Happiness.

6.02pm on a Friday and I’m still working. I have another hard deadline, and it’s full speed to the finishing line. Although sometimes I think I shall never be finished. There is always another draft.

I had no interest in the eclipse, but I ran into a gentleman with some welders’ glass and looked at it through that and at once was enchanted. A shadow fell over the world and I could see why the ancients thought eclipses a portent of dark doings. It was oddly moving and dramatic.

Rode the mare, fed the mare, adored the mare. Walked the dog, raced up to HorseBack, cantered about with my camera, shouted with excitement at all the good work, had much happy conversation. Went home and did the HorseBack Facebook page which took ages, because there were so many pictures to choose from and so much to say.

Edited, edited, edited. Then, in a spurt of bonkersness, wrote almost 3,000 new words. The emphasis has shifted slightly, and more needs to be said than I thought. Had a moment of slight panic. Ate some cheese. Watched a delightful Hunter Chase, almost my favourite kind of race in the world. Did some more editing. Ruefully regarded my muddly office and decided it would have to wait for another day. All that is important now is getting this damn draft right.

Somewhere, vaguely, on the internet, I saw that it was the International Day of Happiness. Or some such thing. Decided I had to write you a long, long list of happy things.

Obviously it would start with THE RED MARE.

Find something you love and do it well; don’t compare yourself; look at moss; surround yourself with people who make you laugh; read a book; if at all possible, live in the Scottish countryside. Then my brain started fizzling as if the wiring had gone faulty, which is what happens at the end of such a day, and I thought: bugger it, you know what makes you happy. I don’t need to tell you. My own list is endless, and I do not have time to type it, or strength left in my fingers. Perhaps, if I had to boil it down, it would be something like – Be yourself, find your one true thing, follow your own goofy star, and don’t care what anyone else thinks about it.

If I have learned one thing in my life it is that you can never make people think what you would like them to think, and that even if you are a silver-tongued devil, you can rarely change their minds. So you might as well just keep buggering on and not fret about the opinions of others. Do your best, keep trying, accept that sometimes things will go catastrophically wrong. When they do, laugh like a drain, pick yourself, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

I talk a lot about kindness. It is up there with my most favourite virtues, although it does not get much press. Being kind to others is vital, but I also think one should be kind to oneself.

Someone said to me this week that when I bought an ex-racing thoroughbred mare, ‘we all thought you were mad’. I did not know this. I laughed and laughed. Perhaps it was not the most sensible thing for a woman of a certain age to do, especially one disastrously unfit and out of practice and ring rusty. Yet, on this happiness day, I think: that horse brings me more sustained joy than anything else I have ever known.

Every time I am with her, I hear the flapping wings of my better angels. I did not know she would make me a better human, but she did. When I am with her, all the dark things in the world fly away, and I am in the light.

 

Today’s pictures:

Really at the end of my tether now, so just time for two quick snaps. No prizes for guessing what they will be of.

After the eclipse, before the ride:

After the ride:

I know this blog is very stuttery, which annoys me since I pride myself on my rhythm. Everyone has a secret pride and that is mine. But I have no time left to edit it, and so I send it out in all its imperfections, because learning to accept imperfection is a secret of happiness too, and it feels appropriate.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Happiness.

Today, I am very happy.

I’m not happy because I won the lottery or I got good news from the agent or all my workaday frets have magically vanished or even because I got to the end of my absurd To Do list, which I have not, and certainly never shall do. It’s much more nebulous than that.

I’m happy because the sun is shining and I had the privilege of watching a great horseman at work and I rode my mare in a stately trot round a huge open field without using the reins and Stan the Man made a three-year-old laugh. (‘What is Stanley doing?’ Answer: nobody knows.)

I’m happy because I drove the long way home from HorseBack and looked at the mountains and the sheep.

I’m happy because when I went down to check the red mare at lunchtime, she was dozing in the bright light, wearing an expression as near to a smile of bliss as an equine ever comes.

I’m happy because when I went into the chemist the very nice gentleman behind the counter smiled and said: ‘How is your horse?’

When I was young, my friend The Actor and I used to sit up all night watching the Oscars, in those sort of Soho clubs where they run the ceremony on a big screen. I loved all the frocks and the tears and the brave loser faces and the brilliant thespians joshing with each other to hide their nerves. I really wanted certain people and certain films to win.

Now, I am much more bashed about, and I think about lichen and trees more than little golden statues. I took in this year’s Oscars with the very edge of my brain. I really could not give a bugger who was wearing what, and there were moments when the whole thing seemed so self-regarding that it meant nothing to me. I was pleased for Eddie Redmayne, because he was so pleased, and he seems like a very nice human being as well as a talented one. My eyes were gladdened by the very sight of Cate Blanchett, because she manages to look real and elegant at the same time, and although she appears not to play the fashion game she always wins, hardly trying. (Even more years ago than the Soho days, I was introduced to her, before she was famous. She was one of the most natural, friendly, generous people I’ve ever met, and even though she is even more luminous in life than she is in photographs, she carried her great beauty with a lovely lightness of touch, as if it meant nothing to her.)

But now I could not care much about the winners and losers. I used to dream of prizes. I wanted my moment in the sun. I wanted to thank my mother and my agent and the language of Shakespeare and Milton. Now, I am happy because the man in the chemist took the time to ask after my horse. I am happy because that same sweet horse is at ease with herself and her world. I am happy even though I shall never stand on a stage in a couture frock and be told how bloody brilliant I am. The joys I find as I get older lie in those gentle, everyday things to which mere mortals may aspire.

It’s an odd relief. I was never really going to be an Oscar winner. (Best screenplay was my secret dream, even though I am very, very bad at writing scripts.) I was never going to learn the art of glamour. That kind of spotlight would never shine on me, and, looking back, I’m not quite sure why I wanted it. I was always a bit of a show-off, so perhaps it came from that antic child who would put on her best party dress and tell stories to the grown-ups who came to the house. Perhaps it was the need for validation. LOOK AT ME!!!! AND MY PRIZE!!!!

I find life often confusing and sometimes hard. Sometimes I feel like my little legs are going in a cartoon blur, on the crazy hamster wheel. That’s why the good moments, the fine moments, the moments of glad grace, are so precious to me. A happy day is my prize now. It is a glittering prize, beyond compare.

 

Today’s pictures:

Spring is in the air. That made me happy too:

Happiness.

One of the things I try not to do is universalise the particular. There was a very famous and very wise feminist whose great weakness was to extrapolate wide truths from her own subjective experience. I get a bit crazy in the head whenever I hear the Universal We. The We can apply to almost anything – women, scientists, Ordinary Decent Britons, the entire human race. I once heard it used on an erudite programme on Radio Four, where the speaker was a doctor. Her use of the universal We was perplexing, since it seemed to veer between the medical profession, women in general, and the entire human race. At any one moment, it was impossible to infer which one she meant. I was very, very cross about that.

I also try not to take things for granted, or to make assumptions.

Sadly, the flesh is weak, and I often fall into the elephant traps I try so hard to avoid.

I lately read about a survey which said that 64% of people were not happy, and believed that happiness was harder to attain now than it has ever been. It was one of those maddening vague snippets – it did not say who these people were, where the survey was done and by whom, how big the study was. It could have been forty-seven people in Portsmouth questioned by a biscuit company, for all I know. I’ve looked on the Google and can’t find anything with that number on it. I also can’t remember where I read it. So the whole thing is entirely unscientific. But the shocking percentage stuck in my mind. Even if it is half true, it’s quite disturbing.

I think about happiness quite a lot. I think about the myriad of different ways it may be described, or felt. Is happiness a cumulative number of joyful moments, or that bone-deep feeling of contentment? Is it wild, flinging excitement, or the gentle sense of being at ease in one’s own skin? Is it, for people who live in free democracies with water coming out of the tap and no religious police knocking on the door, almost a duty? (I quite often feel that it is. How dare I be miserable, when the women of the Congo have to face daily horrors?) Is it something worth striving for, when almost every serious academic study on the subject says that the more you search for it, the more elusive it becomes. The idea of the academy is that it is generally a by-product, a notion that is closely related to the famous idea of flow.

The 64% made me realise that I may not be representative, and that I had slightly assumed I was. I think of myself as an ordinary person of a certain age, and two of my most precious words are ‘me too’. I get quite a lot of me too on this blog, when I write something I fear is a little goofy or absurd, and the Dear Readers rush in and tell me that I am not alone. I believe that there is much more that stitches human hearts together than cleaves them apart.

I am prey to occasional night terrors, moments of catastrophising, some extremely cross internal critics who drink too much gin and tell me I could do better, moments of unguarded perfectionism, and a fairly consistent struggle with mortality. I feel a bit of an idiot about the last one, because everyone is going to die and worrying about it really will not help the thing. I can get cranky and grumpy and disorganised. I wish I could write better and faster and I rue my lack of time management. I still miss my dad. In other words, I live with all the expected slings and arrows that a woman of my age might reasonably face.

But I am quite happy, quite a lot of the time. I do practise at this, like a musician practises scales in the morning. I remind myself to appreciate the present moment and not long for something else. I am acutely wary of the danger of high expectations. I notice the small things. Yesterday, I stood for ten minutes like a loon listening to birdsong. I have developed a good bit of muscle memory for talking myself off the ceiling. I have learned to accept that I can’t control what other people think of me. I don’t compare myself to impossible role models – I do not wish that I were a stick-thin film icon or a literary giant or a storied saver of the world. I accept my limitations, sometimes even with good grace. (Although when I bump up against them, I must admit I do sometimes do the Muttley muttering.) I have enthusiasms.

I think of this in the same way I think of working with my mare. I do a lot of slow steps with her, working on the very basic things until they are just right. Every day, we work quietly and steadily on the foundations. I have, at last, learnt not to run before I can walk, building up slowly, slowly, brick by brick, so that I may find myself in a wide Scottish field as I did this morning, trotting a half-ton thoroughbred with my arms in the air, hands flung into the light, keeping the beautiful, steady rhythm only with my seat. (The independent seat is the holy grail of riding, and the expression always makes me laugh. That seat will not be bamboozled or corralled or fooled into following the herd mind. No, no, it is independent.)

I used to think I could solve the meaning of life by grand gestures, by huge application of the intellect, by reading the highest philosophers, by trying really, really hard. Now I think finding a daily crock of gold lies in the smallest and most humdrum of things, which have nothing to do with book learning or great mental effort. I think they are things of the heart, not the head. I think they lie in steady practice, so that they too can trot on a loose rein.

Oh, dear, I am mixing my metaphors now, which means I should stop. I hope the 64% is wrong, and does not make me a freak. I wanted very much to be extraordinary when I was young and foolish and ambitious. Now, I rather long to be ordinary, at one with my cohort, marching in step. I like finding connections rather than searching for otherness. No man is an island, and no woman, either.

Although I do admit that, apart from my soigné friend in Paris, not everyone is quite as excited as I am about moss.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from the last two days, since I’ve been too busy to take out the lovely little camera:

Very often, the duchess is so dozy and relaxed that she does her donkey ears for the camera. Which is wonderful in its own way, since it proves to me that all the work is paying off and she is easy in herself. But sometimes I do yearn for the show pony face, and here it is. There are many things I love about this picture, but today the thing I love the most is that her nostrils and her ears are like little apostrophes:

A gratitude list.

Although it sounds very hello clouds, hello sky, I do try to count my blessings. Apparently, it is a thing. If one consciously lists the good things in life, before bed, or first thing in the morning, one’s mental state is enhanced. It’s one of those simple acts which is often quite hard to do. The monkey mind is monkeying about, time is racing, one must get on. There’s no room for all that hippy shit.

The Younger Brother is really a proper hippy. He lives in Bali and sits in circles of love and beats drums and chants and everything. Sometimes it works for him. Sometimes he rings me up and says, despairingly: ‘I’m still staring into the void.’ The void is our shorthand for all the difficult things that hit one in middle age: the reality of mortality, the madness of the world, the bashed heart. It is easy to fall into a terrible confirmation bias, where one only takes in the sadness and the madness, the haters and the shouters, the people who rape the land and tear down the rainforests. Everyone is going to die and we are all for the dark.

So, doggedly, furiously sometimes, I damn well count those blessings.

Opposable thumbs are always pretty near the top of the list. I love typing and I don’t take it for granted that I can do up buttons. I also give thanks for a brain that mostly works, water that comes out of the tap, and a warm house. If I believed in prayer, I would pray to the gods of nature, the spirits that live in these blue hills and my beloved trees and the smallest piece of moss. I give gratitude to beauty, in all its forms, and the luck I have that I can appreciate it. I’m very, very pleased to have the English language at my disposal. That is a great gift. I am blessed with a happy horse and a happy dog and a fast internet connection, so I can look at baby pandas when things get very bad.

I think quite a lot about happiness: what it is, whether it is a goal to be pursued. I think about ratios. I have the ordinary amount of sorrow, fret, fear and angst. But as long as there are joys as well, the balance holds. I can’t be Pollyanna every day, skipping about, blind to the dark side. (Jung spoke a lot about balancing the light and the dark.) On the other hand, wallowing in the bad parts does not achieve much and can slip easily into self-indulgence. The good old shrinks always say: you can’t change the thing, but you can change the way you think about the thing. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Perspective, in all its forms, is a talent that may be learnt.

The gales have passed and the sun has come out again. Scotland looks clear and calm and ravishing. I got back on to the back of my dear red mare. We have not been riding on account of the weather, and I was so excited that I had to take several deep breaths so as not to communicate wildness to her. She walked sweetly on a loose rein, at home with herself and the world. Even in a slow, low walk, I can feel her power, all those centuries of breeding for speed and strength streaming off her. She is as light as air and as mighty as an empress. The spreading sense of physical joy runs between us, in the bright air. Half a ton of flight animal rests easily beneath me, responsive to my every thought. It is a sort of miracle. It is a blessing of the very highest.

Opposable thumbs, a majestic thoroughbred and a Scottish field: that is a list to be going on with.

Oh, and this morning I saw the first tiny daffodil shoots; singing green harbingers of spring.

 

Today’s pictures:

 

A small thought on happiness.

The blog may be a little spotty in the next couple of weeks as I am up against a hard deadline and my brain is about to explode. Forgive me.

Today though, it turns out I do have one small thought.

This weekend I went to the Blair Castle International Horse Trials, as part of my work for HorseBack UK. The team did a mighty demonstration there, and it was my job to record it.

Blair is in one of the most ravishing parts of Scotland. I drove through the indigo and purple glories of Perthshire, with the glancing early morning sun shining ancient and amber over the folded hills. I have not been to a three-day-event since I was a child, and it was rather thrilling to see so many powerful and supremely fit equine athletes.

The worry always in this kind of situation is that I should look at the gleaming stars and think of my scruffy, muddy mare back in her quiet field, and feel inadequate. Why were we not winning silver cups and red rosettes? Why was she not getting the first prizes which she deserves?

I’ve been thinking about happiness lately. I have read quite a lot about the science of happiness (it really appears that such a nebulous concept is now being codified) and I have, you will be amazed to hear, several theories of my own. Most of the theories, you will be even more amazed to hear, revolve around love and trees.

My enduring line is that high expectations are the enemy of happiness. I think what I really mean by this is unrealistic expectations, or wrong expectations. Comparing yourself upwards and wanting what you don’t have both factor in to this equation. Why am I not like this? Why can I not have that? More and more, I come back to the immediate, and the small. Love what you have. Cherish what is, not what might be.

Because I’ve been thinking of all this, I had no batsqueak of longing, when I saw the Blair stars. They do what they do, and the red mare does what she does. She does not need a silver challenge cup, since she is the holder of the perpetual trophy which lives in my heart. She does not need to prove herself with prizes. She is perfect just the way she is.

Instead of wondering why we were not jumping and competing and doing dressage and winning things, I noticed the qualities Red has which those brilliant competitors perhaps do not. She needs no fancy tack. No martingales or drop nosebands or Pelhams for her. She goes sweetly within herself in a rope halter. She will come to a dead stop from a fast canter if I say the word ‘and’. (This has happened by accident. I was teaching her whoa, and I always prefaced it by and, so now ‘and’ is all she needs. She is that clever.) She can free-school with such astonishing precision that she will now do transitions from my body alone. I merely raise my energy for a trot and lower it for a walk. (It is at this point that the crazed voices in my head start shouting MIRACLE HORSE!!!!!)

But actually, even that is not required for happiness. Of course I love that she can do all these things. I am so proud of her on some days that I feel my entire body might just take flight, and soar away over the Scottish hills. Yet, the happiness part is more earthed, more humble, more ordinary than what she can do. It lies in what she is: in her gentle presence, her kind face, her horsey horsiness.

It lies in these pictures. This is what she does when I arrive at the gate each morning. She looks up, thinks, nods, seems quietly pleased, and mooches over, with her eyes bright and her ears pricked. This is not one of the many things I have taught her to do. She just does it. She is a mare at ease with herself and her human. That, that, is the gift; that is what makes my heart sing.

I’m not sure there is a secret to happiness. I’m not sure there is supposed to be. But if ever anyone were to ask me advice on the subject, I would say: think small. It is in the very small that some of the greatest joy is found.

My morning love:

And here are the majestic Perthshire hills, through which I was lucky enough to drive on Saturday, and which also bring me simple joy:

PS. Here is another small story about taking delight in the ordinary things. There is a horse I adore called Beacon Lady. She is not a famous horse, and she will never make the front page of the Racing Post. But she is tough and willing and she has a fabulous quirk: she only likes Brighton and Epsom. Those two courses are where she does all her winning.

Her connections recently put her up in grade, out of the unremarkable handicaps she had been winning, and she had the slight humiliation of trailing round behind  much, much better horses. Today, she was back at her own level. Still, there were good reasons to think she would not win, and the bookmakers reflected this when they priced her up at 10-1 first thing. I whacked a tenner on her out of love and loyalty. If I did not back her, she would of course know, and never forgive me. (You see how well my battle against magical thinking is going.)

It was raining so hard that the cameras could hardly see the start through the gloom. Beacon Lady did her usual thing of loping round right at the back, about twelve lengths off the pace. Even though I am used to her doing this, I did not take it as the most brilliant sign. Then her good jockey switched her to the middle of the track, so she had plenty of room, and sent her for home. The sweet girl lifted her head, as if to say: I’m at EPSOM, my favourite place in the world. She put her sprinting shoes on, and scorched through the mud and murk, leaving the rest flailing in her wake.

I’m not supposed to be watching the racing today. I’m far too busy writing 2332 words. But I stopped the clocks for Beacon Lady, who will never trouble the headline-writers, but who is always above the fold in my heart. A handicap at Epsom in the rain on a Monday is virtually the definition of a small thing. It will have me smiling for the rest of the day.

Happy Day

I’ve been doing a little Facebook experiment. It is called 100 Happy Days, and the idea is that every day you post something that makes you happy. It sounds very hello clouds, hello sky, but I think it is in fact quite an interesting psychological test.

I am capable of grumpiness and crankiness; I grow fretful over trifles; I am sometimes assailed by fears of the unknown future. I wrestle with mortality and the growing numbers of the Dear Departeds. (I am missing my dear old godfather a lot at the moment, and, as Cheltenham approaches, holding my late father very close to my heart.)

The lovely thing is that this idea makes me realise that even on the darkest day there is at least one happy thing, even if it is only a snowdrop or a pied wagtail or the soft eye of the red mare.

Today, there were not single spies of joy, but battalions.

The sun shone, for a starter. It really shone, with conviction and promise. The birds were singing, the woodpeckers were hammering away in the woods, the new grass was growing, to the mare’s delight.

In the morning, I found my one happy thing. It was a dilly. One of the great old cowboys, I can’t remember whether it was Tom Dorrance or Ray Hunt, said that the thing you are always looking for with your horse is that place deep inside where everything is possible, where there is only willingness. This is quite a profound thought, and sometimes feels almost metaphysical to me. It is nothing to do with technique and everything to do with heart and feel.

I thought about it with the mare this morning. I was doing some circles with her. She tends to lean in and drop her shoulder and sometimes a simple circle can be hard work. Today, though, something blossomed and spread. She started going easily within herself, in the most ravishing, smooth, floating sitting trot, describing a perfect line, so light that I was riding her with one finger. ‘There’s that place,’ I thought. I felt it in myself, deep in my gut. I felt my place of willingness and her place of willingness speak to each other, so that we found a harmony that was like flying. Hold on, I thought: THERE IT IS. There it is.

It was a feeling like no other. It transcended the actual and the physical and soared up into a realm of its own.

I was so ecstatic that I raced her out of the circle into a straight canter, as if we ourselves were roaring up the Cheltenham hill. I whooped out loud. ‘Woo, woo,’ I shouted. ‘You absolutely brilliant girl.’

You should not really be letting a thoroughbred canter about on a loose rein whilst whooping in their ear. The red mare kept her composure. She put on her sprinting shoes for a moment, and then came back under me, and gentled to a steady halt. She lifted her pretty face to the sky, and blew through her nostrils. I must not get fanciful, but I think she was as happy as I was.

That moment would have been enough. But then I went up to HorseBack for the first course of the year. The place was transformed. All the horses were in, the sun was still going like gangbusters, a wonderful group of Personnel Recovery Officers were gathered, Brook the ex-sprinter was doing a hoof-perfect demonstration, and, best of all, some of the regular veterans were back for a three-week stint.

My admiration for the veterans knows no bounds. It’s not just that they have done sterling service in places and situations I cannot even imagine, or that they face startling mental and physical challenges with stoicism and good humour, it is that they are so funny and generous, and very nice to me. I’ve got over my initial shyness, that sense of distance between the experience of a civilian and the experience of those who have served. They mob me up now, and make me shout with laughter. They think I am a bit crackers, as one of them said today, I suspect because of my ridiculous passion for horses, and my betting habit, and my Cheltenham obsession, and my tendency to open my mouth and let streams of nonsense issue forth. I take this as a big compliment. Coming from fighting men, crackers is good.

It was so lovely to see real work starting again, and all the people gathered, new faces and familiar faces, and the dear equines getting ready to do their important jobs. It reminded me of what all the effort is for, and made the hard, long winter worth it.

And then, as if all that were not enough, I backed two winners at Stratford, so that my Cheltenham bank is bulging.

I’m trying to resist the urge to put it all on Hurricane Fly. I love that horse like a brother. He is not a soft, kind horse like my mare. He is tough as teak, a dauntless warrior, a fighter and a biter. I’ve seen him almost shoulder other horses out of the way, with a bugger off look out of the corner of his canny old eye, and a surge of power that says: Champion coming through. I love him for his raw talent, his splendid athleticism, his refusal to give up. He has a wildness in him, as if he can still hear his ancestral voices, an elemental aspect, that sets him apart.

I reminded myself today that Cheltenham is not about the punting or the winning or the cash or the cleverness of picking out that one banker of the meeting. It’s about these mighty thoroughbreds I love so much. It’s about their beauty and their grace, their courage and their willingness and their power, their dancing stride and their mighty leaps. I cannot count the ways in which they make my heart sing.

I’ll have a little bet on the Fly, for loyalty, for love, for the memory of old times, but if he can reverse all the stats and see off the young shavers as he storms up the hill, it will be a sight worth more than emeralds. Even typing his name makes me smile.

So, it turned out that this was a day of manifold happinesses. I do not take that for granted for a single solitary minute.

 

Just time for a couple of  pictures, as it’s late now, and I’m tired, and I’m going to have a glass of wine and watch a replay of Quevega picking herself up off her nose at the top of the hill and surging to festival glory last year. That little battling mare makes me cry.

View from HorseBack:

The dear HorseBack horses:

My astonishing mare, taken a few days ago. A lot of happiness in that picture:

This is very naughty, because I respect copyright, but I had to show you this ravishing picture of Hurricane Fly, safely arrived at Cheltenham, blowing away the cobwebs from his journey across the sea. I hope that the very talented Alan Crowhurst will forgive me, just this once:

Scotland, this morning.

Three of the happiest hours I have spent for a long time. Forgot about work, forgot about everything. Just wandered past the hills, mooched about with the horses and the dog, regarded the blue, blue sky.

Back at the field, the light had faded, but there was still enough beauty to entrance this human heart:

Also, I must admit that my joy was enhanced by the great cleverness of Red the Mare. I can sling the rope over her shoulder, tell her to stand, and she will not move a hoof for ten full minutes whilst I click away with the camera, making sure I get her best angle. And nearly fall into the burn in the process. (Clue: it’s BEHIND YOU.) Further proof for my entirely non-empirical theory that thoroughbreds are the most intelligent horses in the world.

In her increasingly extensive vocabulary we now have: stand, whoah, back, forward one (for her to move one foot at a time), steady, walk on, trot on, breakfast, and, of course, Put On Your Duchess Face.

Also, I suspect that she has a pretty clear idea of what good girl means. Along with brilliant, beautiful, bonny and love of my life.

And later in the day, the equally clever and charming Kingston Hill stormed into the general racing consciousness by absolutely hosing up in the big race of the day, and laying down a marker for next season’s classics. He confirmed his place in my heart by refusing to take a drink afterwards, because he was far too busy pricking his ears and posing for pictures and soaking up the approval of the crowd. I’m not sure I ever saw a two-year-old so composed and intelligent and interested in what was going on around him. His trainer, the very brilliant Roger Varian said, with smiling pride: ‘he’s a complete professional; he travelled better than all the older horses.’ I hope he winters well and comes back to delight us next year.

(I’ve stopped putting up pictures which are not mine here, because I must respect copyright, but if you want to see a glimpse of his dear face, go to my Twitter feed @taniakindersley and you can find him there. I think re-tweeting photographs is allowed.)