The weather gets wild.

I go to sleep with the gentle sound of Vic Marks in my ear and wake up to nothing. There is only the plucking, howling sound of wind beating its way round the house.

The power is down. I have no way of knowing whether Australia suffered a sudden batting collapse at 3am. (I discover much later that dream did not come true.) I am momentarily confused, deprived of news, as if my sensory receptors are shocked at having nothing to receive. I take my bath by candlelight, which sounds marvellously romantic but is in fact maddening when you have horses to do and books to write and the pressing need to get on.

Down at the field, the door is off the feed shed and the roof felting is flapping in the gale like some crazed bird. The wind has entered the shed, removed items from it, and scattered them over a thirty foot radius. It is actually quite sinister. There are body brushes embedded in the mud as if a sociopath has hurled them there with the force of a thousand furies.

The gales, which I later discover are gusting at up to ninety miles an hour, blow visible sheets of rain in horizontal legions, as if they are marching to war. I look with trepidation at the Wellingtonias, which are rocking about like drunken old sailors on a binge. But I can have no Chicken Licken moment. I have Beloveds to see to.

I hear a distant whinny. Red has taken Autumn the Filly to the farthest corner of the field, the place most precisely distant from all trees and branches and gale hazards, and is standing guard over her. It is rather pitiful seeing her being responsible for only one horse now, when she looked after two with such care. She takes her job as lead mare very, very seriously.

The whinny is almost a question. Is it safe to come in?

I call to her, and she leads Autumn slowly along the long, winding path to the gate. Red rolls her eyes at me, as if to say: ‘You won’t believe the night I’ve had.’

‘I know, old girl,’ I say. ‘Not a wink of sleep, I shouldn’t think.’

Horses hate wind not just because of the obvious reasons – the rush and the noise. They hate it because they cannot hear. It muddles around with the hairs in their ears and screws up their detection systems. They are still prey animals at heart, and if they cannot hear the footfall of the mountain lion over the hill, they become nervy and unsure. The junior horse is fine, because it is not her job to be on the qui vive. The big mare is jumpy and unsettled, looking for reassurance. I give it to her, along with lots of hay and plenty of rations. My spectacles are covered in rain and I can no longer see where the falling trees are going to come from so I just get on with it and trust to luck.

The power cut lasts until lunch. I light candles and cover myself in blankets and read a book. That is all you can do when the electricity fails. Every time it happens, it further amazes me how reliant I am on that invisible spirit running through the wires. I cannot type my book, see the news, cook food, heat the house, or even boil a kettle. The day begins with no coffee. My creaky body cries out in protest.

I think always of how much time must have been spent on mere survival, on the taking care of logistics, in the age before electricity. The chopping of wood, the making of fires, the boiling of water – all would have taken hours of physical labour. Even the lighting of lamps would have been an event, as someone went round the house doing the candles and the lanterns. This does not take us back as far as the nineteenth century; it is not all Jane Austen, who is the one I tend to think of when I am plunged into a pre-technological age. You do not need to go nearly that far. A huge number of rural houses would have been off the grid until well in the 20^th century. How did they function? I am filled with awe at their doughty resolve.

For a moment, I rather despise my modern softness. I’m afraid to admit that I panic when I do not have the internet. So much of my life is there. I resolve to grow more hardy, to get my mindset back to that tough, wood-chopping, water-carrying incarnation of my ancestors. I must teach myself not to wail if I miss the 12.40 at Wincanton. Butch up, I tell myself sternly, and remember your inner steel.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are not awfully good. I managed to snap a few shots in the calm between the two storms:

Hard to believe only yesterday I was cantering up that far slope in vivid sunshine:

Red, on guard, while little Autumn peacefully gets on with her hay:

WIND EAR:

This is the red mare’s stoicism face. Even though she is so finely bred, she’s tough as old boots. She has a huge shelter but she rarely uses it. Even in weather like this, she prefers to be out in the air. I think it is her evolutionary past, singing in her delicate ears. Always be able to move your feet, those ancestral voices tell her. Do not let yourself be confined. What a trooper she is:

The hill, amazingly serene in the wild winds:

 

Ha. I’ve just come back in after writing that. It was tea-time for the horses and extra rations were required. Out came piles and piles of the best hay, placed tenderly in the sheltered spot; out came the extra water, in case the trough should freeze in the night; on went the protective necks which attach to the rugs and keep the girls from getting icicles on their manes. All this was performed in gales which have now dropped to a modest forty miles an hour, with the temperature at zero, and the snow looming over the hills. I am pretty soft, I can’t pretend otherwise. But for the hour of evening stables, when it comes to the wellbeing of my dear equines, it turns out I am like a tough, stompy old farmhand in a Thomas Hardy novel.

And talking of toughness, I take my hat off to the staunch engineer who went out in all that weather, and put the power lines back together again, so that I may be warm and connected again. That was quite a thing to do.

A final farewell.

In every family, there is the one who is not much talked about. Not because they are wicked or shameful, but because they are so good. They do not run off with drummers or take to the bottle; they just get on with it. They do not create drama. They just, delightfully, are.

Myfanwy the Pony is like that in my family. I don’t write about her much here. It’s all about the great journey with Red the Mare, my mighty thoroughbred, with her famous grandsire and her beauty and her great spirit.

Myfanwy came quietly and unexpectedly into our lives because Red needed a friend. And there was this little grey person, with her pretty face and her pricked ears, who almost dropped out of the sky. The lady who transported Red to her first home up on the hill had a pony her children had grown out of, and Red needed a companion, and the lady very generously offered us the loan, and it was as simple as that.

When the small person arrived, my big mare, who had been on her own for a doleful week, whickered and whinnied as if her long-lost sister had suddenly pitched up at the gate.

A few weeks after that, the American Paint filly joined us, and last November we moved the herd down to their new home in the shadow of the green woods, and they have been there ever since, a little trio of calm and joy.

The stories that got told here were all of Red. Quietly, in the background, Myfanwy, in her grand old age, her riding days over, enjoyed her retirement. She settled most mornings under her favourite tree, watching sagely as the younger ones got worked and schooled and educated. We did inculcate her into our school of horsemanship, and she learnt to hook on and back up off a soft cue and yield her hindquarters, and always looked rather pleased with herself when she had done this new work. We sometimes took her out for a good walk in hand, and the little Pony Whisperer would come and give her a grand groom, and only last week I did a join-up with her in the field, and she remembered all the steps as if we had done it yesterday.

But really, she was just a continued presence, with her bright face and her sweet ears carved like commas and her surprisingly low, throaty, Lauren Bacall whicker. She made no drama; she created no three-act opera. She left that to the other two. When the gales came last week, she amazed us by kicking up her heels and doing a perfect bronco display in the wild weather, and the Horse Talker and I looked at each other and said: ‘Well, there is life in the old lady yet.’

Not that much life, as it turned out.

This morning, there she was, standing under her tree, like a little unicorn in the autumn light, waiting for us to come back from our ride, as she always did. We were just about to leave the field, when we saw her stumble and stagger.

I, always convinced that she would live until she was thirty, almost ignored it. Not Myfanwy; she was a tough mountain pony; she could deal with anything. But then I looked again, and I could see something was very wrong.

We thought she had colic, at first. The vet was off on a call, so the Horse Talker and I walked her and walked her, for an hour and a half, round the field. Then the Remarkable Trainer arrived, closely followed by the vet. By this stage, violent streams of mucus were coming out of the poor old lady’s nose and mouth and she was shuddering all over, her small furry body shaken by violent spasms, low groans coming from the very depths of her.

The vet, one of the kindest, most sensitive women I’ve ever met, tried a single injection, and said to see what would happen in a couple of hours. Heart failure, though, she thought; possibly multi-system failure. She held out little hope.

The injection had no effect. The three humans sat in the shelter, which is built up against an old granite wall, filled with soft straw, a place of quiet and safety. The old girl shuddered and went down and got up again, and then stood, suddenly very still, almost in a fugue state.

I made the decision. ‘She is telling us she has to go,’ someone said; everyone said; everyone knew.

The light was failing in her black eyes.

She lay down again and I sat on the packed earth floor with her and gentled her on her forehead, in that exact place that mares nuzzle their foals. ‘It’s all right, old lady,’ I said. ‘You can let go now.’

I said that to the Pigeon too.

It was very quick and very good, in the end. The vet warned us there could be struggles, jumps, spasms, gasps or groans. But there was none of that. She let out one last cry, lifting her head in a final effort and neighing. Her two friends, put safely in the far paddock, called back to her, their voices carrying bright and vivid on the chill air.

Then the needle went in, and she fell straight to earth, with no battle, as if she was so ready that the very ground was pulling her to it.

And she was gone.

She went in elegance and grace. She made it very simple for us. It was her time, and she knew it.

The vet, who is not a sentimental or anthropomorphic person, said: ‘I’m glad she said goodbye.’

We were all slightly surprised. But that last call, and its responding cry, did feel like a final farewell. Horses do not do sentimentalism. They understand and accept life and death much better than humans do. They have a lovely, honest flintiness which I adore.

For all that, I think it was a goodbye, a bookend to that first hello, when the big red mare and the small Welsh pony first set eyes on each other and called out in greeting, as if they were old familiars, as if they were each the one the other had been waiting for.






The last picture I took of her, two days ago, in the lovely November light.

And Red the Mare, who loved her well, and who, when I went down to check on her just now, by the light of the sailing moon, would not be consoled:

Scotland, this morning.

Three of the happiest hours I have spent for a long time. Forgot about work, forgot about everything. Just wandered past the hills, mooched about with the horses and the dog, regarded the blue, blue sky.

Back at the field, the light had faded, but there was still enough beauty to entrance this human heart:

Also, I must admit that my joy was enhanced by the great cleverness of Red the Mare. I can sling the rope over her shoulder, tell her to stand, and she will not move a hoof for ten full minutes whilst I click away with the camera, making sure I get her best angle. And nearly fall into the burn in the process. (Clue: it’s BEHIND YOU.) Further proof for my entirely non-empirical theory that thoroughbreds are the most intelligent horses in the world.

In her increasingly extensive vocabulary we now have: stand, whoah, back, forward one (for her to move one foot at a time), steady, walk on, trot on, breakfast, and, of course, Put On Your Duchess Face.

Also, I suspect that she has a pretty clear idea of what good girl means. Along with brilliant, beautiful, bonny and love of my life.

And later in the day, the equally clever and charming Kingston Hill stormed into the general racing consciousness by absolutely hosing up in the big race of the day, and laying down a marker for next season’s classics. He confirmed his place in my heart by refusing to take a drink afterwards, because he was far too busy pricking his ears and posing for pictures and soaking up the approval of the crowd. I’m not sure I ever saw a two-year-old so composed and intelligent and interested in what was going on around him. His trainer, the very brilliant Roger Varian said, with smiling pride: ‘he’s a complete professional; he travelled better than all the older horses.’ I hope he winters well and comes back to delight us next year.

(I’ve stopped putting up pictures which are not mine here, because I must respect copyright, but if you want to see a glimpse of his dear face, go to my Twitter feed @taniakindersley and you can find him there. I think re-tweeting photographs is allowed.)

In which everything almost CRASHES. And, of course, Red the Mare saves the day.

The day, which started off on a blast with good HorseBack work and 1378 words of book, went into a spiral at about 3.30pm as my computer began to exhibit signs of catastrophic failure.

You all know this. You have all had the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. I jabbed pointlessly with my finger, booted and rebooted, prayed to the non-existent technology gods, grew tearful, shouted at myself for being such an idiot for not heeding the warning signs earlier, and reflected bitterly on my absolute dependence on this machine. All my work is in here; all my pictures, music, communications. I have, for once in my life, backed up the most important files, but even then, if the thing were to go phut, which it was threatening to do, I am left with nothing but a useless black box and I live forty miles from the nearest computer shop, and that is the eighth circle of hell that is PC World. I would almost rather pull out my own fingernails than go there.

As I was wrestling and swearing and weeping and praying, I thought I might ask the Horse Talker to do evening stables tonight. I would have to stay shackled to my desk and curse the ghastliness of the modern electronic world. Then I thought: bugger it. I managed to shut down the computer. I’ll just give it a little rest, I thought, and go and put on Red’s raincoat, since it had started pelting with rather cold rain. She is a thin-skinned thoroughbred. Unlike native breeds, she needs a little protection.

When I got to the field, she was sheltering under her favourite tree, with her small herd gathered safely around her. The moment she saw me at the top gate, she led them all the way up, in Indian file. I dashed in, tense and furious still from the computer frenzy, flapping the rugs about in a most unhorsewoman-like manner.

My darling old duchess stopped stock still and looked at me seriously as if to say: yes, I suspect it is the moment for the lightweight waterproof. She ducked her head and stood like a statue as I fumbled about with the straps. She sighed a little half-suppressed sigh, as if not wanting to be rude. (We do, after all, put a high premium on manners in this field.)

Autumn the Filly then did the same. My angst fled. I was so overcome with the goodness and sweetness of these two clever equines, who presented themselves politely in the middle of a violent rainstorm, with no need for a halter or a rope, and did not appear to mind how cack-handed I was as I fiddled about in a way calculated to irritate a sensitive flight animal. Myfanwy the Pony, being a hardy mountain breed, does not need rugging, and merely stood to one side, watching the proceedings with a sage eye.

Red blew down her nose and rested her head against me and I stroked her sweet spot and chatted to her for a bit and felt my knotted shoulders come down. Every damn time, she gives me the gift of peace. Then she whickered gently to remind me that it was time for her tea.

When I got back, restored, I turned the shaky contraption back on. There was no BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH, but it was all glitchy and scratchy and mostly unresponsive. Finally, I got some kind of scan to work. It turned out that I had 7099 catastrophic errors. My poor old computer, I thought; all that time I was berating it and cussing it and jabbing it, it was doing its best. I had let it get clogged with junk and nonsense and fragments.

The good old cleaner chugged away, and suddenly, miraculously, it was working again. So I write this with grateful fingers and think that never again shall I let the poor machine get in such a mess. And I reflect, as always, how miraculous it is that even in the midst of a crashing tech fail, that great red mare can still calm my troubled mind.

Almost time for The Archer now, so just two quick pictures, of the little Zen mistresses who hold my sanity in their dear hooves:

(Don’t you love that little Myfanwy face in the background? Whilst the big girls come to the gate at feeding time, she stays staunchly under her favoured tree, until the bowls come out and it is time to line up at the fence. Makes me laugh, every morning, and every evening.)

Shared experience. Or, a still small moment of calm.

This morning, I woke to a low sky and a light, misty rain. It’s that kind of rain where there is just a sense of water in the air; less falling than swirling, almost like a flying dew.

The Horse Talker and I arrived at the paddock at the exact same moment. At the exact same moment, we saw the exact same thing. All three of the girls were lying down in the paddock, in a delightful collective doze. We made Did You See That faces at each other, and walked in cat-like silence through the gate so as not to disturb the glorious picture.

The little pony decided to get up, and performed some astonishing yoga stretches with her hind legs, which made us double up with laughter. Then we each went to our own horses and sat with them and stroked their dear faces and entered into the circle of calm which they had created.

It’s quite rare that we see them lying down. Autumn the Filly was flat on her side, completely flaked out. Red was resting on her belly, her long legs curled up under her, her chin resting dreamily on the grass. It’s also quite rare that a horse will stay down when a human approaches. Often they get up and shake themselves. Their flight instincts mean that they have to trust you a lot to stay in the vulnerable prone position. That is why it is always very touching when you see pictures of people lying with their equines.

They were both so still it was as if every atom in their bodies was at rest. They were in a low, humming dream state, every part of them existing in peace. The field was very quiet, apart from the lone cry of a circling buzzard. The misty rain had driven away all the flies and brought a sort of suspended animation with it, as if the world was on hold. Nothing existed but these beautiful creatures and these two grateful humans.

We laughed and smiled at each other and invented fanciful scenarios as to why they were so dozy. Rather madly, there is to be a techno concert on Saturday in the cut hayfield, and we decided that the girls had clearly been up all night practising their rave moves. No wonder they were so sleepy.

Eventually, Red got to her feet. Autumn was still dozing. The Horse Talker and I went up to the shed to make breakfast. I let Red out into the set-aside so she could do some free grazing. This bit of the field is where the good grass is, and there is no fence. She could, I suppose, gallop off to Tarland if she really wanted, but she doesn’t. She will usually come when I whistle, or if she is too busy eating, stand quietly when I come to collect her.

As we were mixing up the feeds, the Horse Talker and I suddenly heard a swish of grass and a dash of hooves, and Red arrived at a busy trot and poked her white face into the doorway, urgent enquiry in her eyes, as if to say ‘You are making breakfast and you did not tell me?’ She looked so comical that it made us laugh and laugh.

The whole thing was one of the most enchanted hours I’ve ever spent in my life. But what was particularly lovely about it is that it was shared. The Horse Talker and I are now custodians of that collective memory, and we shall be able to say to each other, when the hard snows come and we are trudging through the winter mud, or when we are having a bad day, or when we wake to a grumpy morning – ‘Do you remember that day?’

I am solitary by nature. I do a lot of things alone. I need quiet and peace; I like the space of my silent room. But sometimes, in life, it’s important to have a witness. I thought this as I came back to my desk to start work. I thought suddenly, that is what this blog is all about. I started it, ruthlessly, blatantly, because I thought I could go viral and everyone would buy my book and I should be rich and retire and buy a boat.

The internet gods laughed at that puny plan, but I continued doing it because I discovered I liked it for its own sake. I love the small, tight band of Dear Readers. I love that you remember the Duchess and the Pigeon, and that you have taken Mr Stanley to your hearts. I love the little messages which wing their way from as far as New Zealand and Sri Lanka and California.

People tend to be quite sneery about blogs and social networks. It’s all ghastly self-indulgence, absurd show-boating, awful narcissism. The tired old joke about Twitter is: who cares what you had for breakfast? (Although absolutely nobody I know tweets about bacon and eggs.)

In fact, although these grouchy criticisms have a tiny acorn of truth in them, I think there is something quite profound going on. I think it is to do with having a witness. I think, at its best, this new medium offers something wonderfully collective. Here are our small lives; they are seen.

Of course lives are seen by the real people in the real world; the family and friends and best beloveds. But there is nothing wrong with virtual seeing in the virtual world. It’s not all trick cyclists and Look Ma, no hands. It can be a simple, good-hearted offering of some of the lovely moments.

When the news is dark and the world seems crazed and the big things are so big and bad that the battered brain can hardly take them in, the small, ordinary pleasures in small, ordinary lives can be an anchor to sanity. As much as there is flimsy and nonsense and pointless shouting and idiot arguments in the virtual world, there is also a lot of kindness of strangers. There are shards of wisdom and moments of glad grace. You get a glimpse into lives of which you would otherwise know nothing. I think there is something rather marvellous in that.

 

Today’s pictures:

One from the morning field:

The day was too gloomy for pictures, so here are some of the Beloveds from the last few sunnier days:

The focus is hysterically wrong in this picture, but I love it, because it gives a sense of the happiness of the dear little band:

Free grazing. Two things make me smile: Stanley the Dog channelling his inner horse, and the most excellent colour coordination:

Perfectly synchronised eating:

Is it time for breakfast face:

And a few more of my Hebridean pictures:

I love this one because it could have been taken in 1953:

Happy holiday faces:

Drama; or, the arrival of the black helicopters

High drama in the night, as helicopters with searchlights hover low over the village. The Horse Talker wakes up at 3am to find her entire house is shaking. Thinking only of what the horses must be making of this unexpected airborne activity, she rushes up in her pyjamas to check on the herd, whilst Stanley the Dog and I sleep through it all.

She finds the little band amazingly calm. Red the Mare has taken up her familiar station at the head of the pack, in protective stance.

Red does this when there is any fracas or hullabaloo. When unexpected fireworks go off, and I race to the paddock myself, I always find her staunchly in place, between her two charges and the potential danger.

It touches me amazingly how seriously she takes her duties as lead mare, and it is one of the things I love most in her. She has never been a boss in her life, and had to learn it all as she went along. At first, she over-compensated madly, preening and prancing and dancing round the field with her tail stuck vertically in the air and her head stretched to the sky, performing impossible bucking and rearing combinations to indicate her dominance. Now she gently moves her two girls round the field from time to time, to remind them she is in charge, and doggedly keeps them safe from any perceived harm.

It turns out that a poor old lady wandered from the local care home in the night and lost herself on the hill. Police, sniffer dogs and mountain rescue all joined in the search, and she was found and taken to Aberdeen Infirmary. It astonished us all how much manpower was hurled at the problem and how quick and efficient the effort was. But since the most noise we hear in the night is usually the cry of the oyster-catchers and the occasional chilling death-yell of the owls as they hunt small creatures, it has been a bit of a shock all round. In the newsagent, they can talk of nothing else.

The touching thing, from a personal point of view, is the joint custody of our field. Whilst I slumber, the Horse Talker is on full vigil. First thing in the morning, I take up the baton, and go to check the herd myself. Autumn the Filly has suffered some mysterious stiffness and imbalance, we are not sure whether coincidental or not, and I spend half an hour checking her before sending off reassuring emails. Then, the two of us meet to survey our girls, relive the night’s events, and give everyone a soothing pick of the lush grass in the set-aside.

Sole responsibility for equines is a heavy burden to carry; we are both lucky enough to have each other to lean on. It’s not just when things come out of a clear sky, as they literally and metaphorically did last night; it’s also that it’s lovely to have a witness, to share the progress and the triumphs and the enchanting, funny things that the girls do. It would not be nearly so lovely if there were only one set of eyes to see all that. It goes back a little to my previous theme; it is Look, look, and the giving of time and attention. It is why, I suspect, people put up their horsey pictures on Facebook or share links on Twitter. The horse love is a consuming one, and sometimes it spills over and needs to be shared.  

 

The day is cantering away from me now, so just time for one picture today. I have not managed to catch a good herd photograph lately, so this one is from a couple of weeks ago, showing my dear girl watching over her little herd. One should not get sentimental about horses; they are not sentimental about us. But it does bring a tear to my eye:

In which a mysterious event occurs.

Here is the ridiculous story I was promising you.

It took place two nights ago.

At 9.31pm, on a quiet Monday, I hear the four words I dread the most. ‘The horse are out.’

The Horse Talker and I like to lean over the gate and watch our little herd with adoring eyes, and discuss at vast length how calm, how tractable, how happy, how unshockable they are. This is faintly self-indulgent, since it is partly due to the work we have done with them. We had fabulous raw material to work with, but the daily groundwork, desensitising, attention to detail has paid off, and we are not above the occasional naughty clap on the back. We are only human after all.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, they go nuts in the night and completely trash a strong wooden post and rail fence.

The neighbour who lives next to the field hears an almighty crash, and looks out to find the two bigger mares racing at full speed past his window. What is so funny, in retrospect, is that having got out into the wide yonder of the rolling set-aside, they choose to rush back to the top gate and try to get back into the paddock, as if in apology for their errant behaviour.

I tear down and round them up and get them back in. The Horse Talker arrives, and we survey the devastation. One whole bottom rail has come completely off, two discrete top rails have been trashed and smashed and are at crazy, splintered right angles. But the really, really weird thing is that they are facing inwards, as if the force which broke them came from the outside.

The Horse Talker and I turn at once into a pair of equine Miss Marples. We examine the hoof prints, the skid marks on the grass, the trajectories. I actually attempt to reconstruct the incident, but we cannot see how it was done, with the angles of the breaks the way they are, and also the position of the scratches on Red’s body. Autumn the Filly, true to her amazing, laid-back, get away with anything nature, has come away almost entirely unscathed, except for one tiny scrape on her off fore, which has barely even broken the skin.

None of it makes any sense. Miss Marple herself would be baffled and have to eat her cloche hat. Quite apart from the puzzling nature of the broken fence, which appears to defy the laws of physics, horses would have to get into a terrible state to crash through a sturdy post and rails.

Tractors, trailers rattling with blocks of granite, and a variety of thundering diggers come in and out of that field all the time. There is a random person who lets off loud gunshots in the woods. Strange groups of ramblers appear, rustling their Ordnance Survey Maps. The herd does not bat an eye.

When the shelter was being built, the shattering noise of the nail gun did not even cause them to lift their heads from their hay. Close by, the old Coo Cathedral, a palace built for cows in the 19^th century and now used for weddings, sees firework displays on the occasional Saturday night which sound as if civil war has broken out. When this last happened, two weeks ago, I tore down to the field in the pitch dark, expecting to find the girls going nuts. Instead, Red had gathered her little band in the farthest corner, under the soothing shelter of the wooded hill, and was standing between her two charges and the devastating noise. She was alert and scanning the horizon for possible threats, but there was no sense of terror. She was just on watch, that was all.

Who knows what will frighten a flight animal? Red will walk calmly up to a huge, clattering scarlet digger and stick her nose in the cab to say hello to the Young Gentleman, whom she loves, but the other day decided she was really quite shocked by a pair of blackbirds.

Even so, one of the things that I have taught her is not to go into a rising escalation of fear. That’s what the desensitising is for. Slightly paradoxically, it is to teach horses that fear is all right; it is just a thing, it will not kill them. So you crinkle a plastic bag, for instance, and they start and tremble and shoot their heads in the air, and then you indicate by your own body language that the thing is not, in fact a mountain lion, and after a moment, they believe you. There’s also a dance of bringing the terrifying object in, and then removing it; more of the pressure release principle. At the end, we always say to our girls: ‘See? It did not eat you.’ They learn to feel a moment of alarm, but this does not then soar into a rising arc of panic. They come back to us. It does not mean they will never spook, but it means that a three act drama is then much less likely.

And yet, something, something, happened in that field, which must have terrified them out of their wits, a mystery which we may never unravel.

For two nights, it disturbs me so much I cannot sleep. I hate it when anything happens to upset the herd, and I hate to see my beloved Red with Wound Cream all over her beautiful body. Wound Cream, which really is its name, is the most miraculous thing I’ve ever found. It’s by Royal Appointment, and quite right too; I imagine the Queen loves it. You put it on that nastiest cuts and scratches, and the next day, they are healed. Red has one determined cut which is still on the mend, but almost all of her scars are already fading.

I suddenly realise this morning that because I am unsettled by her being unsettled, and because I cannot work out what the hell went on, and because I have not slept for two nights, she is picking up on all that – what the Beloved Cousin calls, descriptively, being jangly. The Horse Talker and I look anxiously at our girls and say to them: ‘Oh, if only you could speak.’ We long for them to tell us the story.

But now, I see this is not the point. I’ve being babying and gentling Red for two days, but this in fact is not what she needs. So I do some proper work with her. Out in the wide three acre field, I work with her at liberty, and she hooks on at once, and drops her head, and follows my feet exactly – a move to the right, a circle to the left, four paces backwards, stop, start, quick slow. There it is, the harmony again. Everything in her big red body relaxes; she has her Good Leader back. That’s all she wanted.

She loves love, and will present herself for it. She will make a sweet face and offer her head for scratching. She will stand for long minutes by my side, leaning on my shoulder as I rub her dear cheek. But this is secondary, for her. Horses experience love in a very different way than humans, and their version of what we call love is mostly based on feeling safe.

She doesn’t want me jangly and fretful. She wants me leading her round a field, confident and certain. Then she can relax. I’d forgotten this for a bit, and this morning I remembered, and my lovely girl let go her nightmares and followed me willingly and with gratitude.

The Bizarre Event starts to fade. I hate mystery. I love explanations. But we have to chalk this one down in the category of May Never Be Solved.

Still, we were lucky. The kind neighbour mended the fence; the other kind neighbour is on full night patrol in his monster truck, just in case any random human agency was involved. Our little herd is protected by the kindness of the compound, their scratched bodies are mending, and they revert to their usual, happy, dozy state.

I have to put away the ghastly imaginings of what might have been, of the potentially catastrophic injuries they might have suffered, and feel grateful that the ending was really a happy one. The best horseman I know, my cousin’s Old Fella, lost a horse not long ago when it crashed through the gate from its field for no known reason, and broke its shoulder. The fates were kind to us; we got off miraculously lightly. I must remember that, and not dwell on the horrors which might have been.

 

Today’s pictures:

This is an absurd picture of some clouds I took by mistake. But I rather love it. It’s a bit like a painting of the sky:

The herd, grazing calmly, as if Great Escapes never crossed their dear minds:

My poor girl, getting back to normal:

Although she would like to show me all her battle scars, masked by the wonder Wound Cream:

M the P, unfazed by the entire event:

And Mr Stanley the Dog is most concerned with catching bluebottles:

The hill, which stays unchanged through it all:

The end of the week; or, I can’t remember what I was going to say

I was going to write a whole thing about flaws. I had it, running in my head all morning. Ironically, whilst it sat snugly inside my brain, it was flawless. Ha, ha, ha, go the gusts of ironical laughter.

I think my thesis was: flaws are good. They are what make humans lovable. Diamond-hard perfection is of course not possible, but some people manage to give a simulacrum of it. But the real beloveds are the ones who not only have chinks in their armour, but who cannot help but show the chinks.

I was able to bring evidence to bear. I was going to show you my working.

And now it has all gone.

Never mind. Feels quite symbolic, really. Like a little parable.

The week is coming to a close and I am stuttering to a halt. I did a lot of HorseBack work, I wrote many, many words of book. This morning, I got up early to dazzling sun and put on a further 1358. Half of them will go in the second draft, but still. They are scratches on the page and that’s what matters.

I said goodbye to the servicemen who have been with us this week, under the kind Deeside sunshine. I checked the mare’s foot, which is bruised. The heat has gone and she is nodding her head at me as if to say: I’ll be fine. Mr Stanley the Dog staged two great escapes, which luckily did not end in disaster. (He went to investigate a very tempting building yard just across from my house. And for those of you who worry about these things: far from a public highway, so no actual danger.) I even sent some long overdue emails.

I still keep finding Sir Henry Cecil tributes, which make me cry. Yesterday, Warren Place sent out the first horses since his death, and Songbird and Morpheus won beautifully for Lady Cecil, in whose name they now run. They were both so bonny and imperious, streaking away ahead of their fields, that they reminded me poignantly of all that lost greatness.

I got my outside tap to work, with the help of my kind neighbour. This is a hang out more flags moment for me. Now I can water the white lilac.

And that’s it really. That’s all I am capable of. I’ve done all my work; for once I have beaten time. Now I’m going to watch the racing from Sandown and York, two of my favourite courses in the world.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are a little photo essay, for a change. This is what I see when I go down to the small herd each morning. This is why even after the darkest night, I start the day with a smile on my face.

Some of the pictures are not of high quality, because I was quite a long way away, and just pointing and shooting on auto-focus. But I wanted you to get an idea of the sweetness.

First sight. Red the Mare spots me:

She at once sets off. The other two are in no hurry:

I love that I SEE YOU face. Notice Autumn the Filly is still flat out. This is because she is one of the most laid-back horses I have ever met:

Myfanwy the Pony decides to get moving:

And the chilled American Paint at last hauls herself upright:

And then there is some ambling:

The lead mare is on her way. Nothing will stop her queenly progress:

The two junior members don’t like to rush anything:

And round the corner she comes, with Stanley the Dog in the lead:

The dozy beauty, with the wind in her mane:

And finally the sweet hello here I am face, ready for love. Which of course she gets, in spades:

I genuinely do not know what I did to deserve her.