In which I take a life lesson from The Champ.

Warning: it is late, and I’ve only just finished work, and I am tired. My brain sputters and fails. This may not be the finest piece of prose I have ever written. But it does have a good life lesson in it.

 

1137 words of book. Into a bit of a rhythm now.

At one point, I felt so ahead of the game, I naughtily allowed myself to watch some racing from Carlisle. In the glorious northern sunshine, the maestro who is AP McCoy won an astonishing five races, with a combination of finesse, determination, shining talent and sheer belief.

He should be held up as a model for the young people, for all people really. He does not win more races than anyone else by magic: it is from toughness, hard work, relentless drive, and never, ever settling for second best.

Before that, quite by accident, I reminded myself of something I had forgotten. I went out to run an errand, took a goofy wrong turn, and ended up deep in Aberdeenshire farming country. It was the kind of place where the valleys are deep and the hills high, so only one tiny little road can wind its way through the land, and because of this I had to go the long way round.

And that was when I remembered the power of driving. I’ve been battling with sorting out the last act; wrangling and wrestling with intricacies of plot. All at once, as the incurious Aberdeen Angus cows gazed at me and the indigo hills slid past the car window and Stanley the Dog stared beadily into the blue distance, it all fell into place.

I think it’s something to do with having the area of the brain which deals with motor skills engaged. Then the creative part can roam free. So, if I were to be giving writing advice, I should say: when you are feeling a little cribbed and cabined, get in the car.

And, as I finish the day, tired but satisfied, I look back on it and think: it’s not just the young people who can learn from Tony McCoy. It is this middle-aged person, too.

McCoy is one of the very best we’ve seen for many reasons. He has great tactical skill. He has a driving finish like almost nobody else. He does a lovely thing of really holding a horse together. But a lot of it comes down to sheer grit.

Grit is a good virtue, along with stoicism and buggering on, both of which he has in spades. He does not moan or complain when things don’t go his way. He has his share of falls and breaks and rotten rides. There must be days when he is in the car, not to look at the glorious hills and the splendid cows, but in the driving rain on a clogged motorway, only to find some hard-mouthed disappointment at the end of the journey.

Not every horse he rides is top class, and not every meeting is a Cheltenham or a Sandown, with cheering crowds and golden trophies. He, too, will have his wet Wednesdays at Huntingdon, in the fog and the murk, watched by one man and a dog. (Actually, I love Huntingdon; I used to go there with my old dad and drink whisky and meet ancient, weather-beaten old gents in flat caps. But it is not one of the glamour tracks, and mid-week in the weather, it can feel like the land that time forgot.)

I like to have a lesson for the day. Usually it is taught to me by my red mare, who is my most accomplished and elegant professor. (On this sunny Thursday, she was simply demonstrating a blanket masterclass in rampant loveliness.) Today, the lesson comes not from a horse, but from a human. It comes from The Champ. It is grit that shall get me through. I’m going to go away and practice it.

 

Today’s pictures:

This is some of what I saw, on my travels:

Her Loveliness, having a dreamy evening mooch in the set-aside:

Very muddy, and very happy:

The Horse Talker has brought us a thrilling new addition to the paddock. Stan the Man is beside himself:

Although this is in fact his deeply quizzical face:

And, at last, my dear old hill:

And I can’t resist adding that the glittering champion won me literally hundreds of pounds today. I’ve had a rotten couple of weeks, trying to be more forensic about my betting. I felt stupid and wrong as I returned some of my previous winnings to the flinty Mr William Hill.

Today, the odds said a McCoy five-timer was pretty remote, even though a lot of his rides were fancied. We’re back over the jumps, after all. All it takes is a stumble, a slip, something else falling in front. Despite all that, I wanted him to reach his hundred for the season so much, and to approach the magical figure of 4000 winners overall, which he is closing in on, that I backed every single one of them, several in accumulators. It was like he presented me with a suitcase of cash. I should send him flowers.

I’m not at all sure what life lesson I should draw from that.

This land

Warning: crazed insomnia last night, so there is a very real danger none of this may make any sense at all.

 

I read something today about how humans miss the natural world without even knowing what it is they lack. Most people in Britain live in cities or towns. Cities are glorious, thrilling things. I think they are good things, because they must surely decrease fear of The Other. The Other is there every day, in the streets, on the tube, waiting for the bus. Insularity must be more difficult, in that great melting pot. And there is culture and entertainment and architecture and all the other sophisticated pleasures of which city life is made. When I lived in London, I loved her like a sister. I used to refuse invitations to go away for the weekend because I wanted to mooch about in the sunny streets of Soho, or go to a double bill at The Electric. I wanted smoke and pavements.

People still think it mildly eccentric that I should live so far north, so deep in the hills, at such a distance from the theatre and good Chinese food. But I’ve been thinking about the whole love and trees thing (and love of trees), which is probably why the article on missing the earth caught my eye.

I struggle, as does every sentient human in the middle of life, with all kinds of frets, profound and superficial. I battle with mortality. I worry about all the usual things: money, death, illness, work. I feel the mid-life regret at the scattering of friends. Some live very far away, across wide oceans. Some are only in the south, but might as well be in Ulan Bator. It’s logistically demanding to get a family of four onto an aeroplane to Aberdeen for the weekend. We rely on the fact that we can pick up where we left off, because we have twenty years of hinterland behind us. But still, I miss them.

And yet, for all the frets, I am mostly cheerful. I am occasionally haunted by the spectres of loss, but I do not wake every morning with the black dog of despair snapping at my heels. I read something lately too about depression, the proper kind, not the mild down-in-the-mouth to which people sometimes carelessly apply the word. This was about the real thing, the kind that makes the sufferer feel as if they are in a dank, slimy pit and may never climb out. I feel incredibly blessed that I do not have to crawl out of that pit. Even among all the worries and fears, I find daily joy. I laugh a lot, often at myself. I have a lot of love. I love my mare, I love my family, I love my dog.

I wonder, suddenly, whether this oddly cheery resilience is lent to me by the place itself. I know I bang on about the hills, but it does lift the spirit to see them each day. I regard green things, growing things, ancient earthed things. On Saturday night I sat outside under a venerable stand of oaks and ate sausages and drank beer. It was the glorious trees that gave the evening its savour. I walk on grass and smell clean air. I hear birdsong. I watch the swallows fling and play, as they teach their young ones the mastery of aerodynamics. I stare at lichen and dry stone walls and bark. I happily observe the sheep.

Everyone, even the most fortunate human, needs a little help. Life is baffling and inexplicable and sorrows are inevitable. No one may insulate themselves from loss and heartache. Everyone needs an existential walking stick, to negotiate the rocky paths. I think this dear old land is my stick. Perhaps that is why I show you the daily pictures of it. Look, look, I am saying: this is what saves me.

I think far too much, always have. This is a good thing, and a bad thing. Too much thinking can lead to despair. There are too many unfairnesses, tragedies, inexplicable cruelties, for one paltry mind to reconcile. Love and trees, my darlings, love and trees. And hills and sheep. And Stanley and Red, out in the gentle Scottish air, where they may stretch and play and become one with the majestic landscape they inhabit.

 

Today’s pictures are a little selection from the past few days. No time for the camera today. I’ve been doing actual work, 1648 words of it. Something, as always, has to give.

In random order:

A change of mood, and a little horse tale

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I met some really nice and interesting people today. A local woman came up to speak to me about a wind farm development which is planned for two hills away. (There shall be a post about this later; I need to marshal my arguments and check my facts.) I was working with the mare, and the woman admired her greatly, and of course I could not resist explaining about Nijinsky being Red’s grandsire. It is the most babyish form of boasting, and I seem to have absolutely no way of not opening my mouth and saying it out loud, for all the vulgarity.

At this, the woman walked quickly back to her car, opened the door, and then her husband appeared, at a run. The woman smiled at me. ‘When I told him that you had Nijinsky’s granddaughter in the field, he could not resist,’ she said.

The husband gazed at Red with the proper awe. I could have hugged him. I get this same feeling when people say nice things about The Pigeon. If someone truly appreciates how magnificent my mare is, then I am their slave for life.

Luckily, Red was at her politest and best, probably because I had been working on her ground manners for the last hour. She sometimes can take or leave visitors; this time, she courteously offered her nose to be stroked and nodded her head and pricked her ears and was quite delightful in every way.

It was lovely to lean over the gate, in the shadow of the blue hill, and talk with interesting people about our countryside, and what shall happen to it. Later, two of the gentlemen who look after the place for The Landlord came up and also leant on the gate, and we discussed the farmer, and how hard he is working to get the hay in, how he had been up harvesting until eleven last night. We lamented how the weather is all against him, and contemplated the nuances of silage.

Who knew that silage did have nuance? And yet it does. It’s all to do with rain and the time of harvest and the sugar content of the grass. You need different kinds of silage for milk cows and meat cows. I devoured all this excellent new information with delight. One of the things I love most is talking to people who know the land. I did not quite expect, when I was running around tranny bars in Soho at four in the morning in my wild twenties, that I should end up with a horse in a muddy field, talking intensely of silage. But I am oddly glad that is how I did end up.

The horse work today was of great interest to me. I’ve been feeling rather sorry for the mare for the last couple of days, what with the mud and the murk and the rain and not being able to go riding. I made the schoolgirl mistake of not doing much work with her, thinking she might appreciate the time off, and over-compensating with carrots. This did not at all have the desired effect.

Yet again, I realised I must go back to basics, that even in two days bad habits had crept in, that she was not paying proper attention to me, and she was crowding me a bit. There are hard line people who say you should never feed your horse from your hand, because it will always make them pushy. I don’t quite believe this, but I do think that there should be strict discipline around all forms of feeding.

So, there were no treats today, but a little manners work. I went back to leading her on the long line, and making sure she was respecting my space. Everyone has a theory on this. I find an arm’s length is good. I walked her at my side, with my arm straight out, so that if she got too close, she bumped into my fist. Because I have been a little lax about discipline lately, she was quite cross about this. She tried all kinds of cunning tricks to get round it, changing sides, going behind me where she could rub her head on my back. I kept on, very consistent and firm, and suddenly she submitted.

The thing that interests me about horse psychology is that instant switch. It is a combination of them understanding what you want them to do, and being willing to accept your direction. Oh, I see, they are saying, you are the dear leader, and I can trust you and follow you, and this is the thing you would like me to do. Of course, they say, in their horsey heads; of course.

The other thing I fully realise, perhaps for the first time, is that this sort of gentle discipline must be done daily. You can’t just think: oh, I taught her that, she’s got it, now I can do anything I like. It’s a process, not a ticked box. That’s why old horsemen always say good habits make good horses. It’s not that she is naughty and she wants to take advantage, it’s that she is a horse, and she needs to know the same thing applies every day, so that she does not fall into confusion. (I start to think that horses hate confusion more than almost anything; if I had a number one watchword at the moment, it might be clarity.)

What I like about the natural horsemanship method is that you can instil discipline by the gentlest methods. Discipline sounds like a harsh martinet word, that must involve some kind of physical push or hit or shove, raised voices, even punishment. With these techniques, it’s not like that at all. I did not let the mare crowd me and then get cross and tell her off. The stretched arm stopped her crowding me in the first place. I was not pushing her with my fist, I was letting her run into it if she attempted to invade my space. It only involved the merest contact, but it was enough to show her what I wanted.

The other lovely thing I have learnt lately is the idea of rewarding the try. This is something I have read about from many sources. The idea is that you watch your horse acutely, and the moment they make the smallest, imperceptible attempt to do what you are asking, you reward them. You do not wait until they do the exact thing completely and perfectly, because often they do not quite get what the complete thing is. It is the try, rather than the ideal execution, that may be praised.

I adore this idea. Again, I extrapolate from it the lifiest of life lessons. Everyone should be rewarded for the try. One should not expect people in one’s life to do the things you may wish exactly as you wish them to be done. Honour the attempt, not the idealised consummation. I am now going to apply this to every area of my life. If I am very good, and concentrate very hard, I may even learn to apply it to myself.

Of course, the happy irony is that if you are working with an equine, and you start rewarding the try, they immediately begin to do everything perfectly anyway. It is as if they sense that you are so much on their side, so devoted to the idea of partnership, that all they want to do is please you.

So, once I had got Red into an attentive, polite frame of mind, I did all the other groundwork things with her. They are all very small, and very potent. Move the hindquarters, stop, back up, come forward. She was so quick and responsive and absolutely immaculate that it blew me away. We got to the stage where I could merely point with my finger, with no contact whatsoever, and she would do the thing I asked.

All this might sound a bit nuts, but there is a really important reason for it. This kind of groundwork makes the horse happy, because she feels safe. She knows exactly where she is with me. It makes me safe too, because it means it is less likely that half a ton of animal will knock me over or push me into the fence or trample me. It means I can trust her with strangers, especially children. I can invite them to come and say hello, secure in the knowledge she will not barge them or frighten them.

I know I do bang on about this a bit, but I can’t tell you what a miracle it feels like to me. To build a relationship like this with such a beautiful, highly bred creature is one of the great gifts of my life. I want to share with the group over and over, because there is so much joy in it. And the potency of the joy comes because it is earned delight; I really have to work for it, which makes the reward sweeter still.

I was filthy grumpy yesterday, and got up with lowered spirits to another black sky. ‘It’s going to rain until September, I heard,’ said the man who knows the land. Yet an hour and a half of good work with my good mare lifted my heart, and defied the damn weather. At the moment, she, with her willingness and her cleverness and her trust and her quickness to learn, is my sunshine. She is my very own little Vitamin D delivery device.

 

Pictures of the day:

I love how Red’s view changes as they cut the hay. Even on the dullest of days, the colours of the land still sing:

It also interests me how the light changes. Those first two pictures are taken facing due west; the second two are facing north. And they are quite different.

This year really is the year of the foxglove. They must be the only things which have actually welcomed all this rain, because they’ve gone crazy:

My lovely mare, watching the farmer at work, as if it were a really, really good television programme:

And doing her Minnie the Moocher amble:

She really is an awfully nice person.

And talking of nice people:

Pigeon, with serious face:

AND HAPPY FACE:

I don’t have the heart to show you yet another shot of the murk where the hill should be. One day soon, the dear old mountain will come back to us, if only that bloody jetstream could get its act together.