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:

Where the heart is; or, the friendly ghosts.

When I was two and a half years old, I fell head over ears in love with a gentleman called Eddie Harty. He had just won the Grand National on a horse called Highland Wedding when I first met him, but I knew nothing of that. I was far too young to be starstruck. I just knew that, of all the people who came to the house, and there were many because the front door was always open, he was the one who made my heart want to burst.

Whenever he arrived, I would run upstairs and put on my best party dress. ‘We sometimes had to wait for you,’ my mother says, drily. Apparently, I would give strict instructions that nobody was to do anything until I was properly dressed. Then I would run back downstairs, cast myself shamelessly onto Eddie Harty’s knee, and gaze up at him in adoration.

Forty-six years later, I still think of that most excellent gentleman. He was not a classical beauty, which apparently gave my mother great heart. She thought that I would not grow up to be led astray by a pretty face. Even at such a young age, I was all about the character. He was brave and dogged and determined and a great horseman, from a dynasty of great horsemen.

I think: it’s funny what one remembers.

When I get on a thoroughbred, I feel as if I have come home. My red mare carries with her the ghosts of all those mighty equine athletes among whom I grew up. I remember many of them too. My favourite was the grey Dolge Orlick. My father had a lot of horses who were named after characters in Dickens, which is quite odd, since he was famous for never reading any book except the form book. Lovely Dolge could not have been worse named, since, far from being oafish and evil, he was bright and bonny and kind.

The mare carries the ghosts too of the great racing men who illuminated my childhood. Quite often when I am riding her I think of Fred Walwyn and Fred Winter and Dave Dick and John Lawrence. She carries the spirit of my old dad, although he would have laughed out loud, in a characteristic mixture of puzzlement and pride, if he could see me riding her in her rope halter with one light hand on the reins as if she were an old cow pony out in the American prairies. My favourite set of books when I was eight was The Green Grass of Wyoming trilogy, and every morning, as we lope around the emerald fields of Scotland, I think of that, too.

She defies the laws of physics, acting as a kind of equine worm-hole, collapsing time and space.

I’ve moved a lot in my life, leaving my childhood home, going through ramshackle, gypsy teen years when we were always packing, having an antic London life in my wild twenties, before finally putting down deep roots in an adopted place which had nothing to do with racing or Ireland or horses or any of the things which were part of my young days. Scotland came about through whim and chance, and yet it is here that I belong. The mare, I suddenly realise, was the last piece in the puzzle.

Some people find thoroughbreds alarming or mysterious or incomprehensible. Some people really don’t like them. Yet every time I sit on that noble back, I am in a place I know and love, a place entirely familiar and easy. No matter how much is going on in my life or in the world, no matter how jagged and jangly I am, the moment I get into the saddle, I am home. It’s a tiny, workaday miracle.

 

Today’s pictures:

The dear Dear Readers gave me such a glorious welcome back to the blog that I feel quite bashful. (I am British, after all.) I can’t thank you all enough. You have put a huge and rather surprised smile on my face. I know you love the pictures of Scotland, so here are some more of Queen’s View, especially for you.

In which I return to the small things.

Back to the smallest of the small things. I always do this when the news is bad and there are too many sorrows out in the world. The small things are what make me feel that I can cling on, that the turning earth will not tip me off into vacancy.

So I tidied the feed shed, and made up a new kind of home-made fly spray for the mare, and then rubbed neem oil all over her body to soothe her skin and deal with the lumps and the bumps which come up in summer from the horrid horse-flies.

Setting a kind, trusting animal to rights is one of the keenest pleasures I know. I find her hot and bothered, snatching at the biting critters with her teeth, shaking her head and twitching her great body. I leave her anointed and soothed and settled. I give her a great scratch all over, getting at all the maddening places she can’t reach, including right into her dear ears, and then I cool her with water, and then I smooth the ointments and unguents on her red coat, and then I let her lean her sweet head against me and give her a dozy massage on her poll. It is a form of communion which goes beyond words.

We ride out and I take her to see my mother. My mum is not very mobile, so seeing the horse is a rare pleasure for her. I teach the mare to walk up the steps to the door, one delicate hoof at a time, so she can say hello.

‘How are you going to get her off those steps?’ says my mother, in some astonishment.

‘Like this,’ I say. I point at each hoof in turn. ‘Back one,’ I say, and the clever mare moves one foot at time, returning without fuss to the ground. She looks quietly pleased with herself, and has an ‘aw, it was nothing’ gleam in her eye.

‘We haven’t done that for a while,’ I say, unable to keep the pride out of my voice. ‘But she remembers everything, she’s so intelligent.’

I write 1876 words. I do my HorseBack work. There were young people at HorseBack this week, as part of the fledgling Youth Initiative, where local children who face a variety of challenges work with the horses, helped by several of our regular veterans. There’s a lovely circularity to it, and it’s been a hugely successful experiment, and will now become part of the core of the HorseBack work. I find looking at the pictures of the young people, as I edit and collate and select for the Facebook page, intensely moving.

As I finish this, I can hear a piper playing. There is a wedding about to start across the way from my house, and the sound of proper Scottish bagpipes will welcome a happy couple. Soon, I’ll go back down to the field and attend to that dear red mare. I’ll look at the deer and the trees and the pied wagtails and the swifts and the green, green grass, and Stanley the Dog will hunt for rats and play with enormous sticks, and all those small, small things will settle around me, little battalions against a world which sometimes does not seem to make any sense.

 

Today’s pictures:

A group of elegant ladies have just moved into the west meadow:

This is Glen Tanar, three miles west on the South Deeside Road, where I spent the morning on Wednesday:

And this was my lovely girl this morning. She does not always come when I appear. Sometimes she is too busy eating, and I wander down and get her. But on some days, she lifts her head and moseys right on over, with a there you are look on her face, which makes me want to laugh out loud with sheer happiness: