HorseBack day

I got up gingerly, like a curmudgeonly old lady, checking for aches and pains. But the sun was shining and I had things to do and I was bored of being what my father used to call a Minny Moan, so off I went.

It was a HorseBack UK day. My chaise longue joke went down very well so now I really am part of the furniture and I don’t feel I have to be on my best behaviour or try to impress anyone. This is a delightful state to find oneself in, but it is oddly easy there, because the whole point of the place is to make people feel comfortable.

Comfort is a word that can be overused; it can slide into sentiment. It can have a pious ring to it, even something slightly patronising: to comfort the afflicted has the faintest whiff of de haut en bas. But comfort in its sense of ease is a lovely, true thing, and that is what you find there, under the shadow of the blue mountains.

There is no sense of one-upmanship; everyone does what they do very well, and without fuss or fanfare; the people who are visiting learn what they learn, and take what they need. One of the veterans said to me today: ‘No one is competing to see who has the worst wound.’ I thought that was interesting, especially as this group was composed of the ones who wear their scars on the inside. They do not have artificial limbs; they have wounds of the mind. From the outside, you would never know. They are charming and funny and wry and dry and articulate. I wonder if that makes it more complicated, somehow.

The funny thing was that there were some acclaimed sporting gentlemen there today. (I think they might be a secret and so shall not reveal their names or discipline.) I was very excited by this and it was part of the reason that I took my iron tonic. But in the end there was so much there to fascinate, the veterans told me so many interesting and honest things, the horses were so delightful, and every single conversation I had was so riveting, that I barely had time to shake the tall, athletic fellows by the hand, let alone admire their tremendous physique.

Still, it is absolutely brilliant that a great sport is interested in such a good organisation, and from the athletes’ smiling faces I guess that they shall be drawn back to the place as I am. As I left, my stamina feebly shot, one of the sporting gents was levering himself onto a wooden horse, and being instructed in the art of riding Western, to general waves of merriment.

I smiled as I drove home. Up at the horses’ field, Red the Mare was dozy and affectionate and faintly comical, as she sometimes is. I had been fretting, lately, about the logistics of setting up her winter quarters. ‘You know what?’ I said to her. ‘It’s just a few decisions and a bit of fencing and a new water tough. I had the perspective police good and proper today, and I marked them well.’ She nodded her head wisely, as if she could have told me this all along, if only I had had the sense to ask.

Just as I was finishing this post, feeling rather weary and wondering how my tired mind would come up with a galvanic final paragraph, an email with a short link fell into my inbox.

I opened it to discover that two women called Chrissie and Susie are walking 780 kilometres with rucksacks on their backs, over the ancient pilgrims’ route from France to Spain, all to raise money for HorseBack UK. I gazed ruefully at the iron tonic. I don’t think even an industrial vat of it would get me that far. So now I don’t need a good final line. I have two remarkable women instead. Seven hundred and eighty kilometres. ON FOOT. I swear I shall never complain of fatigue again.

 

The link to the Incredible Walking Women is here: http://heslop-allen.vpweb.co.uk/?prefix=www

HorseBack, as always, is here: http://www.horseback.org.uk/

 

Pictures of the day:

The tidiest tack room I have ever seen in my life:

Four wise professors in the University of Everything:

Work in the arenas:

The view to the south:

With Gus the foal looking on:

And inside, there is a sporting gentleman on a very splendid wooden horse:

Finally, my own girls, in sepia today, for no special reason except that it brings a waft of Edwardian elegance that pleases me:

The art of ease; or, the state of the female nation; or, my rant for the day.

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Here is what the women do: make it look effortless. (And when I say The Women, I obviously mean every single one of Britain’s 25 million ladies, because I would never fall for the evil art of generalising.) I can’t quite work out whether this is a fatal tendency, or not. It might be a marvellous, tremendously British, keep buggering on attitude. It might be verging on the Churchillian. It could be something that people should be writing anthems about. My fret is that it means that not enough people stop, every once in a while, and say to the ladies: bloody well done.

Here is what most women are: worker, bottle-washer, shrink, household CEO, cook, shopper (the lavatory roll must never run out, or dark things will ensue), mother, daughter, friend, dog-walker, domestic planner, teacher, nurse, and, quite often, accountant. On top of all this, they are expected to be informed, imaginative, and elegant. The magazines would very much like them to be a certain size and shape, and for them to keep their hair preternaturally glossy at all times. (It is no coincidence that the expression ‘bad hair day’ has gone into the lexicon.) If they can keep up with fashion and become a bit domestic godessy, that is a bonus devoutly to be wished. The spurious rumour that females are biologically programmed to multi-task – that hideous, managerial collocation – means that women rarely get credit for the many things that they do all at the same time. The talk of juggling fades into so much background noise, so that it is only noticed in the breach – ripples of shock when someone actually drops a ball. The endless articles about work-life balance take on a hectoring air – you are getting it right, aren’t you?

And so, the women, because they don’t want to make a fuss, because they are, after all, British, just get on with it. They do not moan or whine or go on strike or take to the barricades; so the appearance of effortlessness is born. Somehow, the work is done, the children are taken to school with the correct shoes and the right sporting equipment, the husband’s socks are daily located, the supper is cooked, the deadlines are met. Even those who write subversive pieces and blogs about how they are more domestic slattern than goddess do it in such a funny, self-deprecating way that the notion of ease is still somehow there. Women make jokes among themselves about how they must make the transformation from bug-eyed troll into glorious party creature with no more than half an hour, an eye pencil and their native wit; yet they still manage to leave the house looking fabulous. They will occasionally tell horror stories of being woken three times in the night by a small vomiting person, but they still get to work on time.

The absolute personification of this swan-like tendency – serene on the surface, tiny little legs paddling very, very fast beneath the water – is Kate Moss. This might sound a fraction counter-intuitive. But just stop and think about it for a moment. There she is, out every night, still managing to look glamorous even when emerging, dishevelled and slightly bleary, from a taxi at three in the morning. In her life, rather than in the tabloid depiction, she must guard her business affairs, invent new fashions every time she leaves the house, do some actual modelling, field endless requests for endorsements, go out with edgy musicians, design a clothing line, and talk to Philip Green (I imagine not the highlight of her day). It’s not splitting the atom or working the night shift in an NHS hospital, but that’s not the point. You try being a global brand. Everyone takes it for granted, because, you know, she’s just little Mossy from Croydon. But to go from Croydon to household name takes some serious paddling. To stay at the top of such a febrile profession for twenty years is quite an achievement, whatever you think about fashion. To do it whilst giving the appearance that all you do is go to parties is oddly miraculous.

Women don’t want to be put on a pedestal, besieged with bouquets and excessive congratulation. Most of the hundred things they do, they do because they choose them. But just because sometimes it looks easy on the outside, does not mean it should be taken for granted. Just occasionally, I wish someone would give the women a round of applause.