Never enough words.

The rain falls. The day is very quiet, as if Monday has forgotten itself and is still acting like Sunday. I sit down at my desk and start yet another secret secret project.

The secret projects are rather grandiose terms for the ideas that buzz around in my head like flies and will not leave me alone. Sometimes they come to me whole, and I really do wonder if I can write an entire book in a weekend. There is some mad competition where people go into a room and write a novel in 24 hours. I think they used to do it at the Groucho.

Technically, it is possible. I can touch type at seventy-five words a minute. Even allowing for pauses, that should round up to about four thousand words an hour, if the brain is working at full stretch. A novel should be around 90,000 words, but 60,000 will do, and that could be achieved in about fifteen hours. (It would not be much good, but it could logistically be done, with iron tonic and oxygen.)

People did apparently do this, without running mad. The problem is, in the real world, that the mind tires very fast. If I do over a thousand words in one day’s work, my brain switches itself off like a light. It always amazes me that merely sitting at a comfortable desk in a quiet room, tapping lightly with my fingers, imagining, thinking, can create such bodily exhaustion. I scold myself. I am not drilling in rivets all day. I am not humping timber or building dry stone walls. Nor am I doing labour which, whilst not manual, is equally exhausting – negotiating the thickets of office politics under unkind neon lighting. I have good lighting, and a dog, and a view over the Wellingtonias and the old oaks.

Whenever I start a new secret project, I envisage a writing marathon. I’ll go crazy for three days. I’ll take the telephone off the hook and switch off the internet and not ride the mare.

It never works. Yet my idiot, irrational hope springs eternal. The problem is: I want to write about eight books at once, this very minute.

I stop. I take a deep breath. The brain is already fizzing and popping, getting ready to switch off its circuits. The writing day was interrupted by real life, and requests for things, and the usual technological difficulties. At one point, I found the distraction device of the internet marching into my room and luring me to put up photographs on Pinterest. (Why? Why?)

Words did get written. But not enough. Never enough. I suppose one must lash oneself, otherwise the temptation would be to sit about and eat Kit-Kats and think rambling thoughts. But really, a calm little patch of the middle ground would be nice. It does not always have to be all or nothing.

And now, as usual, I am going to sit very, very still.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from yesterday. Today is an ugly, brown, demoralising day. I attempt to keep grumpiness at bay and fail. The mare, despite having water running down her dear face, is actually very good and funny and sanguine, and does not even take to her shelter. Pah; it’s just a bit of weather.

But yesterday, there was LIGHT:

Happy morning in the wild spaces:

Dowager duchess Where is my afternoon tea? face:

The hill, with the weather starting to move in:

No blog today.

I have nothing for you. NOTHING.

The weather has come in again. There is filthy, wet, blizzardy snow, blowing in on a gale. There is wind-chill of the most horrid aspect. No matter how many thermals and waterproofs I apply, I remain cold and slightly damp.

There was a lot of work today, both mental and physical. I actually met some delightful and fascinating people, and I’d love to tell you about that but my fingers are too crabbed and my brain too pummelled. Every atom in my body is yelling STOP NOW.

I really must work on my stamina.

Anyway, that is a poor way to tell you there is no blog today.

I hate there being no blog. It makes me feel as if I have failed. The Dear Readers kindly come, and give their time and attention, and then there are days like this when I give nothing back. What kind of bargain is that?

Also, I really like getting comments and hearing from all of you, all over the world, but that can’t happen if there is nothing to comment upon.

You know how I’m always banging on about how every day can’t be Doris Day? Well, this day is now officially Doris DON’T. I have a daily ration of energy and good cheer, and I used it all up. I am now going to sit in a corner and eat chocolate. It’s a cliché, but I don’t care. I am going to mutter under my breath like Mutley and dream furiously of spring. There’s only so much nonsense one girl can take, and I’ve taken it. I’d just like to remember what it’s like not to walk around all day in slightly damp socks.

 

Up at HorseBack this morning; you can see that even their magnificent view is defeated by dreich:

This, this, is what I dream of:

This is what I remember does still exist, beneath the snow:

Right. Now I’m going to take some iron tonic and give myself a stiff talking-to.

Snow crazy. Or, I am grumpy as hell.

I’ve been banging on a bit about love, lately. Oh, look, here is the light, here is the beating human heart, here is the good stuff. Hello sky, hello flowers, hello trees. The whole dippy nine yards.

Of course, it is all true. The Horse Talker told me this morning that her nine-year-old boy actually said to her the other day: ‘Mum, all you need is love.’ I don’t think he knew he was quoting The Beatles. He was having an out of the mouths of babes moment of pure wisdom.

It damn well is true. Love and trees; love and trees.

But today, I must admit, I’m not feeling it. I am grumpy and cranky and shivery and cross. I’m fed up with the stupid snow. Oh, I know it looks ravishing. I know that the branches of the trees look as if they are delicate ice sculptures, and there is the glorious sight of Stanley the Dog leaping through the whiteness, and the world feels as still as if someone stopped it.

I know that it provides me with an excess of delightful photo opportunities. I get a great kick of putting up scenic snaps on my Facebook page, and watching when people hit the Like button. It’s a tiny daily fillip. There is also the slight drama to it all, as we count the inches and discuss the crashing temperatures.

But oh, oh, oh after four days of the nonsense I am as grumbly as Victor Meldrew. I’m like that old man who yells Get off my lawn. I’m not accessing my inner love and trees, but tapped straight into my inner curmudgeon, who just WANTS IT TO STOP.

I know I’m always on about counting my blessings. Even now, as I type this, I think of the fortune of having a warm house and fingers to type. In my head, where the strict rationalist and the spit spot no nonsense voices reside, I am not allowed to complain. Not when I have All This. I’m not having to drive to the office through weather-clogged roads, or be out in sub-zero fixing power lines. I just have to give the horses their hay and write a bit of book and make some chicken soup.

Still: GRUMPY GRUMPY GRUMPY. Sorry, can’t help it, can’t fake it, can’t put a good face on it.

The one slight bright spot is that the jumps are back after a week away, and there is actual green turf at Ayr, and I have a stupidly big punt on a short-priced favourite, which I rarely do. The kind fella obliges, and at least I have a little shout and win some cash. But then I grow mournful again, because there, on the screen in front of me is green turf. I have sudden, acute verdant envy. I want to see grass again.

Come along, says the adult voice. It’s just a bit of weather. Besides, white is a lovely colour.

Bugger that, says the child voice. And then it throws all its toys out of its pram.

 

Today’s sodding pictures:

No prizes for guessing what they are of.

Bored yet? HA HA HA; don’t care. I’m going to put you through yet more idiot snow:

And yet buggery MORE:

Paddock this morning:

Must admit, even though I am in a filthy temper, these little breakfast faces did make me smile. Myfanwy is hiding behind Red. You can just see her little ears:

Snow dog. Yada, yada, yada:

You can just see the hill:

I know I showed you a version of this yesterday, and I know it’s a bit blurry, but it is the one thing that does break through the grumpiness. It’s the look on Red’s face:

Sorry about venting. Shall be all bluebells and butterflies again tomorrow.

OR NOT.

Inexplicable levels of grumpiness

I hate moods. I like good, clean emotions. I don’t even mind painful ones – sorrow, fury – as long as they come from somewhere explicable. I like things to have an explanation. Moods descend, without reason or rhyme, and flatten the spirit.

Without any discernible cause, I am heroically grumpy. My throat is tight with grumpiness. I stump about like a furious old woman, muttering under my breath. I crossly tidy the house. It is our highland games this weekend and people will be coming, and some of them may knock on the door, and I do not want them to go away thinking me a slattern.

Usually, tidying the house gives me a tremendous lift. I feel saintly and relieved. I may glimpse, just for a moment, the Mount Olympus that The Organised People know. I even went and got flowers. (The garden is too confused with this weather to have much for cutting; besides, I went mad with the box last year and so there aren’t that many flowers anyway.)

Instead of improving my mood, the tidying induced an orgy of self-recrimination. Stupid idiot bloody piles, went the Mutley mutter; why can’t I learn to throw pieces of paper away?

The Younger Brother arrived to pick some of my honeysuckle for our sister. He was also after sage for the supper he is cooking tonight. ‘I am bloody grumpy,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘There is a terrible alignment of the planets.’

This is the kind of thing he says. My empirical mind takes a step backwards like a spooked horse. But quite frankly, who bloody knows?

The brilliant Johnny Murtagh lifts my mood momentarily by riding a perfectly brilliant race on the lovely, tough Saddler’s Rock, on whom I appear to have had rather a lot of money. ‘Go on, JOHNNY,’ I yell. The Pigeon does her cartoon dog jumping up and down on all fours, barking her head off.

Then I lapse back into non-specific fury.

Ah well. I shall take some iron tonic and count my blessings and smell the flowers and everything will be better tomorrow. It always mysteriously is.

 

PS. I do apologise for the tenses, which are all over the damn place. I am far too cross to go back and correct them. I hope that the Dear Readers will allow my flaws for today. Better better better tomorrow. Really.

 

Pictures:

Tidy house:

You see I have a great fondness for decorative bottles.

Loveliest decoration of all:

Look at that Pigeon, with the paws and the posing. She does not give a stuff about the misaligned planets:

Red the Mare, who is actually quite grumpy too:

The hill: