Magnificence, AP, and the kindness of strangers.

Be magnificent, said the voice in my head as I woke up this morning.

Actually, that was not the first thing it said. The first thing it said was: ‘Why are you dreaming about Kind?’ Kind was Frankel’s dam, and reportedly one of the best-named broodmares ever, as sweet and gentle as the day is long. She was the star of my dream last night and the voice in my head thought that was quite peculiar.

Then the voice moved swiftly on to the magnificence.

The Be Magnificent thing is because I have had quite a lot of angst and fret lately, about a variety of matters too dull to bore you with. These are matters with which I must deal. In times like this, my instinct often is to try and explain myself. I forgot that or neglected this because I was working to a crazy deadline or my brain went phhhtt or I’m desperately trying to wrangle my career back on track after a professional setback of fairly shocking proportions.

I wish always to be understood, which is why exposition is my default. But the problem with explanations is that they often sound like excuses, and in a way they are. I decided that that magnificent thing to do was not to twist on a pin but to apologise with grace, and correct the omission, and leave explanations for the birds. It did, I freely admit, go against all muscle memory.

The next thing I asked myself, in my drive for magnificence, was: ‘What would AP do?’

(For those of you new to the blog, or who have no racing interest, AP McCoy is the most champion of champion jockeys Britain has ever seen.)

This is a novel thing for me, but it’s been cooking for a while, in the echoing back corridors of my mind. In America apparently there are some very religious people who always ask themselves What Would Jesus Do? Sometimes, to remind themselves, they abbreviate it to WWJD and put it on t-shirts. (This may be apocryphal.) Since I do not have a deity, I decided to ask myself what The Champ would do. He is a man of stoicism and steel. He buggers on where lesser humans would throw up their hands. He does not brag when things go well, and he never complains when things go wrong. I also suspect that he may be in possession of a most excellent Occam’s Razor.

I told my mother this at breakfast. She put her head on one side and regarded me quizzically.

‘What would AP do?’ she asked.

‘Ride another winner,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ she said.

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘he would not give in to angst and navel-gazing and midnight fretfulness. He would never make excuses. He would just go out there and ride another winner. You see?’

I’m not quite sure she did.

Up on the hill, with the sun pouring down like honey, and the red mare at her most glorious beneath me, I gazed over the blue landscape between her pricked ears and thought: you are my winner. As she gave me, with all the sweetness of her generous heart, the most beautiful, collected, smooth sitting trot I’ve ever felt in my life, I thought: this is that winner. And I am riding her.

Then I went home and wondered if I could be magnificent. It’s so much easier to be chipped about the edges and a tiny bit second-rate and messily ordinary. It is easier to make excuses and point to reasons and demand exculpation. I would have to pull myself up to my full height and draw on all my resources.

And then, at that very moment, someone else did the magnificence for me.

A person I know only through the internet recently asked for my address. I usually would never give out this information, despite being surrounded by fierce guard dogs and neighbours who go out lamping half the night, but this particular gentleman seemed so intelligent and kind and funny that I decided to err on the side of trust rather than caution. You get out what you put in, after all.

The thing he wanted to send me arrived today. I opened it. I stared. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

It is a little book by US Cricket Guy, the funniest spoofer on Twitter by a country mile. He galvanises the Ashes by referring to decision timbers instead of wickets and cries ‘Let’s play CRICKETBALL!!!’ when things are getting tense. He makes me collapse with laughter.

A complete stranger had gone to the trouble of tracking the book down, buying it, packing it, addressing it, and sending it all the way to Scotland, just because he knew from my intemperate Ashes tweeting habit that I love test cricket with the adoration of a true believer.

That is magnificence.

It makes me smile and smile, even as I write it. The kindness of strangers never gets old for me. Each time it takes me by surprise; each time it is as keen and new and lovely as the very first. Each time, it restores my faith in human nature. I doggedly believe that most humans are mostly good, and sometimes this rickety faith has to be held together with baling twine. Today, it was bolstered with Corinthian columns and flying buttresses.

The only problem is that it sets the magnificence bar very high. My kind internet friend has raised the stakes with his immense generosity. I shall now have to leap as if I have springs in my heels. But then, that, that is what AP would do.

 

Today’s pictures:

Apologies to the polymaths. It’s late and I still have not finished my work so there is only time for the rampant loveliness that is my furry, muddy, scruffy, magnificent red mare:

Despite this season of fretfulness, when I am on her back, everything is all right. It is as if I have come home.

A small wall, and a small break. And the cricket, of course.

I have hit a little bit of a wall. Not in a catastrophic way, just in an ‘oh, there’s a wall’ way. The body and mind are saying steady, steady, just as I say it to my red mare. So I’m going to slow down for a few days. There will be done only the work that must be done. There will be gentle time spent with my glorious girl; there will be the sweetness of Stanley the Dog, and the making of soups (yellow split pea today, with sage and olive oil), and the mighty treat which is listening to The Ashes on the good old BBC iPlayer.

There are people who loathe and despise the BBC, and write weekly about its manifest ghastlinesses, and wail of how blatantly wrong and unfair it is that Ordinary Decent Britons should be forced to pay the iniquitous licence fee. I think: no commercial broadcaster in the world would put eight hours of cricket, for five days in a row, on an internet device which can be accessed at any time. As I sat up last night to catch the first few overs, I watched my entire Twitter timeline explode with anticipation and joy and giddiness. It is THE ASHES. It is the Gabba. The wonderfully vocal Aussies are booing Broad. Who silences them by taking three wickets, before I finally give up and go to sleep.

The sheer level of exhilaration, jokes, and keen sporting knowledge lifts my heart. There is even a spoof account of towering genius, run by a tweeter called US Cricket Guy who refers to falling wickets as ‘decision timbers’, which makes me shout with laughter every time. And, as always, the thing of beauty which is Test Match Special makes the whole occasion.

People who love test cricket love it like nothing else. It is not just a game. It is an ethos, a symbol, an idiosyncrasy; it has history and culture stitched into it. It is also a thing of implausibility – how can a game which goes on for five days have you on the edge of your seat? Yet it does. And dear old Auntie brings it to us, in all its glory. That alone is worth the licence fee.

All of which is a rather long and winding way of saying that I’m going off the blog for a few days. I hate doing this. I have a bizarre sense of obligation. I must give the Dear Readers, so loyal and generous, something. It is also a wonderfully useful daily writing practice, good for my mind and my fingers. And I miss your lovely comments when I am away. I miss the small thrill I get every time my inbox pings, and there are the familiars, some of whom have been with me from the beginning, saying something kind about the sweetness of the red mare, or the handsomeness of Stanley the Dog, or making a wise observation on the human condition.

But still, a rest is due. Soup and cricket indulgence shall restore me to fighting strength. Next week another massive work push begins, and I must limber up.

 

In the meantime, I leave you with a few quick pictures:

The red mare was astonishing today. She still has moments of being anxious and unsettled. Her world has changed, with the lack of her old friend. But she responds to good, steady, calming work like a champion. (Work is the thing that soothes and quiets her. It is the old horseman’s adage of: change the subject.) This morning, she did free schooling, which I had never taught her before and which I rather extemporised, and which, of course, she got the hang of in about five minutes. Then there was some enchanting walking about together with no rope, our feet moving exactly in time. And then, when I rode her away from Autumn the Filly for the first time since Myfanwy left us, expecting fireworks or resistance or upset, she went as sweetly and kindly as she has ever gone. I was so exhilarated by this that when I saw an inviting green slope I sent her into a racing canter on a loose rein. There I was, standing in the stirrups, leaning up her neck, inviting her to go along as fast as she liked, and she kept to a lovely rolling breeze and dropped back to a gentle walk as soon as I told her to steady.

I know it is absurd to write these things. But they are milestones to me. They are the things that cynics say you damn well can’t do with a thoroughbred mare. You’re supposed to stuff Dutch gags in their mouths and truss them up with tack and bung them full of calmers, not ride them about in a bit of rope. Almost more than anything else, I love the fact that she tips over all the stereotypes with her elegantly duchessy hooves.

And I am so proud of her, that I want it to be marked. I want it to exist in language; I want there to be proof on the page. It is more for me than for you, I freely admit. I want to know that on the bad days, when the dark clouds gather and the prospect seems bleak, I may take down this book, and slowly read. And I can think: anything is possible.

 

PS. My eyes are squinting with tiredness, and I have not proofed this well. I know there shall be howlers. Forgive me.

The Ashes; or, the wonder that is Blowers.

This morning, I started writing a rather long, involved blog. I thought you might like a good, meaty Saturday read. But then I switched on Test Match Special and Henry Blofeld was on such cracking form that I had to stop everything to listen.

Test Match Special is one of the shining lights of British broadcasting. I don’t imagine there is anything else in the world at all like it. It is peopled by eccentrics, jokers, joshers and statistics geeks. ‘What’s the record, Malcolm?’ At which point Malcolm makes a little humorous murmuring noise and digs out some obscure stat from 1911.

TMS is such a glorious programme that I think I would listen to it even if I knew absolutely nothing of cricket, and had no interest in the game. It is a raging joy and delight for anyone who appreciates the English language and the British character. In the Ashes, we get the added enchantment of a couple of wonderful Aussie voices, livening the cultural mix. It’s such a clever thing, because it makes the perfect counter-point to the old, old sporting rivalry.

In the box, with the genteel cake and the polite messages from the devoted test fans, the Australians and the English are sweetly courteous and sporting. They admire the other side’s skill, cheer a great shot by an opposing batsman, are scrupulously fair. There is an astonishing lack of chauvinism, even though you sense of course they desperately want their own team to win. When the youthful revelation that is Ashton Agar amazed the entire cricket world by putting on an eleventh man stand of 98, saving the day for Australia after a catastrophic collapse, every English commentator was devastated that he was out before he reached his hundred.

I adore test cricket. I have no interest in the quick version of the game and don’t follow twenty-twenty. I love the extraordinary tension and drama that builds up over the five days. I love the fact that nations who do not have test sides are baffled by the fact that a single match can last for so long a time. I love the stories and dramas and characters that are given room to breathe over those long, rolling, sunlit days.

I love the idioms. The very fact that there is a position called ‘silly mid-on’ makes me smile. ‘He just tickled that,’ the commentators say, with a straight face.

I love the storied rivalries. The Ashes is the most special of all, because of the snaking history of Australia and England with leather and willow. It started in 1882, when Australia thrashed England on home turf, and a newspaper wrote an obituary: this is the day that English cricket died and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. A group of women in Melbourne then presented a small urn to the English team, containing the burnt remnants of a bail, and so The Ashes was born.

And still, 130 years later, that tiny urn is fought over with fierce, diamond-sharp competition. Little boys from Brisbane to Bolton grow up dreaming of representing their country in The Ashes.

If I had the time, I would cancel everything and sit all day and listen to every minute of the eight hours of coverage. It’s hard to believe that you can be on the edge of your seat in a game that takes such a long time, and breaks for old-fashioned tea. But you are. As it is, I tune in and out whenever I can, and if I miss a particularly thrilling spell, I go back to the iPlayer in the evening and catch up with the day’s play, listening in a trance of hazy pleasure.

Dear old cricket. Dear old Blowers, who encapsulates for me everything that is splendid about this form of the game. He exclaims in delight every time he sees a flappy pigeon, gets improbably excited when he spots a shiny bus driving past (he has a thing about buses), calls every single person, no matter what their age or position, ‘my dear old thing’, gives the players straight-faced nicknames. ‘And here comes Starkers,’ he says, as the Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc runs up to the crease. (For the Dear Readers from abroad: starkers means naked, in British slang.) He is the most treasury of national treasures, someone who will never be replaced.

As I come back from working my mare, and settle into a lazy Saturday, and think vaguely what will win the July Cup at Newmarket, I turn on Blowers’ wonderful voice and I genuinely feel all is well with the world.

I woke this morning in rather a bad mood. I felt tired and twitchy and filled with self-criticism and angst. Not working fast enough, too many things to do, too many tricky decisions to take. I don’t like myself much when I am in this mood, because I have so much luck and so much to be grateful for, and I have no right to feel so scratchy. But Blowers banishes all that. He has the miraculous talent of spreading sunshine wherever he goes. I smile and my shoulders come down and the clouds roll away. All possible things will be well. How lovely it is that one good man can perform such a miracle, through the radiophonic device.

 

Today’s pictures:

A few shots from the week:

The beloved beauty:

The little HorseBack foal:

Stanley the Dog dauntlessly catching flies:

The hill: