Back to normal

Settled back into my routine at last. Which is: work and horses and dog. I’m still in a slight professional limbo, waiting for verdicts on new projects, and can feel the stress of it tighten in my shoulders and press down over my head.

As always, the very small things give me pleasure, while I wait for green lights. Someone said a kind thing about the work I do for HorseBack UK; keenly sweet to me, as he is not a person given to rash compliments. I stored it up like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter.

Someone I very much admire wanted to be a friend on Facebook. I’m not even quite sure how she knows I exist, but now she shall see pictures of Red the Mare looking happy and glamorous and the little Welsh pony being adorable and Stanley the Dog looking like Burt Lancaster. This gives me idiot amounts of joy.

It makes me think about the sharing of a life. I have a small life. I like that it is small. When I was young, I had grandiose ideas of doing mighty things. I would win prizes and people would know my name. Now, as regular readers know, all I care about is love and trees. I have nothing particularly fascinating to report, no meetings with famous men or encounters with storied women. I do not stalk the corridors of power; I cannot give you inside information on great events.

And yet, I find something touching about the quiet, unheralded lives which may be seen on the internet. I like to know that my blogging friend in California has taken her glorious Dalmatians through Laurel Canyon, or is cooking a delightful new recipe. I cherish charming Facebook pictures of people’s morning views, or chickens, or dogs, or equines. My other great blogging friend, met entirely through the internet with no connection at all in real life, is currently struggling with a mystery pain. I read of her battle and sympathise and feel a curious connection through the ether to an interesting, intelligent woman I may never set eyes on.

This feels like something real and oddly significant. It is a widening of community, not a shrinking of it, as the crosser commentators like to insist. There is an odd zero sum thinking, when it comes to the internet, as if any life online must nullify life in the actual world. It’s very curious, when you think about it. It’s like saying that reading a book means you are replacing real living with fiction. I say: there is room for both. There is room for everything.

Occasionally, one of the Dear Readers, who does not live surrounded by hills and sky, will leave a comment saying how livening it is to see those things. I put up pictures of the hill for those who have no hill. In my mind, the hill, symbolically, belongs to everyone. It is the Universal Hill. I am not trying to prove a point or convert anyone to my way of seeing the world or start hares running. It is the simple sharing of a life, in its plainest sense. If one shard of pleasure shoots into another life, then my work is done. It is: here is an amusing canine, here is a lovely horse, there is a charming tree. Rest your eyes for a moment, and be diverted.

 

Today’s pictures:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack UK horses, a delightful South American veteran, who came out of polo to do this new, good work:

My own favourites, loafing in the sunshine, which has suddenly appeared after last night’s snow:

Stanley the Dog, doing slightly plaintive:

(Or: when are you going to stop faffing around with that camera and THROW MY STICK?)

First signs of spring:

Hill:

In which the internet is kind

Warning: more language, I’m afraid. Editorially necessary. Still not nice.

 

There is an awful lot of received wisdom about the internet. One of the stickiest is that it is a wild, cruel place, where people have no edit button, and say hideous things from behind a cloak of anonymity.

As a sub-set of this, there are many stories about women being abused and degraded. Revolting suggestions about parts of the anatomy are offered; death threats are not uncommon. The latest example of this was the monstering of Mary Beard. To everyone’s great delight, the stalwart professor fought back like a tigress.

All this is, of course true. Only this morning, I found a comment on a seemingly benign Facebook page. One man accused another of being a ‘dumb fuck wank stain wife beating cunt’. (Sic. He clearly had no use for hyphens.) This was in regard to a piece about the South American tribes whose way of life is being threatened by the building of a vast hydro-electric dam. You might think that the people who care about this would not even know the expression ‘wank stain’, let alone use it in public. Yet there it was, in all its gratuitous ugliness.

The thing that is not much reported is that the internet is also a place of great warmth and kindness and humanity. It can be polite and charming. It can be helpful and informative. Because of it, I know things I would not otherwise know; I may witness lives across the other side of the world, about which I would otherwise be ignorant.

All of which is a long way of saying: thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes.

The virtual birthday is a new thing. Through Twitter and the blogs, and most of all via Facebook, which helpfully reminds your online acquaintances that this is the great day of your birth, happy little messages of goodwill may wing their way through the ether. They come from complete strangers. They come from friends whom you only know online. They come from real-life loved ones, and far-flung family, waving across time zones. They bring just as much pleasure as actual presents and cards. Someone, somewhere, has paused in their busy day, and taken the time to type. It is oddly touching.

I sometimes wonder if the goodness and generosity and big-heartedness of my internet circle is an anomaly. I am always wary of universalising the particular. And anecdotal evidence is, well, anecdotal. Of course my Dear Readers are of the finest and best: five star, ocean-going, fur-lined remarkables. When you were made, the mould was broken.

Yet, I cannot believe that this place, and the people who come here, are so very unrepresentative. I get glimpses, sometimes, of other people’s interactions, and they too are being funny and kind and polite. If anything, the wank stain crew seem to me to be the minority, the oddities, the furious few who, like small children throwing tantrums, almost cannot help themselves.

Being kind does not make headlines. It also does not shock in the way the ravening hordes with their swearing and their threats do. But it is real, and it is important, and it should not be drowned out by the shouty people.

I also think it matters. I’m going to go back to my hippyish tendency now, but I really do believe that sending the smallest message of affection, paying the tiniest compliment, offering the briefest good-hearted encouragement really does add to the sum total of human happiness. The increments may be minuscule, but boy, do they add up.

Thank you all. You are bloody lovely. And now I am going to contemplate love and trees.

 

Today’s pictures:

A gloomy old day. Dirty sky and intermittent rain. At least last night’s crazy gales have blown themselves out. But today was all about looking for the beauty in the small things:

The last of the snow, in a rare moment of light:

Autumn the Filly:

Myfanwy the Pony, at her woolliest:

A rather dreamy Red the Mare. She may be tired after keeping her herd safe in the high winds. She’s never been a lead mare before, and she’s learning on the job. It’s very sweet to watch. Except when she decides Autumn is getting out of line and must have a charming bite on the bottom. (Don’t worry; it’s a very gentle bite. And Autumn proves herself pretty much unfussed by anything.):

Stanley the Dog has found a most excellent stick:

Here he is, doing sit and stay. He is saying: how long do I have to sit here before I may have my good boy reward?:

Today’s hill:

What are words for?

Today, I used my writing for good rather than evil.

(Of course, I don’t ever use my words for evil, I just like a catchy first line, because I can be a bit of a tart like that.)

One of my eight deadlines is for an outstanding charity. I’ve always sent off middle-class first-world guilt direct debits. These are entirely self-serving. If some smiling women send me a picture of a tap that I paid for, so they don’t have to walk ten miles with buckets on their heads, then I may have the illusion that I am a half-decent human. But as I get older I think just whacking off some soul-salving cash is not enough. Now, I get the brilliant opportunity to give my time, and whatever small skills I have, for a greater good.

The charity needs words: for reports, for fund-raising, for brochures, for its website. I can do words. This morning, I sat down to tackle the thing seriously.

It is possibly the most difficult kind of writing I’ve ever done. I’m used to goofing along in my own whimsical, shambly way. I play about with language, indulge in wild idiosyncrasy, gallop off on tangents. If you are writing something for a serious operation with a serious purpose, you can’t do that. You have to do fairly sober prose. You have to write like a damn grown-up.

The original report inevitably included, as these things always must, some of the business words and tropes that make me sad. There was a bit of delivering, which my Twitter followers will know makes me twitchy. (My contention is that parcels are delivered, not policies or social change or the Olympics.)

I wanted to strike them all out, but then I realised I could not, quite. They really were there for a reason. If a grave corporate operative is reading this thing, wondering whether to make a grant, she may expect some of that business-speak. It acts, I think, as a shorthand for seriousness, as much as I may hate it. It is, in its own weird way, the language of the tribe. It’s no good me hectoring them in poetic-speak and expecting them to get it.

At the same time, what this particular operation does is not only magical and inspiring and life-changing, but very idiosyncratic indeed. I did need to reflect that, and I did want to make a few hairs stand up on the back of people’s necks. So I frowned and wrangled and compromised and cast about for the finest of fine balances.

It made me think about different kinds of writing, and what all those words are for. My secret project, I may tell you because I know you won’t breathe a word, is a novel. I have been in the world of non-fiction for a few years, and now I go back to stories. As I do that work, I am thinking all the time of movement. There is no time for too much of your philosophy, Horatio; there must be pace, the pulling threads that carry the reader through a story, a sense of momentum. There must be the evocative, all the time, in the most economical way possible.

I think, as I write: can the reader see that? I am painting with words, something I have not done for ages. Rather like the riding, it comes back to me, a little rusty from disuse, stored in muscle memory.

On Twitter, a sort of writing I take oddly seriously, and which interests me, there is the need for pith and punch. Just one hundred and forty characters to make your mark, in a crowded timeline, in people’s hectic lives. I yearn for the Noel Coward talent to amuse. He would have been brilliant on Twitter. The best tweets are immediate, surprising, and, like a Saki short story, often have a little lemon twist in the tail.

Then there is the blog writing. Here, I move uneasily between theories and approaches, acutely aware of the newness of the medium. A new Twitter companion said something kind about the blog today, and I was overcome with joy and blushes. But every compliment is a challenge. It’s all very well if someone likes it, but that only means that I now have a standard to uphold. Tomorrow must be better. I can’t give in to tiredness or self-indulgence, but must tap dance and sparkle. Here, the Dear Reader lives large in the front of my mind.

At the very same time, I think the blog has a bit of latitude for self-indulgence. It is my thing; it is free; no one is obliged to take down this book. Part of its pleasure is that I may look back, and see what I was doing with the mare in March, or have little sentimental readings of Frankel’s great triumphs (I am ashamed to say these sometimes bring tears to my own eyes, which is the equivalent of laughing at your own jokes), or read the funny thing the Youngest Cousin said when she was three. It’s like a delightful scrapbook in that way, and I don’t apologise for that.

But then there is the importance of the compact. The Dear Readers give time; the least I can do is offer some half-decent prose. My feeling is that I can be indulgent about subject matter if I can do it in antic sentences. If I give you some roaring adverb action, then you may forgive the fact that I bang on about racing, in which you may have no interest. (Unlike some hard-line writers, I adore a finely chosen adverb, and a good adjective too. I am not Hemingway, nor was meant to be.)

What then of the days when I am shattered and my brain goes phut and my creaking fingers crawl over the keyboard, nothing light in them? Does that mean rank failure? That is why I always hover over the Apologise button; that is why my own private report card says Must Try Harder.

I think perhaps that here the purpose of the words is to divert, in its most lovely, shining sense. I used to use this space for ranting, quite a lot. There would be some political scandal into which I would wade, or something that infuriated me on the Today programme. Ha, I had my forum; I could convert the unconvinced. Watch my incontrovertible arguments win the day. See my rampant feminism roar.

Now, the comments which give me the most profound pleasure are those which talk of the ordinary. Someone is struggling with a degree; someone is battling with melancholy or endless demands or just too much to do. They stop here, and say something like: you took my mind off it, or you cheered me up. My younger ambitious self would have baulked at this; I wanted prizes and bouquets. I wanted cash and love. Older, and more bashed up, I think the tiny, mundane act of diverting is the good prize, after all. It is a small act of connection, to do with the kindness of strangers and our shared human hearts. I think, as I often do about the benign side of the internet, that there is something magical in that.

And perhaps too, in the end, words don’t always have to be for something. They can just be fine things in themselves.

As I was writing this, I found myself putting in that ‘nor was meant to be’ line. I do this quite often; those old references are stitched into my writing mind. I’m always bashing on about slings and arrows, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. I went back to Prufrock, at whom I had not looked for a while. One of the things I love about TS is that often I don’t understand what he’s on about. The Wasteland in particular is stuffed with classical references I do not get; some of it is even in German, which I do not speak. It does not matter. I read it for the words alone. Prufrock is more comprehensible, but even after a hundred readings, I am sure that I miss some of its finer points. None of that matters. The words exist, work, dazzle off the page, as their very own selves. They do nothing except be, in some mysterious, harmonious beauty.

Like this:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot.

 

Pictures of the day are from the archive. Too distrait to take the camera out this morning. Instead, a random selection:

 

I realise, suddenly, that today is 11th September. That was a day when words failed. Even now, it is hard to write about it meaningfully and well, without falling into false sentiment. But it should always be marked.

And on a happier note, words are easy for the great victory of Andy Murray in his first grand slam. Hurrah for the Flower of Scotland! And bloody well done. And go, Andy, go. As I woke this morning to the news, I hoped that all those nasty, carping people who have complained of his supposed surliness, just because he would not vamp for the camera, who insisted he was a grumpy Scot, who suggested that he was not really much good at the tennis and did not have the bottle for the big occasion are EATING THEIR WORDS. And feeling very, very silly indeed.

He’s an exceptionally talented young man, and he’s nice to his mum and he loves his dog, and that should be good enough for any human.

And one very final PS:

For those of you interested, the mare’s wound has healed. I did not sleep last night for worrying, which is why this blog is a bit mad. I rushed up first thing, and all swelling had gone and a neat scar sat where there had been a cut. Carr and Day and Martin Wound Cream, by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, is possibly the most miraculous product I have ever used, and for those of you with horses, I cannot recommend it highly enough. (As I rub it on, I think: how clever the Queen is to know about it.)

Really, really am stopping now.

I would like to thank the Academy...

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Thrilling, slightly unbelievable news comes from the blogosphere. Despite being very new to all this, and, I sometimes fear, faintly amateurish (although never forget that the word amateur is derived from the Latin for love), Sarah and I have been given a special AWARD. The lovely Mrs Trefusis has named Backwards in High Heels as one of her top five blogs. Since Mrs Trefusis is a woman of exceptional grace and poise, and writes like an angel, this is a high honour. I accept it in a spirit of true humility and actually slightly outlandish excitement.

The prize comes with a set of rules (as there are rights so there are responsibilities) as follows:

THE RULES

1. You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous blogs in a post.

2. You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.

3. You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.

Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. To add the award to your post, simply right-click, save image, then “add image” it in your post as a picture so your winners can save it as well. To add it to your sidebar, add the “picture” widget. Also, don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.

So, here are my five fabulous blogs:

The majestic LibertyLondonGirl, Queen of bloggers, who knows about everything from fashion to books to architecture, and is currently delighting us with despatches from her intrepid travels through the wilds of California.

The enchanting So Lovely, who sends out charming and sometimes faintly whimsical posts from sunny Los Angeles, and can actually make her own hot cross buns.

The outrageously funny Belgian Waffle, who makes me laugh so hard it startles my dogs. I don't know how she does it, day after day, with the funniness. She should get a government grant, in these Troubled Times.

Also exceptionally funny - the clever and eclectic Lucy Fishwife, who knows that literature and strong cocktails go together like carriages and horses (although how many people do you see riding around in a carriage, nowadays, apart from the Queen?).

And the incomparable Cassandra Castle, who never fails to make me smile and does lovely and often surprising things with words. It was because of her that I started this blog, and she was the first to welcome me to the blogosphere and make me realise that it was not the terrifying place I had feared.

I know it's only supposed to be five, but I can't go without also bigging up the fabulous La Beet, whose enquiring mind never fails to stimulate.

These are not the only blogs I adore - go to the blog roll of honour for the others that I love and follow - but they were the first ones I discovered when I started all this. The writers are not only startlingly good, but they were unbelievably kind and supportive to a new girl, and they hold a special place in my heart.

Now for my five addictions:

My dogs. Can't help it. I'm not going to go into it now, because I think very soon it will be time to give the glorious creatures an entire post of their very own. With pictures. I'm warning you.

Books, obviously. When I was a little girl I would read so hard that I did not used to notice the light was failing. 'You'll ruin your eyes,' everyone said. I am the only one of my brothers and sisters who has to wear strong corrective spectacles, so this was clearly true. But it was worth it. Highest obsessive rating: Mrs Woolf, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Mrs Parker, TS Eliot, Jane Austen, and Nancy Mitford. I also love Helen Simpson, Lorrie Moore, Terence Blacker, Cynthia Heimel, Brian Greene, Justin Cartwright and Martin Amis. I think Midnight's Children deserved every inch of its Booker of Bookers and get very grumpy when people get cheap laughs on Radio Four by saying that Salman Rushdie is unreadable (politicians especially do this, as if it is a badge of honour when it's just stupid and wrong).

American politics and MSNBC. My absolute secret vice is an excessively geekish fascination with the American politicial system. Whenever I have a free moment I race to my computer and watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. I even know arcane House and Senate rules; I can explain the intricacies of the filibuster or the reconciliation process, should you ask, which I recommend you do not. During the Obama campaign, I stayed up all night every Tuesday that there was a primary on, to get the results. When he won, I cried actual tears of joy, and I love him still. This addiction also gets fed by medicinal doses of The West Wing.

The Big Life Questions. There is absolutely no excuse for this. Most people would think it pretentious and pointless. But I really want to know why we are here, what we all think we are doing, and what is the answer to the Universal Why. I want to understand the brain, unravel the nature nurture debate, map the development of language, and know where all the taxis go the moment it starts to rain. I want someone to tell me exactly what it is about women that is so scary that for thousands of years we were not allowed to vote or have opinions or enjoy sex.

Radio Four. I adore and worship it, even when it is going through a slightly dull patch, which it is at the moment. Melvyn Bragg and In Our Time is worth the licence fee alone. It makes me feel both interested and safe, which is a charming combination.

'

And since I allowed myself six favourite blogs, I am going to permit one more addiction, which is writing, naturally. I love everything about it, even when I find it so hard that it makes my eyes ache. I love the nature of words and what they can do. I love punctuation, especially the semi-colon, my favourite punctuation mark. I love the rules of grammar, and sometimes breaking them. I even love the tap tap tap of my fingers on my computer keyboard. I love the fact I can touch type, and still feel bizarrely proud of it after twenty five years. I love being able to say, when asked what I do: I'm a writer.

In which I celebrate the surprising nature of the blogosphere. Or, in which I am a little serious and long-winded and must beg your kind indulgence.

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Until very recently, I did not really know what the blogosphere was. I knew it was out there, but it had a large Here Be Dragons sign hanging over it. I did not read blogs, except for the Huffington Post, which is so big and grand that it doesn’t feel like a blog at all. I did write for a while for the Guardian books blog, but I could not quite get the tone - was it journalism, opinion, something quite else? - and when my editor went on maternity leave, I let it lapse.

I used to be an early adopter. I had email when it was such a baby that I only had my cousin in New York to correspond with. I spoke to a nice man at BT about getting a Blackberry when they were still reserved for corporate clients.
‘Are you a company?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I write books.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’ve never spoken to a book writer before.’
(We had a lovely conversation about literature after that. I wish I could remember his name.)

But now, the big new world of technocrazy scares me witless. It’s too unknowable and unnavigable. Like all those in fear, I retreated into prejudice. Every columnist with a deadline to meet and a mind blank of ideas has a failsafe: let’s bitchslap the blogosphere this week. I nodded my head as they told me that bloggers were sad geeks with no lives, or preening exhibitionists, or deranged narcissists, begging for attention. I quite saw all the arguments about privacy and even dignity. I agreed that it was an exercise in solipsistic self-indulgence (who the hells cares what you think?).

Then I had a book out. I cared about this book possibly more than any other I have ever written (reasons to come later). I was going to do everything I could to make it a success. I could blog the book, and it would go viral, and I would dance off into the sunset.
I stifled my doubts about throwing my paltry thoughts out in public (as a child, I was often told my grown-ups to stop showing off). But then an entire new set of terrors raced into view. There are around 200 million blogs in the world. Who would want to read mine? Who would even find mine? I would be like one of those discarded bits of spaceship, floating around in a blind universe. I would be yelling into the wind. And even if someone did find me, what if I was doing it wrong? What if the real pros stumbled onto my very basic site, gave a collective sneer, and turned away in disdain?

But here is the absolutely lovely, astonishing, miraculous thing. Through a stumbling serendipity of different internet tools and sheer damn luck, I found myself in the most charming corner of the blogosphere. It’s like one of those tiny streets that only natives of a city know about, lined with painted houses and heavenly shops that sell botanical prints and calligraphy pens and old maps of the world and out of print copies of Michael Arlen.

The other bloggers who follow me turn out to be funny, fascinating, ironic, irreverent, self-deprecating and unbelievably generous. They leave supportive comments and whimsical jokes at the bottom of my posts. They are nothing like the stereotypes that the newspapers adore to deride. Entering the blogosphere is like going to a huge new school where you have no friends and do not know the rules. For me, being found by these particular bloggers is like having the really cool girls inviting you to join their gang on the very first day.

The most lovely twist to this is that the book is all about sending out a big collective ‘bloody well done’ to the women. The zeitgeist likes to tell women that most of the decisions they make are wrong; plus, their bottoms are too big. Sarah and I wanted to talk about all the wonderful unsung ways that women navigate the convolutions of the new century. We practically wrote poems about the joy and profundity of female friendship (my slightly controversial view is that it is more important than romantic love). Well, the people who have come to my blog are all women, and they are shining examples of everything that we talk about in Backwards in High Heels.

So, Recessionista, Néné, Mrs Trefusis, Lucy Fishwife, Lucy and Cassandra – thank you for such an unexpected welcome. You have turned the vast, dark expanses of the interwebs into an enchanted garden. Even if my evil plan to conquer the blogosphere does not come to fruition, and Backwards in High Heels never goes viral, you have made it all worth it. You are the very women that we wrote the book for.