12.12.12.

This is a Red Letter Day. It is a day among days. Apparently, this repetitive date is the last one ever. I can’t quite work it out in my mind. Surely it will come again, on the 12^th of December 3012? I suppose what people mean is that we shall all be dead by then.

Either way, it feels tremendously thrilling to me, for a reason I cannot work out at all. I am inspired to blog the whole day. I actually signed up to a thing called One Day on Earth, where they are making a brilliant project, getting millions of people to record the day on video, and then posting it all on their website. This is a lovely idea of human community and I was all for it, until I realised that I only have a pathetic video facility on my ordinary camera and have never been able to work that properly. Instead, I am going to do my own little one day, right here in this small corner of the earth.

It will be like the Mass Observation: an ordinary day, in the ordinary life of an ordinary woman, on an extraordinary date.

I did not start the great day on a glorious note. I slept through three alarms and ran down to the horses with my hair sticking up in shock and lateness. They were unmoved, feeding happily at their new, custom-built, hand-carved hay manger.

I worked first with my small Welsh Mountain pony. We did some gentle ground work, yielding at the quarters and shoulder, backing up, coming to. We did a little join-up, and I had the keen pleasure of walking the field with her at my side. It’s an easy technique, but it gives me the most intense joy, and every time I do it I bless the cleverness of Monty Roberts, and wonder that it never fails. I think the delight of it is that an essentially wild animal is giving you their consent. This feels quite profound to me.

Afterwards, I stand with the pony for a while, scratching her all over her sweet spots, gentling her muzzle, telling her she is easily the cleverest pony in Scotland. She leans her head against me and I feel my heart expand with love.

Myfanwy is, on paper, good for nothing. She is old, and her back is crocked, so she cannot be ridden. All the rescue charities find it almost impossible to home what they call companion horses. Yet, to me, she is good for everything. She has grown into the most beloved, entirely irreplaceable member of the herd. I cannot imagine life without her. Red the Mare would be lost without her small, furry friend. When I appear at the gate, the pony raises her head and pricks her ears and makes a low, humming whicker, and that is worth more than diamonds.

Red gets no work today, just love. We stand together for a while, looking out into the light. She rests her noble head on my shoulder, and I stroke her dear face, and chat to her for a bit. I think of the thing the Buddhists talk about, of staying still in the moment.

‘This very minute,’ I say to Red, who listens politely, ‘is more important than anything. For this moment, I am quite happy. I must not think of the lost ones, of The Pigeon or The Duchess or my father, because then I shall miss this perfect moment with you.’

Red blows gently through her nostrils, as if she knows all this already.

I say: ‘Of course it’s easier to say than to do.’

But for a moment, I do manage to quiet my antic mind, and concentrate on the pure, undilute pleasure of being at one with a horse in a field, on a clear day, where, just for a second, it feels as if I can see forever.

I race down for breakfast with my mother and stepfather. We discuss the continuing row over Kauto Star going for dressage, and the now very public spat between Clive Smith and Paul Nicholls, and how the whole of Twitter is alight with it. I eat bacon and drink coffee black as pitch. The Stepfather, who is not interested in racing, fills out a form from The Dogs’ Trust to sponsor a lost dog.

I take Stanley the Lurcher into their garden for a race around. It is entirely fenced in, so I can let him off the lead and allow him to show his paces. When he runs, he is like a greyhound, his belly low to the ground, his head down, his long legs raking over the grass like Frankel in his pomp. It is a very thrilling sight.

‘Watch that dog go,’ I yell to The Stepfather, who watches in admiration.

I go home to my desk, and write this.

The sun comes out. The bare trees are gilded with pink and gold; the remnants of the ice and snow glitter and gleam. I drink more coffee. I think: 12.12.12. is a very splendid day indeed.

 

Pictures of the morning:

The horses’ field, looking north:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Red the Mare and Autumn the Filly:

When Autumn first arrived, Red did a huge amount of boss mare prancing and leaping, to show who was in charge. She has never been a lead mare before, and she rather overdid it, as if uncertain quite how to play the part. Now, they are sweet friends. Red occasionally gives Autumn a bit of a biff or a bossy pinned ear face, but most of the time they mooch about in perfect harmony.

The sweet dopey face of my lovely girl:

The field with its magnificent tree, facing west:

The herd, with the timber for their new shelter in the background:

Trees:

Ice:

My favourite small tree:

Sheep, looking east from my mother’s house:

The Stepfather’s excellent shed:

Another view east:

My favourite old iron fence:

The limes:

Stanley the Lurcher, with his good boy face on:

And his sweet flying ear:

Observing the sheep:

More limes:

My plan is to return later in the day, so that every moment of this date may be kept forever. Absurd, I know, but I have a habit of indulging my whims, every so often. It was whim that brought me Red and Myfanwy and Stanley, so it can’t be all bad.

Of lost time and lost dogs. Or, forgive me if I am not making much sense.

For those just joining:

Suddenly thought I ought to do a recap. One of the dullest things in the world, in life, is people talking about people you have never met, as if you have met them.

‘Oh, Archibald,’ they say; ‘ran off with a bongo player.’

Or: ‘Dinah’s never really been the same since the incident.’

There is a special sort of face I affect when this happens, and I have absolutely no idea who Archibald and Dinah are, or even if they are human (in certain company, likelihood is they could be dogs or horses). It is a bright, interested face, slightly stretched, faintly quizzical. What that covers, not always terribly well, is a what the buggery bollocks are you talking about face.

So, for the new Dear Readers – I have a most Beloved Cousin in the south. We are quite distant cousins, so we did not grow up together, but we have known each other well since we were eighteen. Her parents were like my second family, and over the years we spent happy holidays and Christmases and Easters together. Her husband is a professional polo player, who used to play high goal, but now mostly makes ponies for the top players.

Those who make their living from polo have to go where the work is, and in the winter months that is South America. So, once in November, and once in March, off the Old Fella goes to the pampas, and I pack up the car and come here for three weeks at a time, to help with the children, whom I have known since the day they were born, and be company for the cousin, and generally keep the home fires burning.

It is a very lovely and touching arrangement, and brings us all a lot of joy. In particular, for me, it is a revealing slice of family life. Since I decided not to have children of my own, the domestic life is a bit of mystery to me. I feel very lucky to have the liberty of a solitary existence, but I also love the fact that, twice a year, I plunge into the rhythms and jokes and business of the small people.

Anyway, for those just tuning in, that is what I am doing now. And every year, I slightly forget the all-consuming nature of it. That is why it is only now, at eight-thirty at night, with the little ones in bed, bath time over, supper made and eaten, that I can sit down at my computer and type the blog. (Or The Blob, as my middle cousin calls it.)

The thing that amazes me is the rushing of time, in a family house. All I did today was run a few errands, arrange some domestic arrangements, and effect the making of a special green soup, and the day was gone. That is why I say, every single time: I don’t know how you parents do it, and, every single time, all my hats must come off.

The girls in particular adore and demand the special green soup, which astonishes me (they are four and ten) and delights me in equal measure.

‘This is the BEST TEA EVER,’ shouts the four-year-old. She looks at me seriously. ‘We must have it every night.’

I know very few four year olds who would willingly choose a soup made from courgettes and spinach and leeks over, say, chicken and chips, but she would. She is a rare creature, but even so.

And it’s not as if she is a perfect, cookie cutter child. She’s not a cute, magazine baby. She is capable of wails and that sudden exhaustion that very small people are prone to and the streaming moment when nothing will do for her at all and she does not know what she wants. She can be furious and cussed and even, on occasion, stamp her foot. (She reminds me of myself at that age.)

But when it comes to eating, what she loves the most is the green stuff, and my green stuff in particular. It makes me feel as if I have won a prize or just published a number one bestseller. The compliments of children are the sweetest, because when humans are that small they do not flatter or flannel or dissemble. They tell you exactly what they think, without prevarication, at the very moment they think it.

The thing I love about these children is that they are very talkative and funny and interesting. Flights of fancy soar about all over the shop. Quite often, for no particular reason, they burst into song.

People are often surprised that I like children, when I don’t want to have my own. This is a small category error. (I don’t not want them because I dislike them; I don’t want them because it is not my talent, and I’m a great believer in playing to one’s strengths.) There is also the error of thinking that because one can get on with certain children, one is a children person. I regard small humans just the same as I regard grown ones; some are fascinating and delightful, and some are wearing and faintly dull. Just because someone is under three feet high, I do not automatically find them adorable.

It’s the same thing with dogs, I suddenly realise. Because I loved my two old ladies so much, because there was the joke of me being stranded on Dog Island without a ferry home, people sometimes think I am a categorical Dog Person. In fact, the utter singularity of my glorious, intelligent, sleek black girls has almost spoilt me for all other canines. I am a perfect bundle of awful dog prejudice. I do not like the small, yappy ones; I do not like over-bred, frankly peculiar-looking ones (I find Crufts absolute torture for this reason); I cannot favour needy, wiggly ones.

This shocking bigotry even goes into the tiny details: I prefer short hair to long, black to tan, cross-breeds to pure bred. What I really love is a mutt, something at which the Kennel Club would turn up its toffee nose. I like working dogs, who, even if they spend half the day dozing on the sofa, at least are designed for an honest day’s graft. The Pigeon and the Duchess, with their half Labrador, half collie heritage, were the crest and peak of this.

Sometimes, when I miss the Pigeon so much that I can hardly function, I think I shall never find her like again. And perhaps I shall not. But I am sneaking off tomorrow to meet a lonely gentleman who has had a hard start in life, and who, as the rescue sites put it, yearns for his Forever Home.

It might not take. I’m not even sure I am ready. But it seems absolutely idiotic to have read all those books on dog psychology (they need a pack leader, etc etc), to live in a place which is the very definition of dog heaven, to have the luxury of time, which so few people really do have, and to close myself off, just because there is a crack in my heart.

Another mistake people make is to think that by getting a new dog, one may heal the crack. I don’t think that is it at all. The crack will remain; there is nothing to be done about that except allow it to exist. It’s not so much that getting another dog will fill the space left by the divine girls; it’s that there is room, around the cracked part of the heart, to give a poor lost mutt another chance. Rude not to, really. The break will heal in its own time, but while it does, there’s no excuse not to give the love to a creature that may really need it.

Does that make any sense at all? I’m at the stage when my eyes are crossing and my neurones are short-circuiting, and my fingers can barely type a decent word, let alone bang out a coherent thought. But you must have the blog, and so tap tap tap I go, in the hope that there may be something there, despite everything.

 

Too exhausted for proper photographs, so here are a very few not entirely brilliant ones for you:

Smallest Cousin, interpreting life through the medium of creative dance. Otherwise known as Waving Her Hands About:

Middle Cousin, practicing music:

Serious dog training, in very interesting outfit:

The lovely furry girls I left behind in Scotland:

Last time I was here, the Pigeon was with. Here she is, from the archive:

With her friends in the south, looking slightly grand and put-upon, as she always did when pulling rank with what she clearly regarded as younger, sillier dogs:

The astonishing beauty of the dear old Duchess, from the archive. You do see why there is a part of me that thinks there shall never be another:

PS. The hair comments have been making me laugh and laugh. You have to remember that when I say dotty, it is a relative term. My lovely hairdresser is real old school. His salon is mostly filled with those tremendous old dames who get their hair set once a week, with rollers and clouds of Elnett. Thus, the idea of having a barnet chopped short and striped with red and black is considered most eccentric. In fact, in the wider world, it is a perfectly ordinary cut. I have not gone punk. (I did once do peroxide spikes, but that was another lifetime.) There shall be pictures, never fear, once I get my act together. But I don’t want your expectations to be too high.

Practically incapable of a single coherent sentence

Absolutely not one word in my head now. This is the thing I always forget about family life: there are not half the hours in the day necessary for all the things that must be done. I have no idea what is happening in the news, have a diary filled with half-made arrangements, and my To Do list looks like something written by a confused dipsomaniac.

So now, finally, as the small people troop up to bed, I sit and think: there must be a blog. What blog? says my addled mind. You must be joking, it adds.

It is just about now that I annually take my hat off to the mothers and fathers and wonder how it is that you actually do it. There should be prizes. I say that every year, when I visit my family in the south, and every year it is true.

The day is gloomy and wet. People say kind things about the departed dog. I attempt not to weep all over them. The Beloved Cousin and I have a cheering lunch, with The Godson. He is twelve now and quite grown up and talks to us of space travel and the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. He is much concerned with ontological and philosophical matters, and discusses the nature of different faiths and whether there is a guiding hand behind it all, and why it is that people believe what they believe.

He is an outdoors sort of fellow; he plays football and walks his dogs and rides beautifully. He has always had an interesting and interested mind, but this new intellectual exploration is a change. I plunge in. These are some of my favourite subjects too. He makes his points and holds his ground. If he gets onto shaky territory, he either makes a very good joke, or bombards me with facts. (He knows all about the moons of Pluto.) I almost burst with pride.

Emails come from home. The poor Stepfather is finally on the mend, with his bashed knee. The Horse Talker has antic stories of Myfanwy the Pony, who apparently has developed a princess complex since I have been away, and Red the Mare, who is being so good she sounds like a dream horse in a story book. I would have put money on it being the other way round. I laugh quite a lot.

I feel a bit shaky and fragile, but there is so much sweetness and happiness in this house that it acts like a balm on my singed skin. The missing will go on for a while, but I have a solid list of the good things, to balance it.

Just as I am wandering around the computer, completing half-finished emails and adding to the tottering To Do list, I find my William Hill account, still open. There was not much racing today, but I had had a little treble this morning, more in memory of my dad than anything else. It sounds most peculiar, but I sometimes really do feel I am placing my punts for him. The irrational is pretty strong in me, just now.

Anyway, Mr William Hill gives me three happy words: WON WON WON. +£76.59, he adds, kindly. It wasn’t a specially clever bet; two of the selections were odds on. But it gives me a disproportionate feeling of delight.

Count the blessings, I think. A gratitude list is a rather self-help, hippy-ish idea, but it’s not a bad one for all that. When I have dark days, I bless the fact that I have opposable thumbs, and fingers to type. I count the ways. The secret is, I think, not taking one single thing for granted.

 

So sorry, no time for pictures today, so just the three girls:

Princess Myfanwy, who is slightly in disgrace:

This was sent this morning from Scotland, showing the good Red the Mare, who has been awarded a gold star for excellent behaviour. I had feared she might act up a bit in my absence, but quite the reverse:

She’s even managed to keep her new rug clean, which is a sort of equine miracle.

My much-missed Pigeon, from the archive:

A line from High Society comes into my head. It was my favourite film for a long time in my twenties, and even now the Beloved Cousin and I still laugh about the moment Grace Kelly sweeps in with a hangover and says: ‘I’m fine. Is everybody fine?’

Looking at that photograph, I think of the line: ‘Boy, she was yar.’ Yar was a yachting expression from that time; I think it meant a boat that was sleek and elegant and not quite like anything else. That will do for my Pigeon. She damn well was yar.

In which I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about

I was going to address something very serious today, but I can’t quite remember what it was. I think it had something to do with bigotry and hypocrisy. What a Monday treat that would have been.

As it was, the day degenerated into a muddle of horse, four different kinds of work (at least one bit of it very serious and not at all about me), paltry attempts at admin, and housekeeping. You can tell that it was a serious day because I only had time to do one tiny treble on my happy post-Frankel William Hill account. I now have no idea what time it is, or what I must do next, or even what my name is. My brain feels like it has been hijacked by experimental scientists. I really must take more iron tonic.

The housekeeping part was very nuts indeed. There is a family wedding going on, and various people are arriving a week in advance to do important logistical things. (I never understand what goes on in making weddings and find the mysteries of them baffling. All I do know is that the whole thing seems to involve small battalions.) As part of the jamboree, I am deputed to have one of the kind logistical people to stay in my house. I find this alarming on about four different levels.

First of all, when work is at full tilt like this, my domestic life goes to pot. (She will think I am a slattern, and she will be right.) Second of all, I am a solitary introvert, and find even the nearest and dearest tiring after three days. The idea of a stranger for a week is therefore disproportionately startling. Third of all, all the sodding lights in the spare bathroom went kaput and I have a fusebox that dates back to 1913 and is therefore incomprehensible to me. The poor woman is going to have to clean her teeth by candlelight unless some electrical deus ex machina descends on the building. Fourth of all, I discover that even though my schedule is frantic, I still cannot help falling into housewife dementia.

So, this morning, I decided the linen sheets must be brought out, the towels newly laundered, biscuits bought for the tin by the bed (I cannot stick the idea of people getting hungry in the night), flowers purchased and Constance Spryly arranged. Then I had to tear back into the village to buy tea. I do not drink tea, but every other Ordinary Decent Briton does. Asking someone to stay in a British house without tea wanders into the mazy realms of Bateman cartoon.

Also, for some reason, I decided that there must be green apples and green grapes, partly for aesthetic effect, and partly in order to ward off those pesky hunger pangs. I also appear to have bought a nice new blanket for the spare bed, because clearly the other twenty-seven blankets I already own are not smart enough.

At least I am supporting the local economy, I thought gloomily, as I performed all this nuttiness. I should get a bloody government grant, or a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Now I have to go and get the poor dog from the vet. After all that, her ear was not right, and she has had to have a POLYP REMOVED. (I take deep breaths and try not to freak out.)

I feel completely crazed and have lost all sense of perspective and hardly know what it is I type. But there must be blog; you must have blog; or the world shall spin off its axis.

I think this is what people call stream of consciousness, if you can describe what I harbour in my cerebellum consciousness.

But the good news is, that of all the work I had to do today, I managed to get the most important done, which was a funding proposal for HorseBack UK. Who knows? It might be turned down. Grants are hard to win. But there is the humming feeling that, if I got them right, words I scratched on a page just may translate into thousands of pounds for a Very Good Thing. So I can deal with dog ears and strange guests and domestic daze, because there was at least one serious matter, that meant something. A day cannot be lost if it has that in it. Even if this poor blog has gone to hell in the process.
 
No time for pictures today, just two darling girls and a blue hill:

In which I contemplate the nature of time

It’s amazingly easy to lose two days. It’s as if they simply fell down the back of the sofa. I know there is the thing of the brain processing time differently as you get older, but even so. Simple neurobiological explanations seem too pat.

Actually, the first one was just life, which sometimes comes and usurps the virtual world. Very old friends were up from the south, and came to lunch. The group included two of my favourite children of all time, who did special dancing for me, admired the horse, shrieked with laughter at the pony, paid adoring homage to the Pigeon, and made a small house in the garden out of old wall stones, moss and pine branches.

‘When we come back next time,’ said the small girl, ‘we can see if fairies have come to live there.’

I love that children say these things with earnest, straight faces. I like it that even in the rushing technological world, small girls still believe in fairies.

The small boy was exercised about the closing ceremony of the Olympics. He had not thought it terribly good. ‘If I were in charge,’ he said, ‘I would have had people singing songs about lakes.’

He is seven years old. I looked at him very seriously. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘on a sort of Wordsworthian theme.’

He nodded gravely. ‘And a song about the River Thames,’ he said.

‘Absolutely bloody brilliant idea,’ I said. ‘Oh, sorry, I did a swear.’

Quite frankly, that child is so remarkable that he does make me do a swear. I’m not sure I know anyone else of that age who would dream of songs of lakes.

My Italian mamma had kicked in, so of course there could not just be any old lunch, but there must be a feast. Two chickens were sacrificed, with marjoram from the garden, and bunches of sage stuffed in the cavity. There was a tomato salad with chives, and a beetroot salad with real actual beetroot I boiled myself, instead of the vacuum-packed stuff, and broad beans and feta and mint. There were tiny waxy potatoes and roasted peppers and aubergines and a plain green salad for a bit of continental chic. There was not enough room on the table for all the absurd platters of food. I’m still finishing it all up. (Very good stock on the stove even as I write.)

Yesterday, there were no visitors or cooking, just the low sound of time whooshing past, and me turning my head to see where it had gone.

Today, I am still catching up. I keep looking at my watch in amazement and alarm. How can it be lunchtime?

The ponies, as usual, gave me calm and succour. Up in that field there is a sense that I can recapture time. It’s the one place where everything slows down, and instead of the wild sense of mortality screaming past, I get a moment of anchor, as if I am attached to the land, as if I can feel the very earth turning gently on its axis.

There is something timeless about looking out over that blue hill, and watching the cattle graze there, as they have probably grazed for hundreds of years. The horses themselves cannot do anything in a hurry. They do not understand the concept of rush. I am impelled to take a deep breath and let my shoulders come down and concentrate on each moment as it presents itself.

I had to get strict with the small pony today. There’s always a fine line you tread with horses. They need you to be firm and determined; if you get too soppy and soft it is no good to man nor beast. On the other hand, you must not be cross or mean. The firmness, I discover, should take the form of not giving in. There is no call for raised voices or any form of punishment, there is just serious persistence. Myfanwy did not want to do something; I wanted her to do it. We had a small battle. Eventually, I prevailed.

I had been stern; I wondered if she would hold it against me. In fact, she seemed relieved. She dropped her head and chewed with her little mouth and relaxed her body. That’s what I wanted, she seemed to be saying; someone who would damn well come along and take charge.

Red the Mare, by contrast, was doing her thing which she sometimes does, which is elevating sweetness and goodness to Olympian levels, as if the Adorable Elves had been up in the night, teaching her to make my heart burst in my chest. Ha ha ha, she seemed to be saying, I shall do this for you, and this and that, and a bit of the other, just for fun, just to demonstrate how absolutely immaculate I am. She was doing things before I even asked her, as if reading my thoughts; matching each delicate step to mine; taking harmony to a whole new level.

I was so overcome by her cleverness that I practically exploded with delight and joy, and she ducked her head as if to say, aw, shucks, it was nothing, knowing all the time it was everything.

And that was when time stopped completely. We finished, and I gave the top of her neck a long, congratulatory rub, and she bent her head into the crook of my arm, and then leant it on my chest, and went to sleep. I felt the wobble in her lower lip, and saw the flutter of her eyelashes, and sensed the stillness in every atom of her body.

That is when you can stop all the clocks. I’ve written of this before, and each time, words come up short. Thoroughbreds have been domesticated for a long time, but they still carry the wild in them. When Red is hearing her ancestral voices, and galloping about the field, squealing and kicking and pawing at vacancy, with her tail up like a banner and her head high, there is nothing domestic in her at all. She is right back to the Arabian sands of her Darley ancestor. So, when she gives herself to me absolutely, in stillness and trust, and what a human might call love, as she did this morning, it feels like something so vast and elemental that I cannot find the English for it.

Everything stops: time, fret, plans, errands to run, letters to write, books to finish, agents to speak to. The news stops and the global economy and the very world itself.

It’s just two sentient creatures in a field.

 

Pictures:

House, from Monday, ready for guests:

I always feel a bit of a eejit when I put up pictures like this. I think it is because normally everything is a bit scruffy; mud from my boots, piles of papers, tottering towers of old political periodicals. It’s as if I wish to prove to the Dear Readers that, on high days and holidays, I can take the straw out of my hair.

The Pidge, very excited about the imminent arrivals:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Red the Mare:

Red’s View:

The hill, from a slightly different angle than usual:

I haven’t done a recipe for ages, and one of the Dear Readers said the other day that he still makes one of my soups, from months ago, so I am inspired to return to food. No time now, but tomorrow, I think I shall give you the beetroot salad, partly because I am very proud of it, and partly because I love the idea of making what is often thought as a rather horrid vegetable, filled with haunting childhood memories (that ghastly beetroot drowned in vinegar from school) absolutely delicious.