Tuesday.

Book sent off to agent.

BOOK SENT OFF.

We are still in early doors and there is a long, long way to go. But at last it may be seen.

If she hates it, I shall write another one. I am a Briton, after all. I have Blitz spirit encoded in my DNA.

I suddenly realise this may sound a little strange to non-writers. Surely I must have some idea of whether the thing is any good or not?

A most peculiar thing happens when you have lived with a book for many, many months. You go snow blind. My critical faculties flicker in and out, like faulty radar. I can tell that this this sentence works, or that idiom is fine, or this paragraph rattles along with some skipping syncopation. But I have no way of judging the whole. It is my damn story. I love it and I fear it may not be good enough and I cannot have any objectivity.

What I can see is that it is very, very eccentric. It is idiosyncratic and fits into no nice category. There’s nothing I can do about that, either. I kept trying to make it more respectable and able to go out in public, but it kept putting on strange hats and wearing white shoes after Labour Day. It is even more cussed than I am.

Despite my very British Britishness, the book is not British at all. It wears its heart on its sleeve and has no stiff upper lip. It eschews the prosaic and the stoic. People may easily laugh and point. I would not blame them.

Still, the thousands and thousands of words exist now, in the world. I can take a deep breath and let my shoulders down and have some days off. I may think about Christmas, which has not crossed my mind. The house remains resolutely undecorated and there is no whiff of festive spirit. I’m going to watch the racing and get in some eucalyptus and cook proper food and ride my horse and throw sticks for the dog.

I can’t do this, because everyone would fall on the floor laughing and my credibility would be finally shot for ever, but if the thing ever is published, I should dedicate it to the red mare. It is she who has held together my tottering reason, with her dear, steady hooves, all this time. It is her beauty, her kindness, her generous heart and her comedy skills which have acted as an anchor, to stop me floating away across an uncharted sea.

Finished.

At 10.21pm, on the 1^st of November, whilst listening to Billy Bragg singing Waiting for the Great Leap Forward, I FINISHED.

Finished. Finished. Finished.

Of course, in real proper professional life, I am not finished at all.

There will be the second and third editing drafts, the ones where the dead darlings litter the floor like sanguine corpses. There will be the black hat draft and the white hat draft. There will be the cliché edit and the semi-colon edit. There will be the obsessive they-can’t-drag-it-out-of-my-cold-dead-hands edit.

But the thing is:

I have a first draft.

I have earth, on which to put my tentative feet.

I have, absurdly, over 122,000 words.

I wrote 5472 words today, which is not to be advised. My proper daily average is between 500 and 1000. After that, the brain ceases to function in any serious way. But I was tumbling downhill towards the finish, and I had to get it done. And I did get the damn thing done.

Now there will be a polishing and tidying weekend, as I brush the thing up, so that the agent shall not run away screaming. But all the same, it is a draft, and it is FINISHED.

A hundred years ago, in another lifetime, which I can hardly remember, in the morning sunshine, when I was doing physical rather than cerebral things, I leapt on my beautiful red mare, and cantered about on the good green grass. Cantered on a loose rein in the wide open spaces, with nothing more than rope halter on my regal thoroughbred, using only my voice and my seat for control.

‘Steady,’ I said, and she dropped her head and steadied.

And we walked home in a slouching cowboy mooch, swinging in time, every atom of our bodies in harmony across the species divide, peace dancing between us like stardust.

There are no words for the love I feel for that red mare, and there is no way to repay the debt I owe her. I have no edit button now, which is why I am writing this. All my neuronal circuits have snapped out, and I am running on adrenaline and instinct and viscera. In this moment, I quite sincerely think that she has kept my scattered marbles together with nothing but her own dear generous heart. I sometimes say, for a joke, that she holds my sanity in her sweet hooves. I’m not sure it is such a joke. I think it may actually be empirical fact.

Someone I know said to me once, a while ago, in a quizzical, sceptical tone: ‘What is it with this horse?’

What I did not reply, but should have, is: everything.

Her dear Self, chilling out, after our morning ride. That mere piece of rope you see on her face is her bridle; the thick ropes are our reins. I’m so used to it now, I sometimes take it for granted. But it’s not supposed to be the way you do things with a thoroughbred who used to race for a living. And it’s not because I am clever or a good rider or have eaten some magic beans. I’m still rusty as hell, and have forgotten more than I ever knew, and my muscles are not nearly as strong as they should be. It’s all the red mare. It’s the sheer goodness and sweetness of her. She is as honest and kind and genuine as the day is long. She makes me feel humble. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such a person.

Nothing left in my brain. So, instead, here are forty-seven pictures of a horse, rolling.

And...into the wall I crash. I forgot to get iron tonic, which was a big mistake. I did make soup, the honest vegetable kind which my mother calls Good Woman Soup. (As I make it, I wonder hopefully whether the very act of softening onions will turn me into a Good Woman. I do, after all, believe in the mystical properties of soup.) I did have some thoughts about National Poetry Day, and the Daily Mail, and the lunacy of the government shut-down which is happening in America, and the saving grace of Jon Stewart, whose videos I illicitly watch on the YouTube. (Sorry, not available in the UK, says the official Daily Show site, regretfully.)

But now: those thoughts are gone. It’s Friday. My work is done. The HorseBack stuff is dusted. Stanley the Dog is walked and Red the Mare is seen to. The circuits in my brain fizzle and fuse. There is not one ounce of energy left. I am going to sit very, very still in a silent room.

This morning, I had an unaccustomed spare half hour. I was actually ahead of schedule, which was so odd it went against muscle memory. The sun had come out for five minutes so I ran down to the field and stood in it with my horse.

I really, really like standing still with my horse. I love riding her and working her and teaching her new things, but mostly, I love standing still with her. She was in a mood of stillness too, so she nodded her head over the crook of my arm and went to sleep in the October warmth. I could feel her growing heavy and she made happy little sighing noises. I made happy little sighing noises. We sighed at each other for about ten minutes. I shut my eyes, and felt the world.

I did not attempt coherent thought. I have never been able to meditate but it was the nearest to meditation I’ve ever come. I felt some profound shift, almost in the viscera, as if all those particles of exploded stars which make up the atoms of my body were reconfiguring themselves. (I can never quite get over the fact that humans really are, as Joni Mitchell once scientifically sang, made of stardust.)

Then Red gave a great snort and I let her go and she ambled off to have a glorious, indulgent, operatic, drama queen roll. And then she got up and shook herself and gazed at me for a bit, and then she Minnie-the-Mooched across to me for a bit more love. Which I gave her.

And then I went and did all my work and used up all my brain and now all I have for you is about forty-seven pictures of a horse rolling.

But what a horse.

And what a roll.

Happy Friday.

What Red the Mare sees from her paddock:

Interesting new member of the herd. Stanley the Dog clearly now believes he is a horse:

Happy red girl with her small friend:

Do not anthropomorphise, say the stern voices in my head. But I can’t help thinking that is the closest an equine comes to a smile:

And now – for the ROLLING:

I love this face. Do you see what I just did?:

And then she does her best Minnie the Moocher, as she comes across for one more minute of love:

A non-blog blog

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Too tired to blog. Really am very sorry. Today was just a bit crazy, in the end, and my brain has snapped off. Today went:

Dog.

Today programme.

Filthy filthy filthy weather. Bugger.

Horse, horse, pony, horse, LOVE.

Dog. LOVE.

Breakfast for me.

Breakfast for dog.

Work work work work work.

Speak to agent.

Reassure agent.

Agent pretends to be reassured.

More dog. LOVE.

Ooh, racing at York.

Betting at York.

Disaster at York.

Supposed to take hour off to watch racing and relax; instead felt like absolute idiot as horses got beat.

Errands with World Traveller and Great-Nieces.

Did I have lunch?

Shirty with woman in shop. Was slightly her fault (no bloody medium turnout rugs).

Felt guilty.

Overcompensated for ten minutes by listening to endless story about woman’s daughter’s pony.

Bored.

Horse, horse, horse, pony. New salt licks are a triumph like no triumph before. Great-niece the Older watches in awe and wonder, delight spread over her face like sunshine. ‘Now they will never do anything else.’

Back to DOG. LOVE.

Break boiler. Bugger bugger bugger.

But in absence, last two bets at York have come off, so William Hill account now fat and rosy instead of standing reproach. Wonder quite how much I should be channelling the spirit of my departed gambling father. Meditate on disadvantages of bad blood.

Brain turns itself off.

Supper. Good thing I am bullish about ignoring sell-by dates. Meditate on disadvantages of food poisoning.

Dog goes to sleep.

Bloody cold. Meditate on disadvantages of breaking bloody boiler. Only self to blame. Hopeless.

Swathe self in shawls in manner of crazed Victorian fortune teller.

Watch dozing dog; think of horse; smile.

 

Too tired for pictures. Just The Beloveds: