Good parts, bad parts. Or stoicism and loss.

I’m back in the missing stage, today. Yesterday I was in the stripped of my skin stage. The day before I was in the baffled, hit a brick wall stage. Today, all I can think is: I miss you. Oh, I miss you.

It was every day, you see. I saw my mother ever day. That’s part of the problem. It’s the good part and the bad part. The good part is that we saw each other each morning as I went in to make the breakfast. On Saturdays, I collected her Racing Post from the shop and delivered it and stayed to talk about the day’s runners. (‘Oh, Ruby,’ she would say, a wistful, maternal note in her voice, as if these were not tough men at the top of their profession. ‘Oh, AP.’) On Sundays, we all had a lie-in and I would just get a telephone call if Hurricane Fly or Annie Power had done something marvellous at Punchestown.

That’s all good part. The bad part is that this means there is a vast daily rupture; a daily absence; a daily reminder. The lovely Stepfather and I eat our eggs and doggedly talk of the news. We speak of Paris and fundamentalism and tolerance and intolerance and the lessons of history, and we pretend that there is not a great, gaping hole in the house. We do a lot of speaking. The one thing we do not say is: ‘Oh, how we miss her.’

I write about my mother and father as if they were paragons. They were not. They were as complex and flawed as all human beings. They were both dazzlingly brilliant parents and occasionally absolutely useless parents. There were times when they drove me mad, and times when I drove them mad, mostly through my shocking stubbornness.

But the interesting thing about death (at least, it is fascinating to me) is that almost at the very moment of passing from the mortal realm to whatever lies beyond all those flaws and frailties and maddening bits are burnt away, as if in some grand Phoenix-like fire. And from the ashes rise all the glorious parts, the good bits, the moments of glad grace, the idiosyncratic talents, the laughter, the kindness, the sheer otherness. (They were both quite unusual, in their different ways. I only realise this when I tell someone a story which I think perfectly normal, and see the arched eyebrows and look of astonishment.)

I like that part. I like remembering them in their glory days; I carry their very finest selves with me, locked into my heart.

I got used to being without my father. It took about two years. I still think of him every day and sometimes miss him so much that I can’t breathe, but mostly I think of him with a great, spreading fondness and keen pride and a lot of wry laughter. I’ll get used to this too, although I think it’s going to be harder and longer, because of the every day aspect. A huge chunk of the cliff of my life has crumbled into the sea and I have to make a new path.

The Stepfather, who is a gentleman of the old school, as my brother said at the wake ‘the greatest gentleman in Britain’, said a very kind thing yesterday. We were talking about stoicism. Mum had it; he has it; it is one of the virtues that is still stitched into the culture of this dear old island race. I admire it more and more as I get older. ‘I think you are very stoical,’ he said, nodding his wise head.

I felt as if someone had given me a medal. When I was young, I wanted to be charming, brilliant, eccentric, talented. I wanted glittering prizes. Now, I want to be steady and stoical.

It doesn’t mean that emotions are not felt, or honoured, but that one does not make a three act opera of them. One may stare them in the whites of their eyes, but not wallow in them. It’s a very, very fine line to walk. Sometimes I feel that even writing this is a bit of a tap dance. Look at me, with my grieving. On the other hand, sorrow must have words, and this is as good a place to put them as any. I put them here, and people may read them and understand them, or they may pass on, and I don’t have to bore poor real-world humans and frighten the horses in the street.

Also, I want to remember. When the missing stage has faded, shrunk back to its proper place, become gentled with time, I shall take down this book and slowly read. I find it curiously soothing to know that it shall all be there, waiting for me.

 

Today’s pictures:

The remarkable thing is that the one place I don’t have to be at all stoical is down in my enchanted field. The mares are so funny, affectionate, clever and beautiful, so authentic and present and real, so honest and absolutely themselves, that merely standing next to them banishes all sorrow. It is really quite odd. It’s my daily rest, my morning holiday from wearing emotion. I can’t quite work out what it is - their sheer loveliness, the purity of them, their own complete lack of sentimentality, their faintly flinty life must go on aspect. Or perhaps all of those things. Whatever it is, I am more grateful for it than I can say.

It’s gloomy today, so these pictures are from a couple of days ago, when it was sunny:

A radical thought.

This morning, in the bath, I had a radical thought. What if I was happy, for my mother’s sake?

Here is the ludicrous thing about death. A person you love dies. You cry a lot. You feel wretched. Your throat aches with unexpressed words, trapped memories, tangled regrets. You wash your hair twice because you have no idea whether you did it the first time. You have a bit of trouble behaving in a rational manner in the Co-op. You have no idea what you are supposed to do next. You go to bed at seven because you are so tired you don’t know what your name is. You keep getting wild flashes of the person, some happy, some sad, all lacerating. You have to tell people, which can go either way. You are out of step with the rest of the world, even though, paradoxically, death is the one certainty which knits all human hearts together. You make stupid amounts of soup, so that your kitchen becomes like some kind of industrial production line. You are a little lost, entirely bashed, and very, very sad.

No person you have ever loved would want you to feel any of those feelings.

I don’t have a heaven or an afterlife, although I am occasionally tempted by reincarnation and I do make jokes about the ghostly sound of my father’s laughter from the Great Betting Shop in the Sky. But if there existed a cloud on which my mother was now sitting, she would not be looking down and shouting, ‘Oh, bloody hell, go on, more weeping.’ I really don’t think that is what she would be saying.

I talk a lot about grief marking the space left behind, honouring the dead, but now I’m not sure. I know it has to be done, and you have to get the damn thing out or it will twist itself up and trap you into fatal tendencies like not eating or not sleeping or shouting at random people.

But what is it for?

Not the dead person, who wants only your well-being. I adore my nieces. If I said one word which caused them dismay, let alone pain, I would castigate myself for days. If, when I died, they felt horrid grief and if I had any consciousness left to see that horrid grief, I would be furious with myself. (Perhaps no cloud must be a good thing then, so the poor Dear Departeds, many of whom were rather jolly themselves and loved a party, don’t have to look down and see the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.)

None of it makes any sense. Humans – poets and novelists and playwrights and philosophers and shrinks – try to make sense of it because it so universally is. Even the most devout, who really do believe in choirs of angels and a Better Place, cry like anything when the beloveds go.

If I were the dead, I should be so cross. Have a lovely time, I should be bawling, from my wobbly cloud; have some gin, ride a horse, have a huge punt on the 3.30 at Fakenham; go dancing with your best friend; walk in the rain; read some Scott Fitzgerald; eat a peach. Make more soup if you must, I would be yelling, but perhaps some without tears in it.

So, here is my radical thought. Today, I’m going to be happy for my mum.

It won’t work all day, because I’m not buggery Superwoman, but I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to dig out the little happy moments like a truffle hound. Instead of looking at Stanley and thinking, miserably, Oh, you loved her so much, I shall think of how happy his eager face is and how he is living entirely in the moment. It is a very good moment, because some of the rats have come back to the feed shed, so he is once more in his Steve McQueen Great Escape incarnation, and nothing makes him happier than tunnelling under the feed shed.

He did lay by her side every morning for the last few weeks, as if he knew she was failing, but that does not have to be a sad thing but a happy thing, a really wonderful thing which should make me smile with delight at his fine, devoted, doggy heart.

I’m going to ride my horse for her, because she was proud of what I did with that mare. I’m not going to look at the new mare as I did last night and say Oh, how I wish she had met you. I’m going to laugh like a drain at the thought that although my mother adored thoroughbreds, she did not in fact want me to get another one. (‘What is this Scout?’ Said in a Lady Bracknell voice.) She really longed for me to buy a little Welsh pony for the great-nephews and great-nieces. ‘A little Section A. Just imagine.’

I’m going to write the most absurd gratitude list in the world. (In this spirit, I felt grateful this morning as I came down from my bedroom, because there were actual stairs, to get me from one floor to the other. There are people who don’t have stairs.) For one day, I’m going to peer through the literal and metaphorical dreich and see the damn beauty. I’m going to do it for Mum.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just one. This is the one I’m carrying in my head. My mother liked small, elegant, polite dogs. She had unbelievably chic whippets when I was a child, as dapper and dashing as old school Russian aristocrats. Stanley is the most muttish of lurchers – to go with his greyhound half there is anything from Staffie to Lab to Boxer to Australian Cattle Dog. He is antic, unpredictable and very busy. He likes leaping about. He can open every single door on the compound. (He once opened my car door when it was locked, and also amuses himself by turning on the hazard lights and switching on Radio Four when he is bored.) You would think my mother would be horrified. But they fell in love with each other on sight, and nothing after that could come between them.

That is a happy thought. This is a happy dog.

Not not not the screw top.

Cremation people: I am sure you are good and thoughtful and kind to children and animals, but who had the meeting where it was decided that the default urn would have a screw top? No human should end up with a screw top.

And logistics people: who invented the form which asks Did the Deceased die from violence?

What the buggery bollocks were you all thinking?

I’m in the irrational anger stage. You may be able to tell.

I loathe the horrid questions and decisions and things to be done. My mother has gone. Her mortal remains mean nothing to me. She is locked now in my heart, and, in time, I shall commit her to the mountains, to Glen Muick, which is my cathedral. I’ll give her back to the earth and the land and the hills and the sky. That is my own private memorial. We shall also have a little family ceremony. But the forms, the questions, the decisions and indecisions mean nothing to me.

The poor undertaker came today, and had to try and understand when I said something of this to him. He had no language in which to reply. I could see his ordered brain searching around for an answer and coming up with: No Correct Response. He is trained in the ways of formality. There can be no you or me, only yourself and myself. I had stumped in from the horses in filthy muddy gumboots and taken them off at the door. He was immaculately dressed. I sat in front of him in odd socks, with my most battered hat on because I was having a rotten hair day.

Even my sister was slightly surprised by this. ‘What is with the hat?’ she said, before she could help herself.

‘I’m having a bad hair day,’ I said. ‘Even a bad hat is better than bad hair.’

The poor, poor undertaker. I don’t think they trained him, at undertaker school, to deal with a crazy woman in no shoes and a bonkers hat who does not care what it says on the nameplate of the coffin.

Then I went and watched a Marine work a thoroughbred, and sanity returned. The Marines really, really know about death. Especially when they have been blown up twice in Afghan. He had all the language I needed, the directness, the authenticity, the keen emotional intelligence, the absolute lack of fear in the face of mortality. For half an hour, I was soothed. I could speak words that made sense, and know I was not frightening anyone. It takes more than a distracted woman in a lunatic hat to strike fear into the heart of a hoofing Royal.

I made my sister Irish stew and we spoke of life and death and love and pain.

More kind words flew in, from all corners of the internet – email messages from old friends, lovely comments on the blog, sweet flutters of generosity on the Facebook.

On my Twitter feed, there is a young boy who recently did a charity walk for the Injured Jockeys’ Fund. I’d found him on my timeline and sent him many messages of congratulation and encouragement because I found what he was doing so inspiring. It was one of those rather touching, fleeting meetings of strangers, in the ether. This young man took the time to send words of kindness and condolence. I think he is ten. He may be eleven. Imagine doing that, at such an age.

The irrational anger will come. It’s a bit of a bastard, but death makes me cross. I have to let that one roll through me, until it is out the other side. To counter it, and balance it, I must pay attention to all the good things, however small. The stalwart friend who held my horse for the farrier this morning because I was late and had to dash off; that fine Marine; that dear young stranger on Twitter; the good companions, the ones who have been with me for over thirty years, who write to make sure I know they are thinking of me. The people who say: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do that.’ (Almost the sweetest words in the English language at times like this.)

Put in the plus column the cooking gene, so that my kitchen is now filled with soup – beetroot soup, and cauliflower soup, and my own mysterious green soup. All the people who really get it. The people who are not scared of death and strong emotion, and can be easy with those hard masters. The good Scottish weather, forecast to be dour and cloudy, which changed its mind and sent me some gentle sun. The lovely mares, in their secret field. The thoughtful neighbour, who took the time to drop in a card. All the good things. There are so many good things.

I can’t quite forgive the screw top. I expect I shall learn to let it go. I don’t care about the name plate on the coffin, but I shall do some ravishing flowers, because I do funeral flowers like nobody’s business. The flowers should not really matter either, but they do. I’ll send the old lady off with the best damn arrangement. She shall not be insulted with maidenhair fern. I find a furious consolation in that thought.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the simple, beautiful things to which I cling:

The dear departed.

Another of the great old gentlemen has gone.

My father had three sisters, all very glorious and splendid in their different ways. One of them was married to this kind, funny, generous man who has just left us.

He was old and he was ill. He was, I suspect, like my father, ready to go. He had run his race. There should be something fitting and right about these splendid old men going gently into the good night. And yet there is a tearing sense of loss and rupture. The world is not quite the world without them in it. The consolation that they are at peace is a thin gruel. He was one of those ones that filled a room, lit up people’s faces, made everything seem lighter and brighter. I had not seen him for some years but his memory burns bright, filled with fondness and warmth.

Now, when one of the old gentlemen goes, it is as if they are all going, all over again. The loss of the father, the godfather, the relation by marriage, the titan of my childhood – all is felt again, as fresh and urgent as if it has just happened. The heart aches and the throat closes up and the mind races furiously around, trying to find a good sense, a hymn of acceptance, a place to rest. No, no, no, says the racing mind, not that grand generation, which we shall never see again.

They were different from us, mightier in many ways, their virtues written in bold type. My lot, my boys, have talents that the old school perhaps did not – they are more attuned to domestic life, more fluent in expressing emotion, less afraid of plunging into what were not once considered the manly arts. They know how to rock a baby to sleep and cook a lunch and do the school run. (Although I still have at least one dear friend who, for all his modernity, looks at me sternly and says: ‘I don’t do feelings.’ And I tease him by talking about deep emotions and watch, laughing, as he desperately tries not to panic.)

But my father’s generation, the ones born in the war, had a dash, an élan, a scatter of magic about them. They were paradoxes: they had a certain reckless swagger, and yet they were masters of stoicism. I do like someone who can stare a serious feeling in the eye and get its measure, but I adore the flinty Blitz spirit of Getting On With It. Those old gentlemen Got On With It.

He was a lovely man. I think of his children, his wife, his many friends, confounded by loss. He will leave a space that cannot be filled. He will be remembered well.

As I rode this morning, in the bright Scottish sunshine, not long after hearing the brave voice of my aunt on the telephone, I thought of the old gentleman and committed him to the hills and the trees and the sky, as I always do. I give them back to the earth, these Dear Departed. I said, out loud, looking up at the wooded slope to the north: ‘I hope you have mountains and rivers, where you are.’

Then, as if sensing that I needed something marvellous, something fine and true, the mare gave me her most flying, floating canter. It was as light as air, as soft as love. It had all her grand thoroughbred spirit in it, all her athleticism and strength and power. But it was done with one hand on the reins, hardly the touch of a finger, so there was that impossible combination of the wildness of her ancestral voices and the control of her calm mind. It was so exhilarating that I whooped into the clear air, overcome with joy.

The joy released the sorrow, and I walked her back blinded by tears. I could not see where I was going, so I let go of the reins and let her guide me home to the gate. She knew where she was going.

I got off and rubbed her sweet forehead in gratitude. ‘Thank you,’ I said, aloud. She nodded, peaceful and unafraid. Sudden human cloudbursts do not alarm her. She, too, has the wonderful ability to Get On With It. The glorious old gentleman would have liked her, I think. They had something in common.

 

Today’s pictures:

Never send to know.

It’s quite an odd thing, to cry for a stranger. One may feel sadness and melancholy and regret for so many deaths: the ones in the newspapers which run into horrifying statistics, almost beyond the ability of the brain to process, like the Yazidis or the Syrians or the Gazans, or those closer to home, the teenage car crashes or fire fatalities reported in the local press. John Donne’s lines live always with me:

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. 

But still, to find oneself weeping blindly in an ordinary kitchen, making an ordinary cup of coffee, on an ordinary, rainy Scottish morning, because of the death of a famous person, as if that person were a best beloved – that is quite strange.

And yet, perhaps it is entirely explicable. Many other people seem to have had the same reaction to the shocking loss of Robin Williams. I sat with a friend in the field in the rain, as the red mare listened, and tried to work it all out. It was not just the straight sadness of a bright spirit snuffed out too soon. It was not only the thought of the family and friends left bereft. It was, we thought, the terrible poignancy of a man who gave so much joy, who lifted up so many hearts, being unable to stop himself from sinking.

We came back to the same line: if Robin Williams could not make it, who could?

Perhaps too there was the contemplation of the power of those demons, which robbed him of hope. If they could overcome such a dazzling, inventive mind, such a good heart, such a glittering talent, they must have been almost supernatural in their agency. The thought of the long fight he must have waged with them was one of unimaginable terror.

Depression is a bastard, and it is a thief. It is random and it does not discriminate. It takes the brilliant and the beautiful, the kind and the good, the funny and the clever. It does not give a shit how much you are adored or how much joy you give or how many prizes you win. It is no respecter of money or class or fame.

As the affection and grief roll round the internet, my friend and I say, as one: if only he knew how much he was loved. There is the silent, melancholy rider: it would have made no difference. Depression does not count blessings. Blessings, ironically, may make the sufferer feel even worse. How dare I be afflicted when I have all this?

Out in the open prairies of the web, where so often the craziness of crowds lives, comes the wisdom of crowds. People are shining lights into those dark corners where debilitation and shame live. It’s a condition, they are saying, as real and painful as a broken leg. You can’t fix a shattered limb by the power of thought or will; you can’t say to someone with a smashed femur, cheer up, butch up, man up. Don’t be afraid to ask, people are saying; stretch out your hand for help. There is help, there are people who love you, you are not alone.

Ordinary people, touched by this extraordinary man, are remembering Captain, my Captain, and wanting to stand on their desks and be remarkable.

I met Robin Williams once. I was a waitress in a tiny café  in a valley in Scotland, and I went over to a table and asked the new arrivals what they would like, and stared straight into that familiar, smiling, open face. I have an odd benchmark of character: I judge people very much on how they treat waiters. Williams was enchanting. He was gracious and polite and regular; he had no sense at all of the Big I Am. He was gentle and quiet, with no trace of that wild, manic, public persona. The other lovely thing, in that small highland village, was that everyone left him alone. Nobody pointed or stared or asked for his autograph. They gave him the courtesy of allowing him to be an ordinary man, just for one day.

I have a fantasy in my mind that he ordered the special lentil soup that I had made that morning. It was a long time ago. I think he probably did not have the soup. I think he just had a cup of coffee. I prided myself on my barista skills, newly learnt, and I made the hell out of that cup of coffee. I don’t expect you can really judge someone on one brief transactional meeting, but I was left with the impression of a very, very nice man. A gentle goodness shone out of him like starlight. Perhaps that is why so many people, from the humblest waitress to the most storied Hollywood star, are so sad.

He did not belong to us. I think of the heartbreaking moment in Out of Africa, where Meryl Streep looks down bleakly on a mound of dry earth and says: ‘Now take back the soul of Denys Finch-Hatton, whom you have shared with us. He brought us joy, and we loved him well. He was not ours, he was not mine.’

And yet, so many of my generation feel as if Robin Williams was stitched into the fabric of our lives, from Mork and Mindy in our youth, through Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets’ Society in our formative years, to the later, darker films of our middle age. He was so reliably present that perhaps many of us thought he would always be there.

There is something tragically democratic in his loss. Perhaps that too is what speaks to every bruised heart. He might have seemed to live up on that higher plane, where coruscating invention and wild talent and universal fame exist, in the troposphere where ordinary mortals may not go. Yet this kind, funny, haunted man was no more immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than the most workaday amongst us.

I very rarely use the universal we. I don’t like to speak for anyone else. But I’m not sure I have seen such an agreement on anything, in the rushing new age of the internet. There are no dissenting voices, no snide remarks, no cheap jokes. There is a collective sense of love and sadness, in their most authentic, unifying form.

In the end, there is not much point in trying to understand or dissect the extraordinary reaction to the death of one brilliant man. In the end, it is what it is. It is a shining light gone out, a brave soul lost, a fighting heart broken.

He gave us joy, and we loved him well.

Go free, now.
 


As I choose this picture, I think:

Tell someone you love how much you love them; take solace in the small things; be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle; lift your eyes up to the hills. Those are my resolutions for today.

Joy.

Pictures first today, because I want you to see the visual joy before I give you the words.

There was a ride of loveliness and delight on the red mare.

Starting off nice and steady:

Then, on a whim, caution to the wind (which was blowing a hooley), and LET’S GO:

Coming back, nice and easy:

Happy face:

And let’s do it again:

Whoop, whoop:

And, after all the excitement, she immediately settles back down for a nice sunshiny doze:

We did try to get her to prick her ears for the camera, but no, donkey face:

And then, for a finale, we rounded up the little Paint, who was not altogether impressed, but it made us laugh and laugh:

I love the tender look on Red’s face. She bosses that Paint mercilessly, and puts up with no nonsense, but she watches over her and keeps her safe from mountain lions, and takes her job as lead mare very seriously indeed.

And now for the words. Which, after those pictures, might not necessarily be what you expect. They weren’t really what I expected. But this is what came out, after all that joy. Bear with me; there is a point to it all. Or at least, I hope there is a point -

 

I fear death. I am most ashamed of admitting this, but shame thrives and grows in the dark, so the only remedy is to throw sunshine at it.

Fear of death is fabulously illogical. Death is the one certainty in life. Fearing it has no utility. It will not put off the dread reality; it merely clouds life.

I’ve been thinking lately why it should exist, this terror. I don’t think about it all the time, but when I contemplate mortality, a clutching fist grabs my viscera.

A couple of weeks ago, I was riding the mare on a quiet Sunday morning. The sun was out, she was light as air, we were in perfect harmony.

I thought, as I rode: perhaps the fear is due to greed. I always want more. Even when I am having a perfect ride, I am thinking of the others I will have, the progress I wish for, the adventures Red and I shall have in the future.

In the early days, when I was falling in love with her, I wished for more horses. Having an ex-racing thoroughbred was such a delight, I wanted a whole field full of the beauties. I used to go to Lucinda Russell’s website, and look longingly at the retirees she had for rehoming. (I do still think that if I should ever write a roaring best-seller, or get that crazy million-to-one accumulator, I would set up a sanctuary for retired racehorses and every day I could cast my eyes over a festival of thoroughbred beauty.)

It took me a while to realise that this one glorious mare was enough. I could put all my heart and soul into her.

As we rode on, on that sunny Sunday, and I thought of this notion of grasping, desirous greed, I suddenly realised that I was in danger of missing what I had under me, which was a responsive, happy horse, perfect in that moment. There are days when we wrangle a bit, slightly out of step with each other, and I have to work hard. And there are days when I get on and all is ease and light, and I don’t have to think, and we are together in everything we do, and it makes me feel like singing. This was one of those days.

I thought, quite out of the blue: if I die tomorrow, this ride will have been enough.

This morning, again, we had such a ride.

Every day we do something different. I teach her things, and I learn from her. Today, we ended up just playing. I let her breeze, as fast as she wanted to go. I have been concentrating for months on teaching her the joys of slowness, as a contrast to her fast working life. I wanted her to learn that velocity did not have to mean adrenaline or tension. Thoroughbreds are bred for speed; it is in their DNA. The fastness they use in their working life is often accompanied by pressure and excitement – they are on the racecourse or the polo field, and there is competition, and a human on top who wants to win. It is all zoom, zoom. I was turning her from a Ferrari into a stately old Bentley.

This morning, she picked up the pace, on a loose rein, and the excitement was there – she did that lovely racing snort I remember from childhood – and I felt the energy build in her great, strong body, but it was a lovely, dancing, contained thing. It did not overflow and master her. She was the mistress of her fate, the captain of her soul.

The steadiness that I have built into her, from months of slow transitions and work on the ground, acted as a delightful ballast, keeping her earthed. I stood up in the stirrups and whooped into the bright Scottish air.

And at the end of it, she came back to me on a voice command, and then moseyed over to say hello to the Horse Talker, who was taking the pictures of the momentous moment, and had a little doze in the sun.

What does all this have to do with death? It is - and I am scrambling to put this theory together in a way that makes sense - that I think that these flying moments are my own ballast. They are complete, in themselves. I do not have to grasp and stretch for more, and regret that one day I shall no longer be alive to have them.

I suppose it is the Buddhist idea of living in the present. There will be people out there who have worked all this out years ago, and will be smiling indulgently and thinking: I could have told you that. I had to figure it out, slowly and painstakingly, for myself.

I don’t think this revelation will be a miraculous resolution. I shall still have my scratchy battles with mortality. But it does amaze me that finally, on the back of my beautiful red mare, I have had a glimpse of wisdom and truth. I always say that she is my best professor, but I did not think that she would teach me such a profound lesson.

It is so simple and yet so hard to believe.

It is that this, this is enough.

A moment.

The older I get, the more I think that life is made of moments. Of course there are great life arcs and plans and goals and sweeps. Humans may lift their eyes to the peaks, and not just stare doggedly at the foothills. But perhaps the paradox is that it is in the foothills where one may find the peaks.

Today, there was a moment.

It sleeted in the early morning, and I woke to a sky the colour of doleful rhinos. It will be a practical day, I thought: get the mare fed and check the rugs and carry the hay. Too horrid for anything else.

Then, little by little the sky began to clear.

Perhaps I’ll just take her round the block, in hand, I thought. I’ve been riding a lot lately, and she adores going for a mooch on the end of her rope, and it is one of the things that we do together that I love the most.

Then the sky cleared a little more.

Perhaps I can even take off the rug, I thought.

I wondered if I should ride, after all. The weather was turning fast. But I had this gentle idea of a walk in my head, and I honoured it.

As we walked away from the field, my sister appeared. The sun, as if from nowhere, shone down on us with vivid conviction.

I knew the sister was busy. I looked at her. ‘Just round the block?’ I said.

So we walked and talked. We talked about everything: life, death, family, love, fear, regret. I had the lovely sister on one side and the lovely mare on the other, and the Scottish hills and the blue sky beyond.

My sister has just lost a friend. She was a friend of all of ours. I remember her from my childhood. She was Italian and she was the most cosmopolitan, glamorous creature I had ever seen. She was always laughing and saying outrageous things. She became my sister’s bosom companion and they spoke of everything. We watched her bring up three impossibly tall, gentle, clever boys. And then she died. The funeral was last week.

That is why we spoke of life and death.

I said: ‘I think that when you get to our age, one death is all deaths. I think it makes us grieve Dad all over again.’

We contemplated this.

I said: ‘We will get through the sadness together.’

I meant all the sadness. The middle of life is when you know that sadnesses will come, not in single spies but in battalions. The only thing you can do is work out some kind of way of dealing with them, so that you are not drowning but waving. At the moment, my main plan is: love, and sticking together. My sister and I shall stick together. The whole family will stick together. I love my family very much today.

The moment came at the end of this long walk and this long conversation.

The three of us were standing, in the sunshine, getting ready to part. The sister and I were finishing our talking. She is leaving tomorrow, so we did a farewell hug. The mare, her sweet head low and relaxed, her eyes soft, her big body gentle and at home in the world, turned to the sister. She gave her velvet muzzle, and the sister stroked it. The mare was very, very still. She was offering something.

I have a secret theory that the kind ones, with the big hearts, can sense human sorrow. A simple moment of sympathy ran between the human and the horse. I watched it, and I felt more touched and proud of my thoroughbred girl than if we had done twenty flying changes. There was something so authentic and generous in that moment that it brought tears to my eyes.

As I walked Red back to the field and gave her her breakfast, as I watched her go politely to her place and stand, waiting for me to put the bowl down in the yellow grass, whinnying a little in anticipation, I thought for the hundredth time what a miracle mare she is. A flinging pied wagtail, the first of the spring, suddenly flew in over our heads and settled on the ground, preening itself in the sun. There was another moment.

Write it down, write it down, shouted the voice in my head. The moments must be recorded. The small moments – of love, of joy, of reality, of honesty, of being alive – are what make me human and actual and true. If I can stack up enough of them, then perhaps there will always be a light, on the darkest day.

I think: I never really know what this blog is for. I think: perhaps it is for this. It is the place where the moments can be stored. It is the crock of gold. It is, as I so often say, because Yeats lives in my head like a singing thing, so that I can take down that book, and slowly read.

 

Today’s pictures:

There was no camera with us on our walk this morning, but this is what we look like – deep in conversation and thought, with the sympathetic wonder-mare by our side:

And from today:

And speaking of generosity and authenticity – oh, oh, the Dear Readers. What enchanting things you said yesterday. I smiled and smiled and smiled. Kindness of strangers; little arrows of sweetness from one unknown heart to another. That is what the internet is for. It never ceases to amaze me. Thank you.

The griefs. Or, a little light and shade.

I think quite a lot about ordinary griefs. I know that really one should not put things on a scale and that not everything is relative, but I do think that some losses are worse than others. So I think of griefs as coming in two kinds: the ordinary griefs, and the rip-up-your-life griefs.

The ones that rip up your life are the ones I can’t imagine. I think of those as the violent, sudden, or too soon ones: the children, the young brother, the just-married wife. Or the too many ones: when a whole family is lost, in a car crash or hurricane. Or, right at the other end of the scale, the ones where two people have been together for fifty years, and one of them goes. The other often does not survive for long. People really do die of broken hearts.

The ordinary ones are all the ones I know: the old men, the old dogs, the old pony. They are the ones who have had their time. The loss hurts, but the natural order of things has been preserved. There is, in the end, consolation in that. In that strange season of death three years ago, when I went to three funerals in three weeks, two of the departed were untimely ripped. Two of them were too young, but I was saved by just enough distance. They were people I loved and knew, but they were not in the immediate circle. They were people I fell on with delight and affection when I saw them, but I did not see them very often. The distance was geographical and circumstantial, and it was enough. The heart was sore, the awfulness and stupidness of fine spirits snuffed out too early was keenly felt, but the life was not ripped.

In the news, there is a rip-up death. I never know what to say about people I admire but do not know. Philip Seymour Hoffman was in many of my favourite films, and was a blazing talent. He had that sense of familiarity that great actors carry, because you’ve seen them in the darkened cinema and your front room, and the vivid sense that the great ones carry makes them very real and present. His death was so abrupt and unexpected and pointless that the lives around him must feel as if they have been torn to pieces. Out on the internet, there is a great outpouring of regret. Some of the messages are touching and elegant, but I find myself resisting adding to them. I put up no Facebook picture and tweeted no tweet. He was not my friend. I do not know how to say anything which would not sound mawkish or bandwagon-jumping.

Yet, the internet is rather wonderful in times like this. The loss of a brilliant man may be marked. Strangers may record their admiration for him. Perhaps the ones who did know and love him will find their broken hearts soothed, just a little, to see that he was held in such esteem. All the same, I feel an odd shyness about posting anything about it on my own internet pages. He was not mine; he did not belong to me.

This morning, someone wrote something beautiful and touching about the old gentleman who was mine. This is another of the ordinary griefs. A man of venerable age went gently into that good night. The sorrow is real, and lies heavy, but it may be managed. I know that time will do its thing.

I circle back to the start of this post – the thinking about these ordinary griefs, and how they are folded into a life. They must be folded in, because every human has them, and one of the most important existential talents is to learn how to carry them, so that they do not sink the ship.

This morning, I had a little lesson in that. I came away from reading the lovely tribute very doleful and tearful. The weight of loss pressed on me. But then the dog made me laugh, and the Horse Talker was down at the field and we made jokes about the equines, who show such daily comedy skills, and then I got on my red mare and rode out. I had thought that would be the time when sadness might return, but she was in her most racehorsey mood, and I had to concentrate hard to settle and relax her.

Then, on the way home, I bumped into some of the extended family who are visiting, and we had a happy chat and they admired my glorious girl, which lifted my spirits. Then there was HorseBack work, and many things to think about. Then there was the writing of the secret project. Then, it was time to go back to the field and feed the horses and put out the hay and check the rugs and give the love. And then it was back to the desk. I even did errands and very ordinary domestic duties.

The sorrow got put away, because there was life instead, and I can’t mope about like a wet weekend. I suppose the lesson in this small parable is that life goes on, and that is exactly what it must do. I think what I was reminded of, particularly in the unexpected laughter with the living people I saw today, was that sorrow does not need to blot out everything else. Moments of joy can exist alongside, cantering in tandem. There is room for both.

At the same time, for all my belief in bashing on, I think that one can be too stoical. There must be a marking, and a grieving, and room for regret. The thing must be felt, and expressed, in its correct place and time. Perhaps it is finding that right place that is the secret of it all. I hunt for it as Mr Stanley hunts for the mice in the feed shed, although perhaps with slightly less snuffling.

As I finish this, I think: I did not quite get all the good words in the good order. I wanted to say something profound, and I ended up with a bit of a muddle. I often do this. But then the whole shooting match is a bit of a muddle, so I don’t mind so much. You clever Dear Readers shall find your way through the tangle, because you always do.

 

Much too tired now to frame proper pictures for you. I scrolled through the archive and stopped at a random place. It was this, all glory and what-the-hell, from a time before the floods and the sleet and the applying of the new rug technology. It’s just a horse, having a damn good roll:

A good man and a good woman, in a slightly unexpected juxtaposition.

Quite often in these pages, I write the sentence: ‘Another of the good old men has gone’.

Well, another of the good old men has gone.

The strange thing is that I was not going to write of it. Last night, as the news came in, I suddenly felt that the internet had got it all wrong. The wisdom of crowds can be magnificent at times like this. There is a touching communal outpouring, a coming together in regret. Passings are marked well, with restraint and elegance.

But I found something curiously grating about the response to Nelson Mandela’s death. There was a faint whiff of bandwagon-jumping, of one-upmanship, of sentimentality. Some of the things that were written were good and true and heartfelt, but some hit a false note. It was not just that idiotic spats broke out, between people of different political kidneys. It was not just that the Ukippers started singing their ugly song. It was that a morbid competition arose – who was saddest, who knew him best, who referred to him as Madiba rather than Mandela, in a rather proprietary way.

I felt not sad, but cross. I went into a fugue-like silence. I could not join in this untrammelled effusion.

When very great public figures die, the newness of the social networks are thrown into vivid relief. The etiquettes and the mores have not quite been worked out yet. If you do say something, on the Twitter or the Facebook, it can sound a little forced and phoney. Look at me, minding. If you say nothing, you have a heart of stone. The balance between the two is finely poised. I could not find the balance.

I had nothing to say. I went to bed, dry-eyed.

This morning, I told my mother. She did not know. Her power is still out. She has no news.

Then I did the morning chores, fed the horses, and returned to the kitchen to make hot soup for my cold, stranded, powerless mum. I put on the radio. Clare Balding was on Desert Island Discs. She was being funny and self-deprecating and human. And then she spoke of the time she was treated for cancer, and how she and her partner dealt with it, and this most articulate woman suddenly lost her words. Her voice cracked and broke, and there was that rarest thing on the wireless: silence.

It was that moment that unzipped my heart, and restored my humanity. So I stood, in a Scottish kitchen, making soup with split peas and barley, weeping for a great old gentleman and a brave woman, both. Then, not long afterwards, someone played Something Inside So Strong by Labi Siffre, and that was that. That song makes me teary at the best of times; today it finished me off.

Sorrowing for the loss of someone you do not know is a curious thing. Nelson Mandela did not belong to me. He was not my president or my grandfather or my friend. But perhaps the very great ones belong to everyone. Perhaps he really was that most unlikely of things: a true citizen of the world. And that was why everyone rushed to the Facebook and the Twitter, because he meant something to them and they wanted to give that meaning voice. They wanted to do something.

In my teenage years, my cohort had three heroes. They were an oddly assorted bunch. They were Che Guevara, Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela. Everyone had Che pictures and Solidarity posters on their walls; everyone played Free Nelson Mandela by The Specials until the vinyl was worn thin. (We are back in the days of records, now.) Che, it turned out as we grew older and wiser, was a bit of a dodgy hero, and we were perhaps taken in by his great beauty. He looked as a revolutionary should look. Walesa and Mandela did not. They did not have the flowing hair and the romantic aura and the motorbikes. Walesa was a stocky fellow, who looked like a farmer. Mandela, from the old pictures before he came out of prison, was a solid man with a boxer’s face, nothing fey or fanciful about him. There were no Guevara sculpted cheekbones, no perfect profile, no dashing rebel hat. But those two unlikely bedfellows were shining beacons for the ideological teen in the raw and rampant eighties.

The really astonishing thing about Nelson Mandela was that he proved even more remarkable in life than he was in our young imaginations. He was unseen for so many years, and he went into the realm of myth. Usually, such humans are a crashing disappointment when they return to the theatre of the real. Few can live up to that weight of ardent expectation. But on that day when Mandela made the long walk to freedom, emerging at last into the bright South African light, he spoke not of vengeance or hatred but of forgiveness and peace. It was not just rhetoric: for every day afterwards he lived up to those words, steadily put thought into action. He turned out to be worthy of the burden of hero-worship placed on his shoulders, which may be the most extraordinary thing of all.

I really was not going to write about this today. I thought: everyone knows what they think, and everyone knows what they feel. My paltry scratches on a page mean nothing. A good old man has gone, and in some odd way it feels like a private thing, for all his public renown.

It was Clare Balding who made me do it. She was the one who made me cry and unlocked the door. (As I write this I am laughing, because it is such an unexpected juxtaposition. But sort of perfect too.)

Despite this, I still have a sense of hesitation, even of impropriety. Then I remember something else I always say here. Which is: the thing must be marked. That is why humans plant trees in remembrance or lay flowers or stand in silence. In my case, most often, the marking is made in my beautiful hills. It is in their eternal blue that I find solace and proportion. I drove into them today, as the sun shone again after the violent storms. To the west, Morven was entirely white. The tips of the silver birches were scarlet in the light and the air was high and thin with the promise of snows to come.

I looked out over this beloved country, and marked the thing which must be marked. On the way home, the South African national anthem came on the radio. I smiled. Everyone, I thought, does their remembrance in their own way, and that is exactly how it should be.

 

Today’s pictures:

In which I have no answers.

When the disasters come, I never know what to do. There is a vast sense of powerlessness. Sometimes the disaster is so big and so ugly and so destructive that I can hardly listen to the reports or look at the pictures. Then I despise myself for my softness and privilege. If the people who are in it can go through it, I damn well can look. But what good does that do? One can send a paltry extra bit of cash to the Red Cross, but it feels like a plaster on an open wound. Debates fire up, like hares set running, about whether extreme weather is thanks to global warming, and so entirely the fault of rapacious and heedless humans. I’m not sure that does much good either.

I tried, this morning, to imagine what it must be like to find, from one moment to the next, that you have nothing. I tried to imagine what it would be like to come back from the field and find my house gone. All my clothes and books and pieces of paper saying that I exist; every word I ever wrote, every photograph I ever cherished. If the village had gone and my sister’s house had gone and the water was gushing out of broken pipes and there was no electricity, what would we do? How would a person survive even one day in such circumstances. My brain ran into a brick wall. There is no imagining. I had absolutely no idea what I would do. I have no idea what the people of the Eastern Visayas are doing now, with their ten thousand dead and their ravaged land.

At eleven o’clock, as I stood silent for two minutes, I tried to imagine those boys in Flanders field, those waves of young men on the Somme, in mud and terror and death. On Remembrance Sunday, I think of all the wars. On Armistice Day, for some reason, I think only of the First World War. That, too, is beyond imagining. I don’t care how many books you read or how many facts you know or how many pictures you see or how much Wilfred Owen you can recite, the sheer numbers still make it go beyond human comprehension. One may have a sketch of it, but not the whole thing.

I think about the horses of that war, of course I do, as I gentle my red mare in the November sunshine. I think of the bonny hunters who were taken to front almost as a lark, and the work horses who were led from the quiet green fields of home and shipped into an incomprehensible hades of mire and gas and cannon shot.

When the silence is over, I go and do my HorseBack work and look out over the bright hills, lit with the glancing November sun. I speak to a veteran who was twenty-two years on submarines, who joined up when he was twenty and the cold war was still raging, and can remember the eerie sight of Russian boats going silently by, in the days when people really believed that the Soviets might blow up the whole world.

And then I come back and the Philippines is on the news again, and my brain stretches once more in incomprehension, and I hear one sentence, standing out – that the pitiless storm has destroyed a region which was already poor and deprived to start with. They had very little; now they have nothing. Perhaps because I do not know what to do when the disasters come, and impotence often leads to rage, I feel suddenly, shakingly furious. What world has this much sorrow and pity in it?

I do not know what to do when the disasters come, so I write paltry words, because words are all I have. I scratch a mark upon the page. I will go back, steadily, slowly, to the small things, because in the end those are all that humans may hold on to. I will look at the hills and the trees and gaze on the handsome, eager face of Stanley the Dog, and stroke the teddy bear neck of Red the Mare, as she grows warm and woolly for the winter to come. I will think of the small, potent loves which get a person through the day. I will put my feet on the good Scottish earth, one step after the other. I will realise that I shall never, ever know the answer to The Universal Why. The rage will settle and fall.

I want, as always, to find a fine sentence to finish this. There must always be a ringing final line, which neatly gathers the whole and brings a proper full stop. Today, I do not have one.

I’ll just leave you with the hill, which is always there, as blue and eternal as a blue eternal thing.

A bad mood.

I started the day pretty well. Then, out of nowhere, a mood came and got me and snapped me in its crocodile jaws and threw me about the place. I had absolutely no defence against it. I wanted to shout and scratch and punch things in the nose. It was like a furious tight fist clutching at my insides.

I’m no good at moods. I can do emotions. I don’t enjoy being melancholy or sorrowful, but I know those; they are good, clean, proper emotions, with clear, explicable reasons behind them. I understand them. A random mood that comes out of the blue leaves me floundering. Also, there are things you can do with sorrow. A mood is so thick that you cannot cut through it. All my remedies are in vain. The small things can gain no purchase. Love and trees mean nothing. The dog, the mare, these Scottish hills, the great good fortune of living in a free democracy and having opposable thumbs do not work.

I crossly and grimly go to the shop. On the way back, I run into The World Traveller. For those just joining us, The World Traveller is my friend, relation by marriage and near neighbour. Her blog name is because she once rode on a horse from Turkmenistan to China. She is the only person I know who can say, without bluster or fanfare, ‘Oh yes, that’s very typical of the Turkmen horses’. (The horses of Turkmenistan are one of the most famous and idiosyncratic breeds in the world, the Akhal Teke – glossy, lithe, athletic, aristocratic, and amazingly tough.)

Anyway, The World Traveller says, with her beaming smile: ‘How are you?’

The correct British response to this is ‘Fine, thank you.’ If things are not fine, if your dog has just died or you’ve lost all your money in rash speculations, you may say: ‘Not too bad.’ If you are very drunk, you can say ‘bloody awful,’ but only if you are being ironical and then immediately make a joke out of it. Even now, in the era of the misery memoir and the so-called confession culture, the people of these islands are schooled not to make a fuss. I think this is because a fuss makes other people uncomfortable and causes embarrassment, and embarrassment is the great British disease. (Britons get embarrassed in a way that no French or Americans ever do.)

I gaze into the clever, open face of The World Traveller. When I first knew her, I was rather intimidated because she seemed to me like one of the perfect people. She is kind and funny and competent and good at things and unbelievably nice. Now I know her so well, I am reassured by the fact that for all her loveliness, she has human frailties just like I do.

‘I’m in a filthy mood,’ I say.

She bursts into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, yes,’ she says, merrily. ‘I know that. I shout at the children, shout at the dog, shout at everyone.’

(She is the least shouty person I know.)

The balm of shared experience falls on me, from the bright Scottish sky.

We discuss our moods for a while. I drive off, bolstered. I’m still mysteriously grumpy, but I’ll ride it out now, because I’m not alone.

I think how interesting it is that admitting the not pretty stuff is a tremendous bonding experience. I notice it here. If I’m having a lovely, shiny day, and I write about that, I get a couple of kind comments, mostly involving the handsomeness of Stanley the Dog, because there’s not much else to say. If I am sad or suffering, the response becomes quite a different animal. It comes fast and generous. I think it is the relief of Me Too. I think sometimes that all crazy, goofy, quirky humans want is to be understood, for someone to come along and say, oh yes, I know just what that feels like. It’s almost like a gentle giving of permission: you may have your shitty days for no reason, because I have those as well.

The funny thing is I used to be ashamed to admit to idiot moods or moments of cross bafflement. I wanted to say: Look Ma, no hands. I can ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time. Watch me gleam. A mood was a horrid admission of rank failure. Now I am older and more bashed about, I find a small, twisted comfort in being able to confess that every day really is not Doris Day.

 

Today’s pictures:

Very hard to know how I can ever be cross when I have these beautiful, delightful creatures in my life:

Funny how she photographs so differently in different lights. And yet, to my eyes, she is gloriously the same every day: sweet, still, real, kind, present:

Stanley the Dog is altogether a more antic person:

With his new best friend:

Playing their hilarious new game:

One more of the sheer loveliness:

The little HorseBack UK foal:

The dear old hill:

The funny thing is, I’ve suddenly realised that every time I have an inexplicable black mood, I write this exact same blog. I grump it out, and share with the group, sentence by identical sentence. I wheel out my Every day can’t be Doris Day line. I’m obviously very proud of that one. I have a habit of flogging old lines to absolute death.

Just as I was about to press Publish, I saw something about the funeral of Seamus Heaney. I love Heaney, and saw him years ago at a sunny, bucolic literary festival, where he entranced everybody. I was very sad to hear of his death. Another of the good old men gone.

The piece said that the very last thing he did before he died was send his wife a message. It was two words, in Latin. It said: Noli timere.

That means: don’t be afraid.

I find that almost impossibly wonderful, in ways I cannot express.

A long, winding shaggy horse story for a sunny Saturday; or, life and death and love and trees.

I did such a funny, lovely thing this morning. I took my mare for a walk.

I usually have many rational explanations for this. It’s important to get her onto metalled surfaces to harden up her hooves, now she is living barefoot. It’s a fine thing to let her explore new places on the ground. (We crossed the burn today and went up into the woods.) Besides, she is recovering from a slightly bruised foot, so she is off games and I cannot ride her, but it’s good to get her moving.

I also have a whole, highly developed theory about leading. Everything with a horse starts with the feet. If you watch herds at work, you see quickly that the leaders are the ones who get the others to move their feet. You can tell the hierarchy instantly from that. If Red is fractious or not paying attention, I move her feet, and like magic, I have her back. Four steps backwards or disengaging the hindquarters, and the stardust is scattered. If I ever had to give advice about a difficult horse, which I would not really, because I can’t bear all that telling everyone what to do, I would say: do a week of nothing but leading.

But the real truth is that it is one of my keenest, most profound pleasures. There is nothing that soothes my heart more than ambling past venerable trees and fields of antic sheep and meadows fecund with cow parsley, with a beautiful, relaxed creature at my side, as the sun gentles the bright land.

I taught the mare, very early on, to lead nicely on a loose rope, matching her pace to mine. This is not just some hippy freak or circus trick. It makes everything easy and happy between us. I don’t get pushed or barged or pulled. She gets the safe feeling of being with her good leader. She puts her head down and lengthens her neck and swings her lovely quarters. Everything in her speaks of peace. I look at the trees and the hills and then I look at her glorious, strong body, her intelligent head, her kind eye, and I am in aesthetic overload. The world stops and the bad news goes away, and it’s just me and my girl.

I suppose it is slightly eccentric, this going for a walk. A gentleman stopped his motor to ask if he was going in the right direction, and seemed excessively surprised to see a red thoroughbred peering curiously through his car window. But it feels entirely natural and proper and expected to me.

I came back to watch The Morning Line, which I had recorded. I like to look at it after my equine work is done, so I can prepare myself for the day’s racing. Clare Balding made a moving and eloquent tribute to Sir Henry Cecil. All his past glories were there, from the beautiful and bold Oh So Sharp, a mighty filly I adored in my youth, to the soaring swansong that was Frankel.

I thought, as I always do when the good ones go, that it’s a pity that these lovely canters through a great life come after the person is dead and cannot see how beloved and brilliant they were. Although I suspect that Sir Henry had an inkling of it. In London, the cab drivers used to lean out of their taxis and shout: ‘Hello ‘Enry, got a good one for us?’ When the cab drivers love you, you have arrived indeed. I used to smile all over my face, in my younger days, when taxi drivers would tell me they had once won money on my old dad.

The great thing about Henry Cecil is that he never trained by the book. He did not even know there was a book. He always said he did everything by instinct. ‘The horses tell me what to do,’ he said.

That’s the most profound truth, for anyone who has anything to do with equines: the horses are always your best professors. If you listen to them, they will tell you everything.

I’ve been thinking lately what it is that makes a horseman or woman. Some people just have a feeling for the thing, and it’s almost impossible to define or teach. I think it’s an imponderable combination of a dozen things. It is calm and curiosity and patience. I have a private notion that people who are really good with horses have a rhythm to them, as if moving to some gentle internal metronome.

I think that they are also the ones who understand that a horse is a horse. It sounds stupidly obvious, but a lot of people never quite believe it. Horses are not like us. The human and the equine worlds have a little overlap, a small coloured common area in the Venn Diagram, but they are mostly quite different. Horses think differently, act differently, literally, with their binocular vision, see things differently. They consent, generously, to step into our world, and light it with their mysterious, foreign presence. I never take that consent for granted. It is my daily gift.

Henry Cecil was a horseman to his bones, and a bit of an eccentric too. In my flaky mind, I think: I bet he’d understand why I take my beautiful, bonny mare for a walk.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the week. It’s been such a strange seven days. This time last week, I was mourning a fine man I knew who died too young; then came the very public passing of a national treasure who is missed by the entire racing world. I’ve been surfing a tide of rolling emotion, tears never far from the surface.

Yet, it’s also been a week of small, intense pleasures; of kindnesses, love, family, interesting new people, good work. I even had two huge accumulators come off, which would make my dear old parent smile, in the great betting shop in the sky.

The sun shone. The blossom blossomed. The lilac bloomed.

Stanley the Dog was impossibly funny and handsome. My mare took my heart in her delicate hooves and expanded it, which is her great talent and my great fortune, and not what I expected would happen to me in my middle age. 

Life and death; love and trees. That was the story of the week. 

The wonderful children of Banchory Academy, who inspired us all at HorseBack so much:

And Scott and Rodney:

Stanley the Manly:

The precious herd:

And my glorious girl:

The hill:

Have a happy weekend, Dear Readers, wherever you are.