Horses and flowers.

Got the horses all rugged up yesterday for Storm Abigail, and then came down this morning to find this enchanting scene – sunshine and happy faces:

(We were very lucky with the storm. It roared in from the west, glanced at us for a moment, and then veered quickly north, to go and do its mischief in Orkney and Shetland. Poor things; they got the brunt of it.)

Then did the flowers for my mother’s wake. We are calling it a gathering, because wake is too gloomy. I’ve also cooked about eighty-seven cheese bloody puffs, along with salmon mousse, yellow pepper soup (to be had in shot glasses), smoked mackerel pâté, a spicy tomato salsa, and some feta cheese thing which will go on little rounds of baguette toast. I’m quite tired. But the flowers came out beautifully, and I’m pleased about that:

I keep meaning to say thank you thank you thank you, to all the Dear Readers who have left such enchanting messages. So many of you have visited this foreign country, and your words of generosity and understanding fly through the ether to lift my battered heart. The heart is very, very bashed. But it’s going to be sunny tomorrow, and we shall remember the old lady well, and on on on I bugger, because the only thing to do is to keep buggering on. It is the greatest catchphrase of this funny old island race, and I cling to it like a drowning woman in a stormy sea.

Horses and family and convoluted hazel

The Co-Writer does this week’s Speccie diary. I am pretty impressed. Not only is it quite a thing to be asked, but it’s such a very, very difficult medium to master. You have to write six or seven pithy paragraphs, on different subjects, although a theme may develop. The tone is almost always wry and faintly ironical. There is one regular Spectator diarist who takes himself so seriously that I always think it must be Craig Brown, doing a little spoof. It’s an oddly British sin, taking yourself seriously. I suspect that it is not nearly so frowned on in France or Germany or America, although I may be falling into the trap of cultural assumptions.

As I read it I think: I would be absolute buggery bollocks at that. The Co-Writer gets to talk about her husband being on national television, and having dinner with famous historians. The absolute high spot of my week was getting my mare to walk nicely through a gate.

I sort of itch to have a go, though. My dander rises. This would be my diary of the week:

 

(At this point, you have to imagine silence de glace. Fingers absolutely motionless on keyboard. Eyes taking on glazed, faintly panicked look. Nothing.)

I have no Andrew Roberts to fall back on, it turns out. It’s a bloody good thing that Fraser Nelson is not on the blower night and day, offering me a commission. I would have to admit defeat, or crank out something blah and second-rate.

Instead, I have this lovely medium, where I may write what I choose, go where I like, muse on what I wish, in as many paragraphs as I like.

As a faint thaw comes, not enough to get all the snow off the ground, but enough so that movement is possible, I do serious work with my mare. A lot of it, after a bit of a lay-off due to the elements, is getting her to pay attention to me. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal, although it looks like nothing. I am her person, her good leader, and she needs to acknowledge that fact.

When you take a horse out of the field, it will generally look about a lot. The head goes up, on predator alert, the body is braced for strangeness. This is a perfectly natural reaction, and even looks rather marvellous – the ears are pricked, the eyes are bright – and lots of people would not correct it.

But I want her focused on me, not the bears in the woods. So every time she looks one way, I lead her the opposite way. I move, fast and firm, in small circles, reverses, figures of eight. After a moment, I have her absolute attention. If I move a step, she moves a step. We are in sudden, singing harmony. There it is. The head comes down, the eyes soften, the ears relax. By the end of the session, I have taught her to follow me with her head without moving her feet. Left and right, we swing back and forth, like a little metronomic duet.

The thing I love about this kind of horsemanship is that it is all about the small things, and you know I revere the small things. There is no punishment. If she does something I do not want, I gently correct her, usually by turning her in the tightest of circles or backing her up. When she does what I ask, she is lavishly rewarded, so that she feels inordinately pleased with herself. She is a creature who loves to please, which makes my work vastly easier.

It’s a theory which goes along the lines of making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy. I think it could be applied to almost all areas of life. To an observer it would look as if I am hardly doing anything. Yet I am laying great, lasting foundations, which shall underpin our entire relationship, and keep us safe and happy. There are no fancy gadgets or complicated manoeuvres; just time, and patience, and thought. Oh, and love, of course.

By the end, she has had to concentrate a lot. I give her a pick of grass in the wild ground near the woods, and then I take her back into the field and set her free. She hasn’t done this much work in a while, and the sun is shining, and she has spring fever suddenly in her. She takes off with a vaulting leap, flies her tail like a flag, and gallops away to join her herd, calling for them as she goes, as if to say I’M BACK.

When she reaches them, she dances about, does a couple of pirouettes and a Spanish Riding School of Vienna leap. Her girls look at her, nod, and go back to eating their hay. This kind of exhibition is one of the purest expressions of beauty I have ever seen and I laugh and whoop out loud. The pleasure that horse gives me is beyond rubies.

There is further high excitement because the family is arriving for Easter. The Older Niece and the Man in the Hat are driving up the M6 as we speak. The Older Niece puts a picture on Facebook of her dog, in the back of the car, with a rather plaintive expression. The caption goes: Are we there yet?

I rush to the village to get lamb and haggis and a steak pie for strength. As always, I have a perfectly splendid time with the butchers, of whom I am excessively fond. Then I go to the flower shop for hyacinths and tiny delicate ferns and little dark plum carnations, for my Easter table. I love the ladies in the flower shop, because they laugh at my jokes. A smart gentleman arrives, with purpose. ‘I’ve come for the – what’s it called? – convoluted hazel,’ he says.

I laugh out loud. The ladies say, ‘I think you mean the contorted willow.’

‘I think convoluted hazel is much better,’ I say.

Great branches of the stuff are produced and it is very, very convoluted indeed.

And then I come back and arrange everything and feel a flush of achievement. Even Stanley the Dog looks quite impressed. It’s not international historians, but it is my own, small, good day.

 

Today’s pictures:

When I say Stanley the Dog was quite impressed, what I really mean is that he lay down on his sheepskin and went to sleep:

This is a bit more like it:

The clever girl, who got five gold stars this morning:

Sunday pictures

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Lovely weekend. Very, very old friends. Lots of children. Lots of laughter. No riding because of weather; this morning there was sudden sleet and pouring rain. Later, the sun came out, I took the Pigeon up to see the chestnut mare in the field.

Suddenly, violently, in amidst all the happiness and jokes, I missed my dad so much I could hardly speak. It's coming up to Cheltenham, I suppose. Perhaps it's just what happens. The gaps between the acute missing widen; there is room for other things, there is a place for joy. When it comes though, it is still a blow at the heart.

A few pictures for you. More flowers, from my Constance Spry moment:

The flowers outside, in the earth:

The mare:

Middle cousin, with dogs. Face bleached as usual, for privacy, but I did want to show you the Look of Love which the Pigeon, on the left, is bestowing. She adores that child. She follows her gently and patiently about the house. Occasionally, the small cousin stops what she is doing, turns, and gives the very old dog a hug. 'Oh, Pigeon-Face,' I hear her say, with a crooning, dying fall. That sort of breaks my heart, too:

And Herself, looking at her most regal. Perhaps she is getting ready for the Jubilee:

I do sometimes wonder what she is thinking, in her doggy old head, when she makes that face. I like to think it's a bit of a Look of Love. Mostly, I think it is likely that she is really saying Where, oh where, is my BISCUIT? (And: if I look regally yearny enough, will you just give it to me?)

No excuse at all

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

So sorry; there really are no words today. There was an awful lot of cooking, and errands, and a visit to the oculist. The hours just flew away, and all I can offer you is some flowers, and three dog pictures. I really would understand if you wanted your money back.

The Pigeon, in two gracious poses:

This next one kills me. I took all three dogs out and made them pose. A very high wind blew up out of the west, which is why they are making those faces. I am slightly hoping that the sight of the Pigeon's ears might half make up for pathetic lack of blog:

Shall do better tomorrow.

No blog today

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

So sorry that there is no blog. I have no idea why I cannot just NOT do a blog. For whatever reason, I must come here and formally apologise. Sometimes I really do wonder about the voices in my head.

I have a funeral in the south and am too bashed up by logistics to write today. But there are a couple of lovely pictures, at least:

Taken in the garden during the last month.

Back to normal

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

That is, if anyone knows what 'normal' actually is. I wonder about that quite a lot. Half of me rather yearns for normal. I have a respectable self which thinks that working regular hours, and keeping the house tidy, and cooking proper food at serious mealtimes is the mark of an adult. I also have a thoroughly disreputable side which thinks: sod them all if they can't take a joke. This side says: I am a creative, dammit, of course I can't do my paperwork, that stuff is for the drones. One side believes Flaubert, who said: be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work. One side favours Scott Fitzgerald, and wants to go and jump in the fountain outside The Plaza.

Small aside:

When I first went to New York City, all by myself, at the age of nineteen, the very first place I went was The Oak Bar of The Plaza, because that was where F Scott used to drink. I ordered a bourbon, straight up, from a barman called Mose who looked like WC Fields, and had a lovely conversation with a gentlemanly psychologist who was in town from Florida for a shrinks' conference.

'Oh my GOD,' shrieked my old school, Upper East Side friend George, when I told him this the next day. 'Did he offer you money?'

'Certainly not,' I said. 'He was perfectly charming. Why would you say that?'

'Because that's where all the HOOKERS go,' said George, in horrified delight.

Anyway, I spend most days battling it out between the bourgeois and the bohemian. No wonder sometimes I have to go and have a little lie-down.

Today was more orderly than yesterday. I wrote a fairly calm 802 words. I made a little flower arrangement. I walked the dogs. I am, however, averting my eyes from the toppling pile of paper which sits to my right, waiting malevolently to be dealt with. We can't expect miracles. Or at least, I can't.

To divert my attention from my vanishingly thin organisational skills, I am contemplating The Beauty. Bugger the paper, let us consider the flowers:

 

It always amazes me how much pleasure one tiny arrangement in a Moroccan tea-glass can bring. That is apple mint, flowering marjoram, lavender, astilbes, a hellebore, and one old-fashioned tea rose, all from my very own garden.

Talking of pleasure and beauty - you know what is coming next:

Did you ever see such elegance?

The whole red chair thing started because I have my sister's poodle to stay, and I wanted to take a nice picture of her, so that the sister and the younger niece could see that their canine was having a nice time while they were away:

Then I decided that the whole black dog against the scarlet chair with the vintage Union Flag cushions thing was too good to waste. So I made the other dogs get up there for their own photo shoot. They were quite puzzled, since they never sit on that chair, on account of it being too small for them. But they bore it with resigned patience:

I know that dogs do not have human thoughts. I resist anthropomorphism daily, not always with vast success. But if they were capable of putting together a sentence in their doggy heads, I suspect it would be: 'Let's just humour the old girl.'

The sentence in my own head is: 'In the words of the late, great Nancy Mitford: do admit.'

 

Final photographic addendum:

One of the things I love about my new camera is that I can fool around with filters and colours. As you can see, it can do sepia, and black and white, and varying shades of warm and cold. I am still discovering its many functions, a process which would be made easier if I had not already lost the manual.

Some of you have left very kind comments about the pictures, and asked to be reminded what the heavenly new article is. It is an Olympus PEN, what is called a three quarter camera. It is not quite an SLR, with the advantage that it is not as heavy and clunky; its design is retro and particularly pleasing. However, as you can see, it is miles more sophisticated than a simple compact. As far as I can tell, its only disadvantage is that it is expensive (I got it with my American advance, which was quite naughty as I should obviously be saving that for a rainy day), and its zoom is sadly limited. I really do want a proper zoom lens, but they are a fortune. I am contemplating screwing up my eyes and just saying what the hell, but have not quite got there yet.

 

Have a very happy Thursday. I wish you all patient black dogs and roses in glasses. Or equivalent.