No blog today.

It’s been a long week, and I have hit the wall.

But I did want to say that the Dear Readers have been particularly dear in the last few days. You have left wise and kind comments, sent dancing tweets which made me laugh, written antic Facebook remarks. I don’t want to descend into Hallmark card territory, but this generous virtual back and forth damn well does warm the cockles of my absurd old heart.

So, thank you.

And here is Stanley the Dog, because I know everyone loves Stanley the Dog:

And speaking of dogs, and love, for a convoluted and labyrinthine set of reasons, I really, really missed these old ladies today. The universe, in its funny old wisdom, sent me reminders of them, and I’m not ashamed to say that I shed a bit of a tear. They are in the past, but they live with me still, stitched into my heart:

The Duchess and the Pigeon; really, two of the most beautiful canines that ever graced the good Scottish earth.

After the storm.

Last night, out of a clear sky, a howling storm of grief blew in from the west.

Sometimes, I will mourn each individual, because something will remind me. The last time I cried for my dad, I was watching a film about Frankel, and it made me inexpressibly sad that the old fella was not alive to see that great horse.

But this one was completely non-specific. There was no catalyst. Suddenly, violently, unexpectedly, I missed my troika of Dear Departeds so badly I could not move or breathe.

This does not happen very often now. The thing I have discovered about the passage of time is that it does not soften the missing, but it puts longer and longer gaps of normality between the storms. This particular hurricane was not only violent, but it went on for a long time. For a while, I felt as if I were underwater. Each time I thought I had broken the surface, another wave came and crashed over my head.

Even though I know this happens, even though I know it is normal and right, the initial reaction is a kind of panic. My mind races around, trying to find something to hold onto. It needs a reason. But, shouts my rational self, you had a really good day. What is going on? yells my voice of sense; there’s no call for this, it adds, in stern reproof.

Then, when I realise it is bigger than I am, elemental, visceral, inexplicable, I give in to it. Oh, all right, says the bashed old heart, I’ll bloody well ache. Spit spot, get it all out, says the Mary Poppins voice. Better out than in.

It took about an hour. Afterwards, I felt tired and cleansed. There it all goes, the missing, the regret, the gap. It was after midnight. I took Stanley the Dog out. The snow was coming in again from the west, not yet falling, but mustering in the sky for its last big push. A miraculous effect was going on, a strange diffused light, as if the whiteness had gathered the lamplight from the village and spread it everywhere like butter. It was almost as bright as day, but a low, amber colour. Stanley bounded around, a slender racing silhouette. The beauty and stillness shimmered and sang around me. I felt lucky, and alive, and present in the world.

Must ask the Dear Readers, I thought. Must ask if this is a thing. It’s almost two years since my father died, and my first dog. Two months since the lovely old Pigeon slipped the surly bonds of earth. It seems a little peculiar to a rational mind that the grief should still be this sharp, this big.

I thought of my good day. It had been filled with laughter and love. Perhaps it was because I had a good day that the sudden mourning came. Perhaps you need to be happy to allow yourself to be really sad. Perhaps that is when you feel safe, as if knowing your body and mind can take it.

I always say the grieving must be done. Nothing worse than bottling it all up; it gets twisted inside you then, and bad things happen. Perhaps it does not stop. Perhaps it is like a rose garden, which must be tended and pruned and fertilised. I must shovel manure, or the thing will go to seed. It does astonish me, all the same. But perhaps it is a tribute, to the lost loves.

I’m fine now. The tempest has passed and the usual reasserts itself. There is six inches of snow, and more to come. The horses are still and happy in the white, mooching around their new palatial shelter, warm in their rugs. All the racing is off, so I am going to have a quiet day with a good book. As always, after these shaking blasts, I go very slowly, feeling my way back into the real world. I expect I shall make some soup. Because soup makes everything better.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of snow and equines:

Myfanwy the SNOW PONY:

Autumn the Filly:

With their new palace:

At the old gate:

My beloved Red, who is enough to soothe the sorest heart:

And Mr Stanley, who quite frankly is looking so handsome I have no words for it:

Those eyes.

No hill today; lost in the snow.

12.12.12.

This is a Red Letter Day. It is a day among days. Apparently, this repetitive date is the last one ever. I can’t quite work it out in my mind. Surely it will come again, on the 12^th of December 3012? I suppose what people mean is that we shall all be dead by then.

Either way, it feels tremendously thrilling to me, for a reason I cannot work out at all. I am inspired to blog the whole day. I actually signed up to a thing called One Day on Earth, where they are making a brilliant project, getting millions of people to record the day on video, and then posting it all on their website. This is a lovely idea of human community and I was all for it, until I realised that I only have a pathetic video facility on my ordinary camera and have never been able to work that properly. Instead, I am going to do my own little one day, right here in this small corner of the earth.

It will be like the Mass Observation: an ordinary day, in the ordinary life of an ordinary woman, on an extraordinary date.

I did not start the great day on a glorious note. I slept through three alarms and ran down to the horses with my hair sticking up in shock and lateness. They were unmoved, feeding happily at their new, custom-built, hand-carved hay manger.

I worked first with my small Welsh Mountain pony. We did some gentle ground work, yielding at the quarters and shoulder, backing up, coming to. We did a little join-up, and I had the keen pleasure of walking the field with her at my side. It’s an easy technique, but it gives me the most intense joy, and every time I do it I bless the cleverness of Monty Roberts, and wonder that it never fails. I think the delight of it is that an essentially wild animal is giving you their consent. This feels quite profound to me.

Afterwards, I stand with the pony for a while, scratching her all over her sweet spots, gentling her muzzle, telling her she is easily the cleverest pony in Scotland. She leans her head against me and I feel my heart expand with love.

Myfanwy is, on paper, good for nothing. She is old, and her back is crocked, so she cannot be ridden. All the rescue charities find it almost impossible to home what they call companion horses. Yet, to me, she is good for everything. She has grown into the most beloved, entirely irreplaceable member of the herd. I cannot imagine life without her. Red the Mare would be lost without her small, furry friend. When I appear at the gate, the pony raises her head and pricks her ears and makes a low, humming whicker, and that is worth more than diamonds.

Red gets no work today, just love. We stand together for a while, looking out into the light. She rests her noble head on my shoulder, and I stroke her dear face, and chat to her for a bit. I think of the thing the Buddhists talk about, of staying still in the moment.

‘This very minute,’ I say to Red, who listens politely, ‘is more important than anything. For this moment, I am quite happy. I must not think of the lost ones, of The Pigeon or The Duchess or my father, because then I shall miss this perfect moment with you.’

Red blows gently through her nostrils, as if she knows all this already.

I say: ‘Of course it’s easier to say than to do.’

But for a moment, I do manage to quiet my antic mind, and concentrate on the pure, undilute pleasure of being at one with a horse in a field, on a clear day, where, just for a second, it feels as if I can see forever.

I race down for breakfast with my mother and stepfather. We discuss the continuing row over Kauto Star going for dressage, and the now very public spat between Clive Smith and Paul Nicholls, and how the whole of Twitter is alight with it. I eat bacon and drink coffee black as pitch. The Stepfather, who is not interested in racing, fills out a form from The Dogs’ Trust to sponsor a lost dog.

I take Stanley the Lurcher into their garden for a race around. It is entirely fenced in, so I can let him off the lead and allow him to show his paces. When he runs, he is like a greyhound, his belly low to the ground, his head down, his long legs raking over the grass like Frankel in his pomp. It is a very thrilling sight.

‘Watch that dog go,’ I yell to The Stepfather, who watches in admiration.

I go home to my desk, and write this.

The sun comes out. The bare trees are gilded with pink and gold; the remnants of the ice and snow glitter and gleam. I drink more coffee. I think: 12.12.12. is a very splendid day indeed.

 

Pictures of the morning:

The horses’ field, looking north:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Red the Mare and Autumn the Filly:

When Autumn first arrived, Red did a huge amount of boss mare prancing and leaping, to show who was in charge. She has never been a lead mare before, and she rather overdid it, as if uncertain quite how to play the part. Now, they are sweet friends. Red occasionally gives Autumn a bit of a biff or a bossy pinned ear face, but most of the time they mooch about in perfect harmony.

The sweet dopey face of my lovely girl:

The field with its magnificent tree, facing west:

The herd, with the timber for their new shelter in the background:

Trees:

Ice:

My favourite small tree:

Sheep, looking east from my mother’s house:

The Stepfather’s excellent shed:

Another view east:

My favourite old iron fence:

The limes:

Stanley the Lurcher, with his good boy face on:

And his sweet flying ear:

Observing the sheep:

More limes:

My plan is to return later in the day, so that every moment of this date may be kept forever. Absurd, I know, but I have a habit of indulging my whims, every so often. It was whim that brought me Red and Myfanwy and Stanley, so it can’t be all bad.

In which I attempt not to bang on

I shall be trying very hard not to do with Stanley the Dog what I did with Red the Mare, which was to write of nothing else for the first three months. I still remember with smarting angst the moment a reader complained. I don’t know which was more disconcerting: being accused of dullness, or being called ‘woman’. (I’ve never understood that. As in: ‘come along, woman,’ or ‘get over it, woman,’ or, most horridly, ‘for God’s sake, woman’. I have never called anyone woman in my life. There’s absolutely no objective reason for there to be anything wrong with it, but it hits an odd, jarring note in my ear, as if there is something mildly patronising or even passive-aggressive about it.)

On the other hand, Stanley spreads before me a daily garden of delights, and some of them are too good not to tell.

The lovely rescue people at Many Tears said that his defining attribute, when he came to them, was sadness. I thought that there must be some lingering melancholy, some uncertainty, some trace of neurosis, but apart from a faint shadow of occasional anxiety in the eyes, I can find none.

Here, his default mode seems to be that of a very happy dog. He loves everyone, for a start. He has already enchanted The Mother, The Sister, and the lovely Stepfather. The World Traveller brought the middle great-niece down yesterday in the snow to meet him, and there was instant adoration on both sides.

This morning, at family breakfast, he was quite exuberant and excited, because there were so many new people for him to see. The Older Brother and his Beloved are here, and so it is a full house. Stanley bounced around, and I was a little worried for my mother’s china, so I said, very confidently and seriously: lie down on your bed. I was not even sure he really knew Lie Down; he has not so far responded to it. (He knows sit, and wait, and paw, but that’s as much as I have discovered.)

Bear in mind this was in my mother’s house, where he has only been once, and with people he has only just met. He looked at me and went and lay down politely, putting his front paws out neatly in front of him.

‘Did you see THAT???’ I yelled in excitement, almost causing my sister to choke on her egg.

‘I never had a dog that did that,’ said the Stepfather, admiringly.

Now, at home, when I say ‘on your bed’, he goes and settles on his bed. This morning, when we went down to the horses, he did not bark at them as he had on first meeting, but tipped up his nose and did an Eskimo kiss with Red the Mare, who lowered her head to him in gentle greeting.

He is learning so fast and settling so well and growing in sweetness so much that I feel as if the dog fates have gathered up all their blessings and hurled them down on me in a wild Christmas flurry of generosity. I don’t quite understand how I ended up with such a dear and delightful gentleman. I mean, of all the dogs in all the bars in all the world, I got Stanley.

One final bit of dearness. For the first time this morning, he rolled over on his back and gave me his stomach to rub. This is a huge act of trust and I took it as a fine compliment. He lay his head back and showed his tiny white teeth in a delicate lurcher smile.

I promise I shall not bang on and on. But I had so resigned myself to second best, after The Duchess and The Pigeon, been so convinced that no other canine could even get in the ball park, that this feels like a tremendous gift and revelation. It is a proper and good surprise, and I feel a bit breathless at my luck. There is Stanley the dog, galloping into the ball park, a bright flash of love and hope.

 

Today’s pictures:

Too gloomy outside today for pictures. The sky is filthy and the snow looks dirty and defeated. Here are a few from yesterday:

Some interior shots of Stanley. My camera is not that keen on the indoor light, and so they are not the best pictures ever, but he looks so sweet and good I wanted you to see:

That face is where one sees the flash of uncertainty, the you’re not going to bugger off and leave me look. Answer is a big fat NO, never, not on your life:

Main thing is he’s got his ball:

Elegant paws:

That is almost as fine as The Pigeon when she used to do her Grace Kelly impression:

My girls. This is almost good enough for a caption competition:

Today’s hill:

Meant to say, a wonderful thing happened this week. There are certain of the Dear Readers who have been here for a long time and who give me glimpses into their lives. I often fret if I have not heard from them for a while, and wonder what has become of them.

One such was perhaps my most distant reader, in terms of geography, Michelle in New Zealand, who sent heart-breaking reports after the Christchurch earthquake, and once wrote that her daughter loved the Pigeon’s face so much that her picture was printed out and stuck on the fridge door. I always remember that absolute wonder and delight I felt that my little Pidge should be sitting in a kitchen in New Zealand.

Not long ago I realised I had heard nothing from Michelle for some time, and thought of her in the southern hemisphere, and hoped that I might hear from her again some day.

Anyway, Michelle is back. She has had a blogging break, and now she has returned. There was sadness, because she came back to the melancholy news, but, for me, there is a most keen pleasure to find her here once more.

The internet is so strange; it is most peculiar that I should be worrying for a person so far away, whom I shall almost certainly never meet in life. But there is a humming sense of community here, which is the thing I always wanted, and has come to pass, and so this return feels a bit like a family reunion. Welcome back, Michelle; it’s so lovely to have you here again.