Lost thoughts.

Quite often, I wake up in the morning and write the blog in my head as I brush my teeth. I cannot tell you the dazzling nature of my thoughts at this point in the day. I grow excited, thinking: ah, at last, I have something really quite wonderful for the Dear Readers. There will be existential musings, and the human condition, and darting arrows flying out of the left field. How happy everyone will be.

Then, life happens. I cook breakfast for The Mother and the lovely Stepfather. I walk the dog. I feed the horse, work the horse, ride the horse, settle the horse back in her field with everything she needs for the day. Quite often, when I think I am finished, I go back and have a quick chat with the horse, usually about how much I love her.

Then I canter off to HorseBack and take some pictures and talk about all the things I need to know about. Today, there were two enchanting visitors there, so I talked to them. I come back, edit the pictures, try to keep the archive in some kind of order, decide what posts I need to write, write them, select appropriate photographs to go with them, and put them up on the Facebook. As I am doing this, I try hard to avoid getting distracted by the latest story about Stephen Fry, or a collage of baby pandas.

I have a quick look at the racing, in case I want to have a bet in the 2.45 at Ayr. Luckily, today I did not want to.

Then I write a book. Because, you know.

By this stage, I remember that I have forgotten to have lunch. On tragic days, I make a quick ham sandwich. Today, I am being a proper person and throwing together a little chicken stew with leeks and celery and potatoes. (It was half done last night, and now I’m just finishing it off. I do feel really quite domestic godessy as the homespun smell wafts through the house.)

Then, I decide that all the stupid admin which is waiting reproachfully for me will have to wait another day.

Then I gallop down to the field to give the mare her tea, put out the hay, make a rugging decision, tell her once more about the deep, deep love, give her a good rub, check her legs, and generally make sure she is happy for the night to come. My friend who shares the paddock will be there, and we may discuss weather, water troughs, herd behaviour, or life. Mostly life, these days.

At this stage, I wish I had taken more iron tonic. The brain is beginning to fizzle and crack as if its circuits are starting to short. I review my work, make a resolution to do more cutting tomorrow, sometimes make a plan for another chapter, which is very naughty since at this stage I am supposed to be slaying darlings, not writing more of the damn things.

The morning seems a long, long way away. The dazzling thoughts are quite, quite lost. Did they really dazzle? Were they even thoughts? I decide, dolefully, that I’ll just give you some nice pictures instead, and hope you will not notice the thought deficit. I wonder if I should tell you about the moment, under the glancing Scottish sunshine, when the red mare not only came to a perfect halt off my seat, with no rein at all, but then, from a very slight movement of my legs, took four delicate steps backwards. Backing without reins. Should I tell you that I burst into shouting laughter of joy, and whooped into the bright air, and then fell to laughing again, and flung myself on her neck and told her that she was the best and dearest and most clever and brilliant?

No, I think, don’t tell them that. Poor Dear Readers, they have enough to put up with. They have to hear about that horse every absurd day of the week. This is supposed to be for them, after all, a tiny divertissement in a hard week. Give them a nice photograph of a hill or something, because not everyone has a hill.

Then I read myself a small lecture on the perils of perfectionism, press publish, and give Stanley the Dog a biscuit. Because it is the least he deserves.

 

Today’s pictures:

I went for a quick drive after HorseBack, a little loop to the north, and this is what I saw:

This one is called Queen’s View, because Queen Victoria loved it:

That is why I get a little hysterical about Scotland, and the blue hills, and the beauty. That is six miles from my front door. That is why I can never, ever get over my good fortune.

Posy Posington from yesterday morning:

And the amazing flying ear of Captain Handsome:

Brevity and beauty.

Ravishing, glittering day. Freezing cold: three degrees with savage wind-chill. Took the red mare for a walk. She has slight mud fever and is a little sore, so we are on remedial walking to get the circulation going in her sadly puffy fetlocks. A lady stopped, looked out of her car window, and shouted: ‘Oh, but she’s so beautiful.’ So that made my day. Did a madly knotty piece of work which almost had my brain falling out of my ears, so there is no functioning cerebral cortex left for the blog. It’s shameful I know, but I must heed my limitations. Once the brain goes out the ear, there is no remedy, except sitting very, very still in a darkened room. I may, if I am exceptionally brave, read a book.

I hope to be functioning more efficiently tomorrow. In the meantime, here is some visual beauty for you, on which to rest your tired eyes. This was Scotland in the late morning, looking south and west over the Dee valley, as I went up and did my HorseBack UK work:

And, at home, the Best Beloveds:

A small thought on beauty.

Apparently, the great Helen Mirren has just said something like: ‘I’m not gorgeous, I never was, but I was always OK-looking.’

In some ways she is absolutely right. She is not classically beautiful. Her nose is a long and interesting shape and she does not quite fit into the current size nothing diktat. Probably, on an objective measure, she is indeed ‘OK-looking’. What she has though is something that makes her more ravishing than correctly obvious beauties. She is comfortable in her skin. And that shines out and makes her radiant.

I have seen three women in life who are not classical beauties but who have that same beaming radiance. They are: Dawn French, Judi Dench, and the Queen. Admittedly, I was quite a long way away from the Queen, since there were sixty thousand other people there at the time, but you could see the amazing beam even then. She is much, much more beautiful in life than she is in pictures, on account of a sort of internal light which streams out of her.

I’ve always thought beauty in women has been mis-sold. It’s almost a category error. Instead of seeing beauty for what it is - aesthetically pleasing, rare, and a pleasure for the observer rather than the holder – people often see it as the key to something else. It is regarded as the secret to love, the route to happiness, the path to fame, even a consolation against the hard realities of the world. I think: when poor Gwyneth Paltrow split up from the father of her children, did she look at her perfect cheekbones and think well, that’s all right then? I doubt it.

I brushed up on Saturday night and went for a rare evening out. In the old days, I would try for a simulacrum of beauty. I would do the face packs and primp the hair and try three different kinds of lipstick. Even though it is accepted in my family that it always was my sister and my mother who were the beauties whilst I was the girly swot, I did try and chase some kind of magazine face. Sometimes, if the hair fates were kind and the light was coming from the right direction, I could almost get a glimpse of it, just for a second.

Now, I am old and realistic. I dress up just enough so that I don’t have to care what I look like. I reach a level of acceptable polish so that I don’t frighten the horses, but can concentrate on good conversation and laughter and meeting interesting new people. It is for this reason that I never wear high heels. I can’t be amusing if my feet are hurting.

The evening was a blast. I found at least two fellow politics geeks, and we had a fine time ranging over everything from the aftermath of the Scottish referendum to the origins of the European dream to Reagan and supply side economics. There was one gentleman I had not talked with before, and as we delved into the thickets of the terrifying Spanish unemployment figures, I could see him giving me a little look of surprise. I think the look said: I was not necessarily expecting this subject from a female in a frock and a jewel. (This may be unfair of me. I have been burned before by the expectation that somehow the serious subjects belong to the big old males, whilst we pink and fluffy ladies discuss domestic matters and shoes and the price of fish. But I must not be paranoid about it.)

I am absolutely buggery bollocks at small talk and polite conversation. I can only really do the meaty subjects. Give me the human condition or the Scandinavian social contract or mortality or tribalism, and I’m off to the races. I admit this makes me an entirely acquired taste, and I do sometimes catch a flashing look of terror on people’s faces as I clamber onto one of my hobby horses and gallop off in all directions. I can do this sort of conversation at social gatherings when I’ve made enough effort to look OK, and then I can forget about my lipstick and get on to the good stuff.

So I love Helen Mirren for saying what she said. There is such pressure on women to look a certain way, mostly young and thin, that it feels like a day in the country to hear a famous female talk about herself in such a way.

I think beauty is a gift, but it is a gift more for the beholder than the possessor. I adore looking at pictures of Audrey Hepburn or Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly, as I love looking at pictures of blue Scottish hills or a fine thoroughbred. It’s just that I don’t think their beauty necessarily brought them all that much joy. They generously gave it to the world, which could regard it with delight. It was not the solution to anything. It was what it was, a thing lovely in itself.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are some sweet shots from the archive. I keep trying to organise my own photographs, and I keep failing. What these ones make me realise is that there really are only three wild beauties in my life – the little Paint filly, the red mare, and Stanley the Dog. No matter how many face packs I put on, I shall never get close to their raging pulchritude. That realisation not only puts me in my very human place, but also, quite frankly, is rather a relief. I can stick to my muddy boots and the straw in my hair and leave the gorgeousness to the experts.

Here they are, the absolutely lovelies:

Beauty.

After the storms, Scotland looked very, very beautiful today.

The paddock now has a little loch in it:

But Herself is all muddy and happy and calm again, now those crazy winds have stopped blowing and she can get her rug off and have a good old loaf in the sunshine:

From the garden:

Focus is all over the shop in this next series, but it’s a sweet little photo essay. Red was doing her Minnie the Moocher walk to come and say hello, whilst Stanley the Dog was sunbathing. I just love Stan the Man being so preoccupied with his serious stick that he does not notice a HUGE RED MARE right behind him:

Also, what makes me laugh is that the duchess can’t be fagged to go round, but insists that the young shaver gets out of her regal way.

Also, for those of you interested in herd behaviour, and I know that number runs into legions, the red mare is giving a perfect lesson in pressure-release. Ask once, gently. If there is no response, ask again, more firmly. THEN REALLY MEAN IT. At once release the pressure when the desired result is achieved. She’s been watching her Warwick Schiller videos. Clever girl.

The dark night of the soul

WARNING: written after low-grade virus and disturbed sleep patterns. Very real danger that it makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

 

I have spent two days lying crossly in bed whilst a low-level virus rampaged around my battered body. Apparently, there are at least four bugs at large in the village – a vomiting bug, a bog-standard cold, a sort of heady, achy flu-like virus, and a more general stomach/head/everything thing. I had the nausea with a general feeling of having walked into a heavy brick wall, whilst being kicked by the familiar, furious Shetland pony.

I slept for pretty much thirty-six hours straight, and then, after all that sleeping had messed about with my internal clock, last night found myself wide awake at four am, cataloguing every single thing that was wrong with me and my life.

I never quite know why the black hours of the night bring about this melancholy inventory. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, in The Crack-Up, ‘in a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning’, and he should know. Perhaps it is the sense of isolation, as one lies wakeful and restless whilst the rest of the world seems asleep and oblivious. The smallest things loom large, the tiniest glitch sputters into crazed unmanageability, and all the ghastly flaws troop out like some twisted Rocky Horror Show tribute act.

By four-thirty am, I had decided that:

My new book would be a catastrophic failure and everyone would laugh and scoff and point and I should have to go back to the wilderness years where I belonged.

I was no good at riding, nor ever should be.

My HorseBack work was shoddy and pathetic.

My inability to keep my office tidy or to open my post in a timely manner or to reply to outstanding emails was shocking and derelict and beyond belief in a female of advancing years.

And that, of course, I should die alone, unmourned and unmissed, and good riddance.

So that was a jolly half hour.

Then I read myself a lecture on not being so self-indulgent and stupid and went to sleep.

When I woke, rather jet-lagged, but with the viral load miraculously gone, the world seemed possible and ordinary again.

Yes, I would die, as everyone shall, but there’s no point dwelling on it. My office is a bit of a muddle and I am rather dilatory at admin, but this does not mean I am going out and conning old ladies out of their savings or writing cruel leader articles in The Daily Mail. (Leave poor old Mr Mili Senior alone, I cry.) The riding is fine. Red the Mare is happy as a nut and welcomed me back to the field after two days away with intense sweetness. Everyone at HorseBack seemed pleased to see me. It’s not the best Facebook page anyone ever wrote, and the numbers go up as well as down, but it’s something for a cause in which I believe and I shall get better at it.

The book is, as all books are, a crap shoot, and I can only do my word counts and think hard and bend my will to the task and do my best. If it fails, it fails. It won’t kill me. I’ve failed before. I’m still bruised from a career setback which was beyond my control. This is part of the human zoo; it is not the dear old Whig view of history, where the lovely curve of progress soars upwards in an irrepressible arc of glory. It is what happens. It is not the End of Everything.

What I did get a sense of, in that umbrous, searching half hour, was what real depression must feel like. In my ordinary weeks and months, I get intense sorrow, flashes of profound melancholy, sometimes a feeling of hanging on by my fingertips. I suspect this is standard issue. I do not barrel through life, unheeding and impervious, as I fondly imagine some sanguine people do, although I wonder if they only exist in my imagination. I think too much and fret too much and am too much struck by the sorrow and the pity, the unfairnesses and griefs to which so many of the six billion souls on this blue planet are heir.

The way I think of it is that you are doing all right if there are joys to match the melancholies. If you can watch the turning of the leaves or feel your heart flip when a certain red mare whickers in low delight or go crazy when a dear old familiar wins the 3.30 at Newmarket or laugh like a drain because a canine does nutty things with his ears: then, then – you are all right.

The true depressive loses joy. I know a few. I know someone who, on occasion, cannot physically leave her room for up to two weeks at a time. I know someone who once stared blindly at one of the most majestic glens in the whole of Scotland and turned to me with blank eyes and said: ‘I cannot see the beauty.’ I think: that is when the real dark night of the soul becomes immovable, when you cannot see the beauty. As long as the beauty can be seen, there is hope.

As I write this, I feel the usual frisson of terror that I have admitted weakness. There is a huge part of me which wants to do unicycle tricks for you. Bugger mortality and fear of failure and moments of crushing shame – surely what you really should have is trees and love and Stanley the Dog doing amusing things with sticks. (And today, he really did do very amusing things with sticks indeed.) But when I am at my most poncy, I like to think that the Human Condition is my special subject, and this is human condition, with bells and knobs and all manner of things on.

I write it partly because I like authenticity, and I like admission. I write it partly because I hope someone out there might sigh and sigh and say: me too. (The soothing balm of shared experience is one of the things I love most on the internet.) I write it to remind myself how lucky I am, because I get these crushers once in a while, in the night, when I am ill and assailed with weakness, but I do not have to drag through that black curtain every day, as some people do.

I write it because it is true.

And also – and this really is my final thought – I write it because this blog is a small place. When I started, I wanted to go viral. I wanted love and acclaim and applause and numbers. I never got them. At first, I was hurt and affronted by this. I made the huge mistake of taking it personally. Now, paradoxically, it is what saves me. Because this is a place of a few, select Dear Readers, I may feel safe, and admit all the absurdities, almost sure that nobody will laugh and point.

Oh, oh, and one more final final point, because I’m still feeling a bit peculiar and I clearly have no control over my fingers. I suddenly think: I’ve got it wrong about the laughing and pointing. People may easily laugh and point; they always have and they always shall. They may mock and raise their eyebrows and judge. It’s almost impossible not to judge. I try not to do it; I try to remember that line at the beginning of Gatsby; but judging is as human as gossip or bad jokes.

The secret is, I think, to get it into its correct category. (You know how I hate a category error.) And the correct category is that the pointing is almost always about the pointer, and not the pointee. Or, in more technical terms: it’s their stuff.

And now I really am going to stop.

 

Some quick pictures for you before I collapse in a heap:

Comical things with sticks:

These are not very good photographs. Stan the Man was moving too fast for efficient focus. But I wanted you to get a sense of the comedy, and the joy, and the beauty, and, even through the blurriness, I think you can:

Most beautiful and beloved face, taken a few days ago:

Where the hill should be. This was taken before lunchtime today, so you can see the autumn days are growing dark and dramatic: