘She learnt to do that,’ I say. ‘She did not just eat magic beans. I taught her to be relaxed and mentally balanced and to carry herself. And I did that by showing up, every day. That’s what you have to do. You have to show up. And maybe that’s what you have to do after there is death. Every day, you show up. And then it gets easier.’

This is my theory and I’m sticking to it. It’s not very clever, or sophisticated, or philosophical. Nobody will put it on a bumper sticker. It has no poetry in it. But it’s mine and I like it and it works, most of the time.

The Younger Brother says, sounding very sane and peaceful, which is not what he is famous for: ‘She is out of pain now. That’s what matters. Nothing can hurt her any more.’

‘And we,’ I say, knowing he will finish the sentence for me.

‘Keep buggering on,’ he cries.

On, on, on we bugger.

I think of the things in which I believe: the human heart, the kindness of strangers, love and trees, the small things. I think of my own private slogans: say the thing; KBO; stare at your demons in the whites of their eyes; be kind. I think of the things I adore: a funny dog, my sweet thoroughbred mares, the brave racing horses I watch every day, my family, this Scotland, these hills, my dear, dear friends. I think of the tender words which have been flying in from around the wilds of the internet and feel grateful for every one. Oh, yes – be grateful – that’s another of my rules to live by.

But perhaps most important of all: you have to show up. Not just sometimes, but every day, in the wind and the weather, through the fair and the foul, the thin and the very, very thick.

I think Mum would approve of that. As long as I said please and thank you.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the family, the last time we were all gathered together, this summer. We knew it would be the last time, and so it was:

And this clever, clever person, who can pull joy from sorrow with her bare hooves. I owe her so much, but never more than today:

National Poetry Day.

It’s National Poetry Day. I love National Poetry Day. I’ve been thinking about poetry from the moment I got up this morning.

The ones that live in my head are mostly Yeats and Auden, snatches of Frost and E.E. Cummings, lines of Robert Lowell, fragments of TS. (Do I dare to eat a peach?)

I thought though that I should find one about a horse, you will be amazed to hear. The best poem about horses is Yeats’ glorious galloping paean to Galway Races, but I posted that on this day last year. I read it at my father’s funeral. The last lines almost finished me off, in the quiet of the small Norman church:

‘And we find hearteners among men

That ride upon horses.’

My father was a heartener.

Anyway, I wanted something new. So I hunted about the internet and there really wasn’t much that would do. There’s an epic poem by Byron but it goes on for about ten years and is quite knotty, although I’ll go back and read the whole thing later. There’s The Charge of the Light Brigade, but that is far too sad for this sunny day. One of the best things anyone ever wrote about a horse comes from Shakespeare, in Henry V:

‘When I bestride him, I
soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth
sings when he touches it.’

But that is not a poem, so today it does not count.

In the end, I found a slender sliver from DH Lawrence, so short that it is almost a haiku, so mere that is it is mystery. I never adored Lawrence’s novels, but I was ravished by his poems. I remember reading The Snake when I was eight years old and being quite mesmerised. I read it forty years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember the feeling of heat and fascination and passion and shame that lived in the poem, and it made me think of snakes in a different way from that day on.

‘And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.’

This short poem is not one I have ever seen before. I felt rather astonished that it was so new to me, and I’m going to carry it with me in the Scottish sunshine.

The White Horse.

The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on

and the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent, they are in another world.

 

That’s it. That is all he wrote. What mystery hovers between those lines. Did the horse and his boy exist in the world? Had Lawrence seen them, one misty morning, and remembered? Or are they symbols, metaphors, shimmering figures of the imagination? There is something almost holy in that tiny poem.

The funny thing is that the really, really good horsemen and women do work their horses in silence. I talk to mine, all the time. I tell her she is brilliant, or clever, or a silly old billy, or quite safe. I tell her that is only a cyclist and not a mountain lion. I say: ‘There are your sheep.’ She loves the sheep. I say: ‘Find your soft place.’ We are always looking for her soft place.

Opposite my house, there is a grand old building with arched windows and soaring roofs which was built a hundred and fifty years ago by some eccentric old gentleman for his cows. It is known as the coo cathedral, and the days are long gone when it housed cattle. It is used now for weddings and balls and celebrations. There was a charity sale going on there this morning and rows of cars were drawn up and people streamed across the grass in the dazzling sun to do their early Christmas shopping in a good cause.

There was no silence, but a great deal of bustle. I took the mare along to have a look. She likes an event. She said hello to some very small children. ‘Look, Fergus, it’s a horse.’

Fergus, who was not quite two, smiled all over his face. The mare blinked at him with elegant pleasure.

‘Yes, Fergus,’ I said. ‘She’s a very special horse indeed. She is a thoroughbred horse.’

I rode her down to the great old building and peered through the window. A lady saw us and opened the door and the mare poked her head inside and observed the throng, sagely. Within moments, she had many admirers. I felt the spreading delight of absurd pride. I love that she loves to greet complete strangers. I love that whenever any human eye falls on her, it lights with pure happiness.

There was no silence. We were in the world.

But when we went back to the quiet field, that DH Lawrence silence did fall on us, and we stood together, in wordless harmony, and we were, for a moment, like that horse and his boy.

Why does poetry matter? Why does it need a whole day, all to itself? Isn’t it too old school, too old hat, too out-dated, for the rushing modern world?

I think it matters because it speaks to the heart. It may console a bruised spirit, or remind a harried mind of a universal truth. It sings a fine and human song, and everybody needs a song.

It doesn’t really need to be for anything. It exists in and of itself: beautiful, immutable, true. It can be funny and it can be shocking and it can be stark. Unlike almost any other form of words, it can be read for the sheer beauty, even if one does not understand the precise meaning. (I have read The Wasteland about twenty times, and I still could not tell you what half of it is about. Some of it is even in languages I do not speak, and many of the classical references are lost on me. Yet, it still is a poem that can brighten my morning.)

If one is flayed or seared or bashed or blue, a good poem may fall on the battered human self like a balm.

I think that is worth a day.

 

Today’s pictures:

I don’t have a white horse. I have a red horse. And she is as bright and bold and bonny as the day is long. If I could write poetry, I should write a poem for her. But I can’t, so I shan’t. She has to content herself with the best prose my fingers can type.

I can’t write her a poem, but she is a poem, so it doesn’t really matter:

The dear departed.

Another of the great old gentlemen has gone.

My father had three sisters, all very glorious and splendid in their different ways. One of them was married to this kind, funny, generous man who has just left us.

He was old and he was ill. He was, I suspect, like my father, ready to go. He had run his race. There should be something fitting and right about these splendid old men going gently into the good night. And yet there is a tearing sense of loss and rupture. The world is not quite the world without them in it. The consolation that they are at peace is a thin gruel. He was one of those ones that filled a room, lit up people’s faces, made everything seem lighter and brighter. I had not seen him for some years but his memory burns bright, filled with fondness and warmth.

Now, when one of the old gentlemen goes, it is as if they are all going, all over again. The loss of the father, the godfather, the relation by marriage, the titan of my childhood – all is felt again, as fresh and urgent as if it has just happened. The heart aches and the throat closes up and the mind races furiously around, trying to find a good sense, a hymn of acceptance, a place to rest. No, no, no, says the racing mind, not that grand generation, which we shall never see again.

They were different from us, mightier in many ways, their virtues written in bold type. My lot, my boys, have talents that the old school perhaps did not – they are more attuned to domestic life, more fluent in expressing emotion, less afraid of plunging into what were not once considered the manly arts. They know how to rock a baby to sleep and cook a lunch and do the school run. (Although I still have at least one dear friend who, for all his modernity, looks at me sternly and says: ‘I don’t do feelings.’ And I tease him by talking about deep emotions and watch, laughing, as he desperately tries not to panic.)

But my father’s generation, the ones born in the war, had a dash, an élan, a scatter of magic about them. They were paradoxes: they had a certain reckless swagger, and yet they were masters of stoicism. I do like someone who can stare a serious feeling in the eye and get its measure, but I adore the flinty Blitz spirit of Getting On With It. Those old gentlemen Got On With It.

He was a lovely man. I think of his children, his wife, his many friends, confounded by loss. He will leave a space that cannot be filled. He will be remembered well.

As I rode this morning, in the bright Scottish sunshine, not long after hearing the brave voice of my aunt on the telephone, I thought of the old gentleman and committed him to the hills and the trees and the sky, as I always do. I give them back to the earth, these Dear Departed. I said, out loud, looking up at the wooded slope to the north: ‘I hope you have mountains and rivers, where you are.’

Then, as if sensing that I needed something marvellous, something fine and true, the mare gave me her most flying, floating canter. It was as light as air, as soft as love. It had all her grand thoroughbred spirit in it, all her athleticism and strength and power. But it was done with one hand on the reins, hardly the touch of a finger, so there was that impossible combination of the wildness of her ancestral voices and the control of her calm mind. It was so exhilarating that I whooped into the clear air, overcome with joy.

The joy released the sorrow, and I walked her back blinded by tears. I could not see where I was going, so I let go of the reins and let her guide me home to the gate. She knew where she was going.

I got off and rubbed her sweet forehead in gratitude. ‘Thank you,’ I said, aloud. She nodded, peaceful and unafraid. Sudden human cloudbursts do not alarm her. She, too, has the wonderful ability to Get On With It. The glorious old gentleman would have liked her, I think. They had something in common.

 

Today’s pictures:

A lovely day out. A welcome home.

Just got back from Blair Castle Horse Trials. This year, it was home to the European Championships, so some of the best horses and riders in the world were there. I enjoyed myself vastly and Stanley the Dog made friends wherever he went. (Except with two angry terriers and a disaffected dachshund, to whose snarls and yaps and barings of teeth he reacted with sweet charity and slight bemusement. Luckily, a ravishing lady Labrador soon cheered him up.)

I think perhaps a year ago I would have felt some chagrin. My mare would never look like those horses, or be able to do the things they do. I would never look like those riders or be able to do the things they do.

This year, I felt filled with love and joy. I admired and felt inspired. I adore watching people who are really, really good at what they do. These people were really, really good. There were some charming horses, with character and grace, courage and talent.

But I would not have swapped one of those world-class athletes for my own sweet girl. On the way home, through the mighty slopes of Glenshee, I had to watch my speed, I was so impatient to get home to her.

Back at the ranch, even though it was six o’clock and time for her tea, I leapt into the saddle and took her out into the amber evening light. The sun poured down like honey and she pricked her ears in polite surprise, not being accustomed to an evening ride. Round we went, in our old cow pony lope. She did actually do her dressage diva trot, as if to say: those world-beaters are not the only ones who know self-carriage. And then, just to show them that there was one event in which she would beat them all to flinders, she practised for the Standing Still Olympics.

I wrote yesterday that when I am in the saddle on that horse, I feel as if I have come home. Today, it was a literal thing. I was tired after the long day and the long drive, but I felt my shoulders come down and my heart lift.

There are thousands of horses out there who are better than she, who are even more beautiful than she, who have skills to which she, and I, shall never aspire. But there is not one single horse who suits me so well and makes me so happy.

Don’t compare, I think to myself. The way to hell is paved with comparisons. It’s a terrible human imperative. If only I had that, if only I were this, if only I could do what that person could do. Love what you have, I tell myself; love the one you’re with. This evening, in the glancing Scottish light, in my peaceful green field, on my glowing red mare, all that was fine and true.

 

Today’s pictures:

The road to Blair:

The Great Event:

The sweet face that greeted me when I got home. Slightly quizzical look, as if to say – Where have you BEEN all day?:

After the lovely ride, spotting Stanley the Manly capering about in the set-aside:

My little man was so good today:

The right reasons.

Today, I had twenty versions of the blog running round in the mazy corridors of my mind. Some were grumpy, some were confessional, some were, I am ashamed to say, a tiny bit passive aggressive. I have a truly dreadful habit of expressing subliminal anger under the guise of sweet reason. (People sometimes say to me: don’t be so hard on yourself. I agree that pointless lashing is pointless. But I also think one must look one’s flaws in the whites of their eyes and get their measure. And the phoney sweet reason is a flaw that must be stared down.) One was certainly self-indulgent, which will surprise nobody.

Then I had a hard ride. I don’t mean it was difficult, but we were doing some serious work so I had to concentrate. I had to call on all my powers. I was thinking about balance, and softness, and feel. I was very conscious of my body, and my centre of gravity, and letting my physical self go in harmony with the mighty thoroughbred body underneath me. I was in, I think, that wonderful state called flow, where everything drops away, and all that matters is mastering something that is very slightly beyond your capability.

All the stupid things dissipated into the bright air.

There was an authentic, beautiful, funny, clever creature, in a green field starred with clover, being her own true self. That was all that mattered. This time and this place were all that mattered. She really is a mistress of Zen, that mare.

And then my wise old owl voice, which doesn’t often get much of a hearing, because it is steady, and low, and does not shout, said: always do things for the right reasons.

That, my darlings, is my thought for the day. Good old owl. I should listen to him more often.

No words left.

I worked really, really hard today, and that work was rewarded. This does not always happen. Sometimes I put in a huge effort and buggery bollocks is the result. But this morning, it all came together. I could see the way. A small green shoot of hope sprouted. It was a lovely feeling.

Since I have wrangled with words for many hours, I have none left now. Sometimes my brain is a finite thing.

Before I sat down at my desk to do the work, I took the red mare out into the wide, open green spaces. It is in just such a space that a thoroughbred is popularly supposed to go crazy. All that flat grass, no fences, nothing to stop her; how could she resist? She resisted. She put on her best dowager duchess hat and gave me a composed trot of such poise and grace that I could hardly believe it. It was as if she were dancing to some internal music. She needed no reminding, no instruction, no correction. She picked her own graceful gait and kept to it. With each step, she grew in confidence and conviction. I could feel something like pride flowing out of her. Perhaps it was even pleasure. I try not to ascribe human emotions to horses, but she seemed delighted with herself.

You can see some of the majesty in this picture. She does have majesty, and it grows in her, day by day:

A good day.

Sometimes, I fall into a defensive crouch. I put so much pressure on myself that I go into a kind of awful tunnel vision. It is dark in the tunnel, and the critical voices in my head like it in there and use it as a kind of echo chamber. Magical thinking, which I try to resist, lifts its head and senses its opportunity, and tells me that I shall never come to any good.

As I wrangle and struggle with my book, I see only the things which are not there. It will never be good enough, I am not good enough to make it good enough, the agent will know it is not good enough and will have to tell me so.

Then a shift in perspective comes, and I go back to the beginning, with clear eyes. Today, my eyes were clear. I started the editing all over again. I could see very well what needed to be done, and I did it. And I found, to my astonishment, that some of it was really not bad.

Just because I think it is good does not mean other people will too. Writing is a subjective business. One is always dependent on someone else’s opinion. There is no certainty, and this is part of what wears away at the troubled, questing, hopeful mind.

But today I know that all the work I have done is worth it, even if I do get rejected. That counts for something.

In the morning, before work, before thought, I ring The Beloved Cousin. At the very sound of her voice, I know that every single thing will be all right. She has that miraculous effect.

Friendship, I think, as I ride out later into the mild Scottish day, the air gentle against my face, never gets the press it deserves. It’s always romantic love which has the classic novels written about it, the songs, the poems, the plays, the films, the sonnets. But friend love, for me, is the one that saves your life, lifts your heart, restores your sanity, confirms your sense of self.

The Beloved Cousin understands every single word I say, laughs at my jokes, unpicks my troubles as if they were her own, makes me feel like a better human, remembers all the things I have forgotten, does not mind whether I am up, down or round the houses, expects me to be nothing but my own flawed, flaky self. She just gets it. (In this case, It is everything.)

As if determined to continue the love and loveliness, the red mare was at her absolute, shining, glittering crest and peak. She rode like a dream, was funny and dear, and showed off her dressage diva trot all the way down the lime avenue, with no reins and no stirrups. She seems to find it mildly amusing that I kick my feet out of the irons and wave my arms in the air, and boxes along in her best self-carriage whilst I laugh with delight.

And then there was the good work and I backed a ten-to-one winner at Goodwood as the ravishing Malabar, the only filly in the race, put the boys in their place, kicking away and streaking down the straight, her beautiful bay coat gleaming in the sun.

There are bad days, and good days. I like to record the good days, because when the shadows come, I find it soothing to look back and remember what the light is like. Today was all light.

A slightly unexpected life lesson.

Quite a long time ago, with a lot of sweating and swearing and yelping, I hit the deadline for the manuscript of my current book. I whacked it off to the agent, after staying up all night, and then collapsed in a heap.

After all the rushing and striving and grand-standing, I had to wait quite a long time for a response. This sometimes happens, and I have learnt to deal with it. I am a pro, after all. At least the thing was done, and I could fill in the time by working on my other book, and, lately, on the new secret project, because I must always have a secret project.

There was, at last, good news. She loved it; she was very happy; she was fired with enthusiasm. She had plans.

Then there was a check. She thought perhaps it needed more work. A change in emphasis might be needed. A little structural tweak. She wanted to go away and think for a while.

I am a pro, I told myself.

Then, finally, finally, an email arrived. I read it so quickly that I did not fully understand it. I was clearly much, much more terrified than I had allowed myself to believe, and this seemed to blur my very vision.

What I thought it said was that she was losing faith. I thought that she was trying to shuffle me off, that really she did not like it any more, that she did not trust me to fix it.

I went into a wild defensive crouch. I kept trying to do the new draft, and could not. What price that famous professionalism now? I had many good excuses – complicated life mostly, but then everyone has a complicated life. In my experience, you only don’t do a thing when you don’t want to. The excuses are always bullshit, however good and shiny they might seem on the surface.

It took me two weeks to realise what was going on. What was going on was that I was FURIOUS. Not with the poor agent, who is a brilliant woman and who has stuck with me through vicissitudes which would have sunk a lesser human. I was furious with the whole shooting match. I was livid with the process.

Writing daily for the internet is a really good discipline. It has keen personal pleasures. I get to meet Dear Readers from around the world, and learn about other views and other lives. I can keep a record, which I like very much. There are precious jewels on this blog, which would have been lost to memory had I not written them down – there is the day Kauto Star won his fifth King George; there is Frankel in his pomp; there are my dear, adored old canine ladies, whom I still miss. The writing itself is important, as it keeps my fingers moving, locking the very act of writing into muscle memory.

But it is also horribly spoiling. I can write what I want, and it can go out into the world as free as a bird. There are no mediating market forces, cultural shifts, publishing shake-ups, economic turbulences to wreck it. It has a lovely purity and immediacy and ease to it. I write it; you read it. I am sometimes proud of it; you are sometimes bored by it. If it lags and sags, I must try harder. If I’m in the zone, it sings its song, and the Dear Readers smile.

I don’t have to do a tap dance, or a dog and pony show. I don’t have to edit and revise and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I don’t have to have any bloody meetings.

The perceived doubt of the email brought all those old rejections, imperatives, wilderness years into one ball of rage. Fuck them all, the childish voice in my head was yelling. I was not even sure who or what I was cursing. The fates, the demands of the job, life itself; the whole buggery mess and muddle.

I was so angry that I then refused to write at all, and listened to the Ashes instead. The voice of Blowers on Test Match Special was the only thing which made me feel as if my fragile world was not rocking on its axis. That, and the red mare, who rose to the occasion, and was more sweet and funny and responsive and adorable than I’ve ever known her. Each ride was more enchanting than the last, as if she knew that something was up, and understood that it was in her sole power to give me the gift of peace for two hours every day.

But then the Test Match was over and I had my deadline to meet and I had to stop being such a sulky fool and do the damn work. Otherwise I cannot keep the mare in hay. (I had tried, over the weekend, to win thousands of pounds on an accumulator so that I could retire on the spot, but it did not go well.)

Crossly, after too much coffee, I went back and read the email again, to see what it was the poor agent really wanted.

It said not one single thing I had inferred.

It was still filled with enthusiasm and belief. She just wanted a few small changes, and then it was all guns blazing.

I read it again.

What had I been thinking? She had written one thing; I, in blind fear, had read another.

I sat down and did all the major edits in one session.

I’ll still need to do some more pondering and have another polish and sharpen up some of the self-indulgent parts, but all is not lost, my career is not yet over, light is shining through the tunnel.

I often say that I am an idiot. Then I have to remind myself sternly that I am not quite an idiot, but an ordinary human who sometimes does extraordinarily idiotic things. There is an important difference. This is one of those idiotic things. Will I ever learn? Back to the drawing board I go, back to the schoolroom, back to learning yet another life lesson that I don’t seem to have imbibed.

Read your emails carefully does not sound like a lesson for the ages. But in this case, it really is.

 

Today’s photographs:

Just one today, because I’m exhausted with all these revelations of my own folly. But it’s a good one, because it’s how I feel. Born free. And also because it’s of the person who has stopped me collapsing from mild hysteria into the very depths of the abyss. She really does have that power.