Actual love and actual trees

An astonishingly lovely and touching weekend. All the relatives were here, from the age of one to the age of eighty. Today, my sister organised a massed tree-planting, for my dad. He died today, two years ago.

The funny thing is that I had got the date wrong in my head. For some reason, I thought it was the 22^nd. So as the tiny great-nephews and nieces and the small cousins ran around shrieking in the Scottish sun, and we got our hands filthy, putting young fruit trees in the dark earth, and dogs barked and rumbled, and everyone laughed their heads off, I had no anniversary feeling. It would be tomorrow that I should mark the auld fella’s passing. This was a free day, all life and light, before the stone wall of the memorial.

It’s brilliant that it turned out that way. Sometimes my vagueness and goofiness really do come in handy. I woke with no presentiment of doom, but ran down to the field and worked for an hour with the mare, and went in to see all the relations for breakfast. I laughed and made jokes and had no sorrow hanging over me.

Now I look through all the pictures and suddenly realise today was in fact the day, and all that love and sweetness and pleasure still sit in me. There is nothing mournful at all, just that antic feeling one gets after seeing a lot of people close to one’s heart, as if every atom in the body is dancing. It could not have been more perfect if it tried.

Yesterday, for my own private memorial, as it was Scottish Grand National Day, I put on an accumulator in Dad’s name. He was really more about betting on horses than putting trees in the ground. It is the Sister and the Brothers and I who love the trees. (If our father had been here today, he would have made kind noises about the plums and apples and damsons, and then asked where the Guinness was.) The acker, in true Dad fashion, was going great guns until the last race, when Nicky Henderson’s sure thing missed the start and got beaten a head in the bumper. That, too, was completely appropriate. I could hear the ghostly sound of laughter from the great William Hill in the sky.

When I talk about love and trees, which I do a great deal, I am often being abstract and metaphorical and symbolic. Today really was actual love and actual trees. And, you know, you just can’t beat them.

 

Today’s pictures:

I took a lot of photographs, but oddly enough, this is the one I like the most, even though it is completely out of focus. I love the smudged figures on the sharp grass. It feels like a bit of a life lesson: a thing does not have to be pristine and immaculate to make one smile.

The planting of the trees:

Me, showing Dad’s tree to the youngest great-niece:

Cousin, playing the Londonderry Air on the Northumbrian pipes:

The Younger Niece, with one of the Great-Nephews:

Lovely Stepfather, working very hard, with delightful cousins:

The Sister and The Aunt:

Running relatives:

With the hill in the background:

Meanwhile, in the quiet of the paddock, Myfanwy the Pony is enjoying the sun:

Stanley the Dog has a ruddy great stick:

 

And my Best Beloved is mooching:

The hill:

How to bet

Author’s note:

This is really long, and about betting on horses. Although I’ve tried to give it a bit of va-va-voom in the prose stakes, so that the general reader could get something out of it, it really is probably for those of you who are interested in this subject.

 

I am sitting in Tebay, my favourite motorway stop, looking out over the Cumbrian hills, and eating special green soup from a Thermos. I made it specially for the journey. I also have a nice little tomato and parsley salad (like Tabbouleh but without the Bulgur wheat) in a Tupperware box. This may be taking my ironical back-to-the-seventies theme too far.

I am quite tired because I’ve driven 270 miles and I got up at five to make the sandwiches for my picnic.

But some of the Dear Readers asked for advice about betting, in the run up to Cheltenham, and I promised I would oblige, and I can’t be one of those people who don’t do what they say they will do.

Here is the first rule of betting:

There is no rule.

It’s a bit like Fight Club like that.

Really what I mean is that you can do everything right, and still lose. Odds-on favourites get turned over all the time. Horses can get bumped and bored, boxed in, brought down. (All the Bs, I notice.) Thoroughbreds are essentially mysterious creatures. Sometimes, they do the equine equivalent of getting out of bed on the wrong side. They are mercurial and highly sensitive. Last year, a great hurdler called Hurricane Fly was running just a little bit below his best. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with him, and he was never disgraced, but all the same, the sparkle of previous seasons had gone. This season, it seems to have come back. No one knows why.

So, perhaps your first rule is to expect losses, and not feel like an eejit if you have them. The professional tipsters, who are paid fat salaries by the national newspapers to dispense punting wisdom, have a league table. It’s worked out on profit to a one pound stake. Almost all of them are in the minus column. There must be hardly another profession on earth where people keep being paid for failure. (No banking jokes, please.)

However, you can make your betting much more enjoyable, and stack the odds in your favour, with some very simple strategies. I offer these humbly, because I lose as often as I win. I am quite richly up on the year, but a lot of that is not at all to do with these things I’m trying to tell you. In fact, some of the reason my William Hill account is as fat as it is is that I opened it to back Kauto Star, in November 2011, when everyone said he was finished. I was so angry that I bet £40 at 6-1. I usually bet in fivers, so you can see the level of my fury. I remember doing the same when everyone said Desert Orchid was on the wane and could not win a fourth King George.

It was that heart over head nestegg which gave me the breathing space to take a few risks, and often it’s the risky bets that have paid off most delightfully.

However, the Dear Readers who asked sounded like beginners, so I’m going to offer the sensible, no-nonsense guide.

If you open an online account, I recommend William Hill. They are easy to use, helpful, and well-laid out. (Ladbrokes are horrid, don’t go near them. Paddy Power is nice but slow; the Tote is fine but a bit busy.)

Your online bookie will give you the Racing Post snapshot on every horse, which is very helpful. If you are at the races, it’s worth getting a Timeform racecard, for ratings and a similar snapshot.

Read these snippets. They contain vital information. What you are looking for is: yard in form, gets the trip, deals with the ground, ran reasonably last time out. Unless there is a big excuse, in which case people will say something like ‘you can put a line through that.’

What I quite often do is rule things out. If you add up the question marks over horses in the race – has never been over three miles, hates heavy ground, etc etc – you are sometimes left with one. That’s how I backed Cape Tribulation in the Argento Chase. He was the only one with no question mark.

Sometimes, you get a feeling for a horse. You don’t know why, but you keep coming back to her or him. I usually follow that feeling, but with VERY small amounts. I had a feeling for darling old Hello Bud at Aintree when he was having his very last go over those mighty fences, when on the book, and at his great age, he was really not fancied to win. So I put on a fiver each-way at 14-1 and he roared home round The Elbow, repelling all boarders.

On the other hand, I sometimes have idiot days, when my Feeling is all wrong, and I lose a pot of money and go into the garden to eat worms. So that’s my other rule: it’s a long game.

If you are just doing it for fun on the day, then say that fifty pounds is part of the price of admission; you are going to lose that money. Or ten or twenty or whatever you can afford. If you win, it’s a bonus, if you lose, the money is already spent in your mind. Never bet more than you can lose. You will feel sick and tearful and stupid.

On the other hand, if you plan to bet regularly, then know one bad day is fine; it’s the overall arc you are looking for.

Everyone has different ideas of fun. If you want to put on a pound and have a shout, find a lively outsider at 20-1. It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of for an odds-on favourite to get turned over by a 33-1 outsider. If you want to pay for dinner, you might choose to be a bit more forensic, in which case you could study the form, and find some of the most deserving favourites and put them in a double or treble. This way, you get a good price. Horses that are very short, when combined, can come out at a handy little four or five to one. I had two of those this week, at Plumpton and Doncaster, and very gratifying they were.

You are probably not a statistic person, but one stat you should know is that favourites win about 50% of the time. 

Unless you have a briefcase of fifties and nerves of steel, I would not back odds-on favourites. You win very little if they oblige, and if they fall at the last, you feel like forty kinds of fool. I do it on very, very rare occasions, and there is usually a lot of love involved. I have backed both Sprinter Sacre and Frankel in the past at odds-on, because I had faith in them and loved them enough to forgive them if it all went south.

If you like backing each-way, which is a sporting bet, it’s really not worth it unless the price is bigger than 4-1. If you like fiddly bets, you can choose four horses and do a variety of accumulators and other fancy tricks. There is a good William Hill betting guide which explains all these. I do one every so often for fun, but mostly stick to trebles and doubles. The problem with accumulators is that all of your fancies bolt up, and you are about to win thousands and then your nailed-on last choice falls at the final hurdle or gets mugged on the line, and you have sackcloth and ashes instead of wine and roses.

If you can, look at the horses themselves. If you are at the races, I recommend the pre-parade ring, which is where they go before they are saddled. Also, it’s often empty. You can commune with the equine beauties, see who is well in his coat, who is on her toes, who is a good mover. What you are looking for is a horse to be alert, but not sweating too much, shiny in the coat, and quite slender. Big, burly horses look lovely, but usually are not match fit; on the other hand, if they look like greyhounds they can be overtrained. Bear in mind that horses have different physical types, just like humans, so some are naturally bigger than others.

Obviously, if you are watching television, it is harder to see the horses since CHANNEL 4 WON’T SHOW THEM TO YOU. No wonder it has lost 12% of the previous audience. In that case, you have to rely on the book.

What else can I tell you? All the obvious things. Don’t chase your losses, have a limit, try not to listen to the last person you see. My old dad used to do this. He’d be approaching the rails and he’d meet someone who’d heard a ‘whisper’ and all the morning homework went out of the window, usually to disastrous effect.

For Cheltenham specifically, I have six words for you. They are:

COURSE FORM COURSE FORM COURSE FORM.

Cheltenham is really tough, and some horses just don’t take to it. You need strong, balanced horses to cope with the undulations and the murderous hill at the end. You need horses who are as game and willing and lion-hearted as they come. If they’ve won there before, put a huge tick in the box.

Also, you can’t mess around with distance at Cheltenham. If they only just get three miles on a flat track, they are certainly not going to get it over the ups and downs of Prestbury Park. Jumping really matters too. Anything with Fs and Us in its form must carry a big question mark.

And one final thing: they need to be mentally tough. Some horses don’t do well in big fields. If they get buffeted about, they can shut down and give up. Some thrive on it, fighting like terriers. Many of the fields at Cheltenham are huge, so if you can find that out, it’s a definite advantage.

More generally, I have a rule that I only bet on races where there are horses I feel quite strongly about. This can be an old hunter chaser I love at Wincanton, or an eager young hurdler who’s just caught my eye. Betting for the sake of betting is very lowering. You need, I think, skin in the game. Maybe you love Ruby Walsh, or perhaps you adore greys, or maybe there is an old veteran you’d love to see get up for one last hurrah. Perhaps you really admire Venetia Williams, the chicest woman in what is still largely a man’s game. One should not let the heart rule the head, but I think the heart must be there. Or it’s just bingo.

And now there is just time for two pictures, using the new Cinemascope function I have just discovered on my lovely free Picasa software:

Happy Friday.

A good Saturday

Exhausted after a tremendous afternoon’s racing. I had a wild accumulator which hinged on two of the tightest of photo finishes, so I was screaming ‘Get up, get up’ and my blood pressure was shooting through the roof. (Luckily, it is historically low, so this may count as an excellent medical intervention.) Stanley the Dog has taken to yowling in protest every time the commentator says ‘Photograph; photograph.’

It all ended well as my brave fancies stuck their dear, doughty noses in front and kept them there for the judge.

There was keen pleasure too in seeing AP McCoy back in the winning enclosure in the JP McManus colours, after their tragic loss of Darlan this week. AP is one of the toughest jockeys I have ever seen in my life. His will to win and his ability to drag himself back from injury are extraordinary. He puts himself through constant physical hardship of a kind difficult for an ordinary human to imagine. But even five days on, that man, who appears to be composed of iron filings, was too distraught to speak of the tragedy.

I must admit, it made me weep. It’s always the most moving when the really strong ones find their voices cracking under the weight of emotion.

Tired too because I actually did social life last night. This almost never happens. It was a tremendous evening, and I roared with laughter and shouted about politics and waved my hands around in the air. I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to be one of those calm, composed people, who speak in quiet sentences and do not shriek and bellow. If anything, it’s getting worse as I get older. Quite soon, I shall not allow myself out of the house at all.

So now I am going to keep old lady hours and stump upstairs very soon with a fat slice of ginger cake and a nice, soothing book.

No time for pictures today. Just this most beloved face:

Last night, one of the interesting people I met was a proper, serious horseman. He is a seasoned professional. Imagine my delight when I discovered that he has a colt he adores so much he actually keeps a picture of the fellow on his telephone. I spend a lot of time feeling rather idiotic about the wild love I have for Red the Mare. It seems I am not alone. Even the hardened pros may succumb. Nicky Henderson, who has been training since I was a little girl, was in inconsolable tears after the loss of his champion on Monday.

There is something about horses. It is a combination of authenticity, beauty, bravery, even mystery. The good ones, the kind, intelligent, bonny, bold ones, can gallop into your heart like nothing else.

An ordinary Saturday

So sorry about the lack of blog yesterday. Technical problems.

Today, the sun came out and the snow returned. A thin, cold, sparking white covered everything again.

It was a usual day. Did horses; walked dog; went to breakfast; discussed equality; went to shop. Went home, did work, read Racing Post, placed bets. Cooked food, ate food. (Beef, for strength.)

Won money. Shouted at the television. (Go on, my son.) Calmed dog, who is still slightly disconcerted by Saturday racing noise. Tweeted incontinently. Always do this on big racing days; oddly, it helps with the nerves.

Practically had seizure as Captain Conan, my huge, sure-fire bet of the day, only just managed to win by a neck. The gallant Captain had five lengths to make up after the last, and did it, step by dogged, gallant step. He’s always done it on class before; now he had to call on guts.

Felt exhausted but happy. Backed three seconds in a row. Lost money. Still well up on the day. Mr William Hill a bit green about the gills.

Walked dog in the chill afternoon air. Went back to horses.

Stood, in the gloaming, for about twenty minutes, just communing with my mare. I do that sometimes.

There’s all manner of work that we do, but sometimes, I like to stand. When she first arrived, she was nervy and uncertain. Everything was too strange for her. She did not want much human contact. I let her find her way. I don’t like crowding or smothering horses. Now, she will stand, at liberty in five acres of field, and choose to be by my side. It’s my finest compliment.

I put my cheek against hers and breath slowly. I murmur a bit of nonsense to her. I scratch her sweet spot. We gaze out at the trees and the sky. My heart turns over.

And that was my very ordinary, very good day.

 

Today’s pictures:

Herd, in the morning sun:

My glorious, dozy girl:

Stanley the Dog went for his first walk with the lovely Stepfather. He was really very good:

Serious sit and stay face:

Hill:

In which, slightly against the odds, I have a very lovely Saturday indeed.

My poor mum is in the hospital. Even though the news is hopeful and she has fabulous doctors and the treatment in Aberdeen is second to none, I hate the thought of her on a ward.

I take my mind off it with horses. First of all my own, who have survived a night of wild gales, but still have so much wind up their tails that they give me a bronco show all round the paddock. Even the quite tubby, quite elderly mountain pony does pirouettes and leaps and spiffy cantering.

Autumn the Filly, true to her mighty Quarter Horse breeding (she is by some tremendous Western champion, who keeps winning things), does her great ventre à terre gallop from one corner of the field to the other.

Red the Mare, not to be outdone, puts on her full Spanish Riding School of Vienna performance. First of all there is the tail, vertically in the air, flying like a flag. Then there is the actual increase in size. I never quite know how horses do this; it’s like watching them assume superpowers. I swear when she draws herself up to full height, she grows about a hand. Then there are the amazing slow motion bucks, the rolling canter, the leaping turns. And finally, most glorious of all, the floating trot. It is as beautiful and stately as anything you might have seen in the Olympic dressage, but because it is a thoroughbred doing it, it’s higher and finer and lighter. It is an astounding combination of elegance and wildness. I laugh out loud, it is so lovely.

Then there is a fine afternoon of racing: the return of the brilliant Hurricane Fly, back to his pomp, a great old amateur record smashed by Mr Patrick Mullins on his father’s delightful mare, and the continuing winning streak of the bold Pete the Feat. He turns out to be wonderfully well-named, as he puts up a gallant front-running performance to record his fourth win in a row, with my money on his dear back.

All my favourite Twittering racegoers are out in force. It’s a whole new thing, watching the racing with a virtual gaggle. They are all incredibly funny and nice: quick to congratulate on a winning bet, generous with their praise of horses and jockeys, profoundly knowledgeable, fired with an enthusiasm which is leavened with a very British, very dry irony.

People tend to get grumpy about social networks, saying they are a poor substitute for real people. But, as I sit, 500 miles north of the racing action, I find my heart gladdened by the metaphorical hats which go flying in the air when a thrilling race is won. It may be virtual, but it is actual too. It is a proper community, and it illuminates my pleasure in the game.

I think: oh, I wish my mum had been able to see the glorious Fly back to his rampant best. She loves Ruby Walsh so; she speaks of him with a maternal fondness. (‘I hope he is eating enough,’ she will say, over the breakfast table. ‘It’s such a hard life for those jockeys.’) Still, let us hope those good Scottish docs fix her right up and send her back to us.

 

Another selection of my Christmas day photographs:

Here I am doing training with Stanley the Dog and the canine of The Older Niece. Who, incidentally, won the Waggiest Dog competition at some very serious London dog show. (The canine, that is; not the niece.)

 

I hope you are having a good weekend, too.

The rain it raineth every day.

The rain pours and pours. The horses and I move into full stoicism mode. Sometimes, when I look up at yet another black sky, with no glimmer of light, I do feel like weeping. Day after day of mud and dreich and wet and cold; it is a drowned world. I scan the weather forecast hopefully for a hint of sunshine.

Out on the racecourse, the tough, brave horses battle through the mud. The jockeys come back with their colours obscured by clods of earth. As a special consolation, I back the first two winners at Ascot. I am so flaky and vague that I completely forget my first wager on Reve de Sivola and back him twice by mistake. He canters home like a really good horse. He jumps beautifully, gets into a lovely rhythm, and makes the three miles in heavy ground look like a bagatelle. I shout and clap and feel rich.

I make celery soup and eat a steak pie for lunch; it’s the weather for comfort food. I contemplate my Christmas arrangements. I have a faint, nagging feeling of something vital forgotten. But dear old Amazon came through, and delivered the great-nephew’s present this morning, and it is so much the very thing that he will love most that it brings a smile to my face.

I write this now after going out to do the horses’ evening feed. The downpour is so intense that it has soaked through my coat and my jeans and even insinuated itself into my tough keeper’s boots. After a bit, I couldn’t get any wetter, and then I embraced the thing with a sort of fatalistic hilarity. It’s only a bit of weather, after all. I shall easily be dry again. It’s not as if my entire house is flooded and my Christmas ruined. Good people work outside in worse elements every day. Then, suddenly, once I had all these thoughts, I rather loved the weather. I loved the fact that I was not mimsing about inside, but out in the gale, carrying the hay and checking the legs and doing something honest and useful. It’s the countrywoman in me. I shall end up one of those tremendous leathery ladies, with a thousand yard stare and no vanity.

In other words: it was an ordinary, rather sweet, very wet day.

 

No possibility of pictures today. Forgive me.

I suddenly missed this person very much, so here she is, from last Christmas, with her special festive bow that The Older Niece tenderly tied round her neck:

She is wearing her slightly put-upon face, because we were about to go for our Christmas walk, and she longed to be off, and I was making her ponce about for her close-up. She really did put up with my nonsense with an awful lot of glad grace. I was very, very lucky to have her, and she leaves a huge dog-shaped hole in my heart.

P.S. Meant to say: there was one more lovely thing. This morning, when I came back from morning stables, several Christmas parcels had been delivered by the postie. One was, amazingly, from the efficient and thoughtful Lou at L’Apothecary. I had put in a late order, on the off-chance, thinking there was little hope it would arrive in time. But thanks to the good old Royal Mail and the extra Yuletide effort of a determined small business, I got my delightful package. When I saw it, I actually exclaimed out loud in surprise and pleasure.

The other had no name or address. I have a SECRET SANTA. I am beside myself.

In which I defy the weather and have A Good Day

The weather is at its most dour and testing. The snow has gone to slush, and then frozen, so it is treacherous underfoot, and there is some charming sleet, blowing in and out over the hill. The sparkling grandeur of Wednesday is a distant memory and now it’s just a question of plugging on through.

I go to the Co-op for supplies. One of the things I like about living in a small village is that you see people you know, whilst out on errands. ‘Hello how are you?’ I carol to the postmistress, whom I keenly admire; ‘Hello, hello,’ I call to the smiling lady who used to work in the newsagent.

There is a warm sense of belonging that comes in a small community, not at all the back-biting, everyone knows everything, small-minded trap of rumour. I like it that when I am cross and tense I can go and have a soothing chat with the librarians, or discuss the terrible weather with the women in the chemist, or buy some tulips from the ladies in the flower shop. I like it that I give the farmer a cheery wave when I drive past him in his muddy blue Landrover, or wave at the postwoman on her rounds.

Today, to my great delight, I run into my friend The Horsewoman. ‘Do you want to meet someone?’ I say, getting Stanley the Lurcher out of the car.

The sleet has blown in, so he is not quite looking at his crest and peak, rather doubtful and damp, but he is duly admired. He is, I discover, admired wherever he goes, and he is charmingly modest about it, as if he has absolutely no idea how handsome he is.

I ask after the horses. (She has a herd of around thirty.) Only afterwards do I realise that I had not asked after the husband or the three charming children. I think I am becoming like one of those crazed cliché horse ladies who can only speak of furlongs and fetlocks, and resolve to do better.

‘Oh,’ says The Horsewoman. ‘I’m so glad you got another dog.’

I think about this afterwards. It is a very, very good and clever thing to say. There is still a tiny, irrational part of me that wonders if it is somehow wrong, that there is a faint disrespect to the memory of my old girls. Then I say to myself this really is stupid, because first of all they are dogs, and do not have coherent thoughts or speak English, and if they did they would certainly say they would not want me moping about by myself. And second of all, they are dead, so are not thinking anything at all.

I think it is very important to honour good lives which brought love. I don’t believe in scrambling to get over it or heal wounds or generally put the thing behind one. I think the trick of it is to learn to carry the departed in the heart. But the lives must be marked; loss must be honoured; respect must be paid. Sorrow is part of that, and there’s no point running away from it. I had some last night, rather unexpectedly and violently, for my Pigeon. But the thing is that there can be room for good things too. It’s not one or the other.

Stanley the dog, it turns out, is my very good thing.

The light fades. It is coming up to three o’clock now and the trees are black outside and everything is low and dull. I have written 1001 words and watched the racing at Sandown, where they are galloping over the bright green grass in fine sunshine, and lost a bit of money on the first couple of contests, which reminds me, as always of my dad. There was terrible drama when Fingal Bay, the odds-on favourite, decided he was fed up with jumping down at Exeter and ran out, crashing into the running rails and hurling his jockey off. (Horse and rider walked ruefully back to the stables, miraculously unharmed.)

I am waiting for lovely new winter rugs to arrive for Red and Myfanwy. Luckily, the smart, athletic chaser Bold Sir Brian has just trotted up in the 2.20, with all my money on his back, so I can pay for them. This victory gives me extra delight because he is trained in Scotland by the brilliant Lucinda Russell, who has had some sorrows of her own in the last year, and deserves the sweetness of a fine win.

The smallest of the great-nieces is being brought to tea to meet Stanley the Lurcher. He is having a little sleep to get ready for his visitors.

In other words, it’s an ordinary day. It’s a good day. If only the nice 6-year-old, Tanerko Emery, can do the business in the 3.30, it will be a very good day indeed, and there will be more rugs for everyone.

 

Today’s pictures:

A few from earlier in the week, when there was light:

Heads down for breakfast:

Stanley the Lurcher:

No hill today; lost in murk.

You do see why I miss this face so much: