Trying too hard.

Author’s note: this is very long, and it is all about me. I’d love to think you might extrapolate some universal human truths, but let’s have the word with no bark on it: it’s all about me. It also features the red mare. She now has her own Facebook page so that I don’t bore you witless with her every whicker, but today she’s come galloping back to the blog. I just wanted you to know that before you started.

 

I love triers. People who try can bring me to tears. Horses who try have me in pieces. Children who try, with that wonderful, youthful sense of optimism and determination, pull on my heartstrings like nothing else.

And yet, I have lately been reminded that you can try too hard.

Of course I knew that. I don’t want you to think I am a complete booby. One of the surprises I have found as I motor through middle age is that I know much, much more than I thought I did. I got quite cocky about this for five minutes, until I realised that I have a fatal habit of forgetting all those good things I know. That’s when the gap comes between theory and practice, and I find myself falling into elephant traps and lying on my back, legs flailing in the air, thinking furiously: but I knew this.

­This week, I had a little parable about trying, from my red professor.

Since I’ve come back to horses, I’ve taught myself a whole new way of horsemanship. I’ve learnt from two great horsemen – Robert Gonzales, in life, and Warwick Schiller, on the internet. Schiller provides an amazing resource for people who want to have happy horses, easy to ride and handle. At his place in California, he takes in all kinds of horses who have problems. He’ll be presented with a 17 hand dressage horse who can do a test, but who can hardly be rugged up without freaking out. He is sent buckers and rearers and bolters, horses that can’t get on a trailer, horses so riven with separation anxiety that they can’t think straight. He’ll take the horse right back to the beginning, go through the methodical steps, find the frets and the worries, iron them out, and by the end will have a soft, responsive equine who can do everything on a loose rein with its head down. He videos this, explains exactly what he is doing, and posts it on his page as a learning tool for people all around the world.

It has been a revelation for me and the mare, and because of it I’ve never in my life been so in tune with a horse, or had a horse who is so at ease with herself.

This week, Warwick Schiller is coming to Scotland to do a clinic. The moment I heard, I booked my place, and started dreaming of the great moment when the red mare would meet the master. Yesterday, a pincer action of three disasters meant that I had to cancel. There would be no trip to St Andrews, no glorious meeting.

Part of me was very sad about this. I’d been working so hard to get the mare ready. We’d gone right back to the beginning, found all the things I was doing wrong, concentrated on fixing them. I’d upped the ante, asked her new questions, pushed her harder. I’d sat up late, rewatching all the videos, trying to figure out where I was going wrong and what I needed to improve. Each day, I went down to the field with my teeth gritted, trying like buggery, because we had to get our gold star.

I say part of me was sad, because there was another part. Another part was, and this is so odd I can hardly write it, relieved. Today, I suddenly realised that I had been going to that clinic for a lot of the wrong reasons. I’ve written, over the months, about the red mare and her wonders on the Warwick Schiller forum, so that she is well known there, carving out her tiny piece of internet fame. I think that I secretly believed that I would arrive in St Andrews and say: Look, look, here is the famous Red Mare, IN REAL LIFE. And everyone would gasp at her beauty, and gaze in awe at all the clever things she can do, and give her a round of applause and a laurel wreath.

In fact, they would have seen a perfectly ordinary thoroughbred, with a kind white face, who is, I have to admit, a little bit short in front, and who sometimes slings her head and rushes her trot. In my eyes, she is the embodiment of a dream; to anyone else, she is just a sweet chestnut mare, with all the flaws that horses are heir to. She has not travelled for a long time, and the journey might have unsettled her. She would have had to stay in a strange stable surrounded by unknown horses, leaving her charge and field-mate behind. She could have wigged out a bit, even after all the good training we have done. She might, whisper it, not have shown her best self. Where would I be then?

Of course I wanted to learn, and of course I hoped that the last knotty problems would be instantly unpicked by those knowledgeable eyes. But I am slightly ashamed to say that much of the driving impetus was an awful sort of showing off. My competitive spirit, which I pretend is not there but which is always yelling, in the back of my mind, give me a cup, had hijacked the whole thing and was running riot. That’s why I was going down to the field every morning with gritted teeth.

Gritted teeth are not always bad. Gritted teeth got AP McCoy to twenty jockey championships. They got my old dad back in the Grand National after severe doctors had said he should never sit on a horse again. They got me, in younger days, round huge cross country courses, to Peterborough and Windsor, through complicated dressage tests.

But gritted teeth are no good to the mare. In this new horsemanship, she has been taught the ways of softness. When I grit my teeth, she thinks there are mountain lions in the woods, and her lovely, floating stride breaks up and her neck tenses and she fears that the storm is coming. She does not know I am absurdly trying to prove myself and improve myself; she just feels the tension and dreads the worst.

As a result of all this damn trying, we had lost that elusive trot. We’d had it, so beautifully that it made me weep tears of joy, and then it went again. The basis of this method is that you should be able to walk, trot and canter on a loose rein. You are teaching your horse self-carriage. It’s one of the things I love. Instead of giving it information every two seconds, you ask the polite question and then leave it alone. You are not saying a bit slower, a bit faster, a bit more collected. You just say go, and then sit as still as Ruby Walsh on Douvan in the Punchestown sunshine. You trust the horse, because you have taught the horse to trust itself. This requires a steady mental state. Trying too hard wrecks all that work at a stroke.

This morning, in a curious combination of regret, sorrow, wistfulness, release and relief, we went for a ride. We were no longer getting ready to show the teacher what we could do; we were just being together. I let the mare wander where she would, which is a basic teaching exercise I do every morning. She struck out towards the darkest woods, the ones that use to make her snort and rear. She was in her most intrepid explorer mode. She ignored the little Paint, who was doing her own private rodeo in the field alongside. At one point, the Paint and Stanley the Dog were staging an antic series of barrel races. The mare did not so much as flick an ear. I had no hand on her rein; she was brave and free.

By the entrance to the terrifying woods, there is a high granite wall, very typical of this part of the world. In it, there is a door. The door is exactly like that in The Secret Garden, one of the books of my childhood which most touched my heart. The mare walked up to the door and put her head through it and looked into the garden beyond. I leant down along her neck so I could see what she was seeing. There was a slope of grass, the young trees we planted for my late father, when the family gathered, including his sister, his nephew and niece, his children and grandchildren, and the blue hills beyond.

The good horse and I stood, for many minutes, looking through the secret door. It felt symbolic of something profound, I was not sure what. I said, out loud, in her ear: ‘Thank you for this.’

We were not going to do any work today, because we are no longer preparing for a great occasion. But I thought, damn it, let’s just give that trot a go, just for the hell of it. And there it was, as if it had been waiting for me all along. She was as poised as an ambassadress, as delicate as a duchess, as gentle and relaxed as an old Labrador. We did it on a loose rein; we did it with no reins at all. I put my hands out into the cool Scottish air, and she bent her beautiful, mighty body round in a curving circle, found her own lovely rhythm, beat her own delightful drum.

I had stopped trying, and that was when she gave me my greatest gift.

So, after all that, the thing which was a bit of a disaster turned out to be the best thing which could have happened. I needed a lesson in not letting that wild competitive drive get rancid and wrong. I needed to be reminded that I don’t actually require a cup. I needed to know that sometimes I can crash everything when I grit those absurd teeth too hard. I had forgotten all these things, and circumstance and this generous horse came along and set me right.

Trying is good. I try to write better prose. I try to do my work at HorseBack well. I try to be a good friend and a reasonably decent human. I try to be polite and see others’ points of view. I try not to judge in a mean way, and I try not to bitch and moan. I try for stoicism and balance.

With this ravishing mare, I try to follow the example of those two dazzling horsemen, not because it will make her a supreme champion, but because she will be happy in her skin and have a human on whom she can rely. It also means I am less likely to fall off and bruise these old bones. That’s a good kind of trying. It’s trying for the right reasons.

And it means that we get a glimpse of the view, through that low door in the wall.

 

Here she is, after all that loveliness, having a happy breakfast with her questing friend. The Paint always hopes that if she stands there with her Oliver Twist face on, she might get a go. She never does. The red mare knows perfectly well that she’s had her own breakfast, and this orphans in the snow look is pure theatre:

In which I ponder lessons in horsemanship and humanity.

Today, my darlings, I lifted up a horse’s ribcage with my feet. If you were not lifting up horses’ ribcages with your feet then I don’t know what you have been doing with your time. (Especially Anne Westminster and her Grenson’s. Which is a reference only four people and a very posh dog will get.)

There was a wonderful moment before I got on. Robert Gonzales, horseman, gentleman, spectacular human, said, in his gentle, easy voice: ‘Just start warming her up there.’ I’d made an absolute cack-handed farce of the groundwork the day before, at one point managing to swirl the rope round my arm and corral myself, but I’d been thinking and pondering and brushing up overnight, so I thought: now he shall see what an old British gal can do. He watched for about three minutes, out of the corner of his kind eye. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There are five things you are doing wrong right there.’

‘OF COURSE I AM DOING FIVE DIFFERENT THINGS WRONG,’ I bawled, in hilarity. The mare blinked at me as if to say: decorum. I doubled over with laughter. I think I may have actually slapped my thigh. Oh, the flap flap flap of the hubris angels’ wings.

Robert showed me the five wrong things. He then showed me how to do five things right. I did five things right. The mare, forgetting for a moment that she is an aristocrat, and all this trundling about the valley in trailers is quite beneath her dignity, looked first surprised and then delighted. Round she went, relaxed and athletic, using her whole magnificent body, her head down searching for softness, a lovely bend in her body. We never really get bend, but there it was. All because I was now standing in the right position and directing my energy in the right direction and putting my hand in the right place.

‘Poor old lady,’ I said, when we stopped. ‘What you have had to put up with.’

‘Right,’ said Robert, quietly pleased. ‘Get her saddled up.’

So, we rode. Under that brilliant, eagle eye, we found a glorious soft trot, we disengaged the buggery out of the hindquarters (‘move, move,’ said Robert, when he saw I was falling into mimsy), we did easy transitions, we made delicate changes of direction. I lifted that ribcage with my heels, so that her powerful thoroughbred arse could be free to do its job.

I did whoop a bit, I must confess. The new feeling coming off the mare was like a rolling, liberated wave of energy. ‘It’s as if I’ve being trying to dance Swan Lake in clogs,’ I shouted, ‘and now someone has given me a pair of ballet shoes.’

I learnt to let softness run all the way through my own body, from my shoulders to my pelvis to my calves, so that her body too would grow soft, from ears to tail.

‘Wow,’ I bellowed. (When I grow excited, I lose all volume control.)

Robert, still quiet, still smiling, taking all this on the chin, looked me in the eye. ‘Good work,’ he said.

Out on the wild shores of the internet, there is a very lovely woman who also writes a blog, and also has an adored thoroughbred, and also loves almost nothing more than a good canine. She and I became blogging friends, and then real life friends, since it turned out, rather amazingly, that I knew her brother in my university days. She often writes, very bravely and lyrically, about difficult subjects. A few days ago, she wrote a piece on loneliness. Successful, professional woman are not really supposed to admit to such frail emotions, and I thought it took a great deal of courage. One of the anonymous keyboard warriors went at once into battle. Instead of saying nothing, or writing in empathy and encouragement, Anonymous was ungenerous and unkind. Pull yourself together and stop moaning, was the burden of the mean song.

It made me think about the art of criticism. All humans make mistakes and get things wrong and fall into muddles. This morning, that good horseman told me, without apology or embellishment, that I had got five whole things wrong. He did not mean that I am a bad person or I should go into the garden to eat worms. He wanted me to get the things right, for my sake and for the sake of the mare. I sensed he had faith that I could, and so I did. Not perfect, but better. Better and better and better; every day in every way.

The critique was all practical and hopeful. That is why I laughed instead of being downcast. The anonymous critic who attacked my friend had no positive end in mind. The harsh words were purely destructive, tearing down the house with no thought for the real, feeling human who lived inside. The criticism had no utility. All it did was bruise an already bruised heart.

The cruellest voices often come from the lacerating gin-soaked critics in one’s own head. I’m learning the art of not falling into category errors; it’s one of my quiet obsessions. I do drive myself onwards, because smugness and complacency are horrid companions. I make mistakes in writing, and mistakes in horsing, and mistakes in life, and I like to look those mistakes in the whites of their eyes and strive to correct them. This does not mean that I am feckless, pointless, useless and hopeless, and that there is no health in me. It just means I got something wrong. The good critic is a lovely voice, and should be welcomed in and given cake. The bad critic should be locked in a room with a bottle of Gordon’s and left there.

And this is what I love about my red professor and all the things she teaches me – I can go from lifting a ribcage to category errors to the art of constructive criticism all in fourteen paragraphs.

 

Today’s pictures:

I did not take the camera today. I wanted to take everything in with my eyes and my brain and my heart, and not have a filter. So there are just a couple more shots from yesterday:

Oh, and I have one more thought before I go. It is this: it’s never too late. I’m nearly fifty, and I’m learning something completely new. I hope I shall be learning it until I am ninety, because you never reach the end of a horse. What I like is that I find a joy in learning. I always was a bit of a girly swot. At the same time, there is an absurd voice in me which says that when you are a grown-up, you should know stuff; that there is something almost undignified about going back to the beginning and admitting rank ignorance. This is a stupid voice, and I mostly give it a Maggie Smith raised eyebrow. What is truly undignified is closing your mind, thinking you know it all, refusing to harvest wisdom wherever you may find it. I don’t think there is ever a moment when you are done. Hurrah, I say, without embarrassment, for going back to school.

The red mare takes a journey.

Today, I had the dazzling good fortune to take the red mare up to HorseBack to work with Robert Gonzales.

I knew that I was at the very beginning of my journey, and I understood, humbly, that I was in the foothills whilst he bestrode the mountain peaks. Even so, when he took the mare in hand and showed me all the things that I had been getting wrong, in the gentlest and politest way possible, I did feel a moment of chagrin. I’ve been learning this new kind of horsemanship with the dedication of someone taking a university course, and I had felt that I had made some strides forwards.

In fact, I saw at once that I had been mimsing about. One of the things my father disliked most was mimsiness, and he was a horseman to his bones, and I should have damn well learnt that lesson by now. I’d been staying in a safe comfort zone, and letting the mare get away with things that I should have corrected. I write a lot here about rigorousness, but I had sadly lacked rigour.

When I had got over the bruise to my amour-propre, I felt excited, because a new door had been opened, and I could step through it. We’ll go on learning and I’ll go on getting better, and when you start from such a low place, the only way is up.

The mare, once she dealt with the slight shock of having someone work her who really was not messing about, had a lovely time, and when her lesson was over, rested happily, ground-tied, whilst the ex-sprinter Brook went through his paces. When they were formally introduced, she took to him with a faint degree of shamelessness, breathing into his nose and batting her eyelids at him. Often, when two strange horses meet, there is a degree of squealing and tail-swishing and a little dance as they work out the hierarchy. There was none of that. Just a gentle, questing hello, as if he were an old friend she had been missing. It was very touching.

Apart from not being firm enough, I think I have let emotion get in the way. The thing I notice about Robert is that he brings a delightful, calm neutrality to each horse. He does not get frustrated when they do the wrong thing, just keeps on persisting until they give him the right answer. When that answer comes, he does not, as I am prone to do, shriek and whoop and fall on the horse’s neck. He merely exudes a quiet satisfaction and gives them a good rub.

The love I have for this mare gets in the way of working her well. She does not really need human love; my bursting heart is all to do with my delight, not hers. She wants a place of safety and a sense of ease. My new resolution is to leave not only my worries and tensions at the gate when I work her, but to leave the love there too. I may indulge that when we have finished. It’s one of the hardest lessons in the world to learn, but I must learn it – it’s not, not, not all about me. It’s about her. That is the very least she deserves.

Oh, and PS. I was so inspired by this revelatory lesson that I cast away any shyness about saying the thing. I looked the great horseman right in the eye, smiled my goofy smile and said: ‘Robert, you are a giant among men.’ And that is no more than the truth.

 

Today’s pictures:

Resting, after work:

Despite being in a new and antic environment, she settled very well, just casting the odd look out of the door, where she could hear the rest of the herd moving about in the fields:

It was quite tiring:

I love this picture for about eighty-seven reasons. First of all, you are popularly not supposed to be able to do any of the things that we are doing here with ex-racehorses. One is standing quite happily by herself, with no human constraint, whilst another horse and several humans are working away about her. The other is going easily on a loose rein in a rope halter, stretching down his neck to find the place of softness, whilst his human rides him bareback. He is also in the middle of doing an exercise which he would never have learnt in his racing days, of yielding the shoulder, so he is having to concentrate very hard. Despite that, the softness is there. I also love the  look on the mare’s face:, a little bit dozy but a little bit thoughtful, as she processes everything she has just learnt:

Oh, those hot-blooded thoroughbreds, those crazy ex-racehorses; can’t do a thing with them:

She worked so hard she actually got sweaty, which is not what normally happens, so on went her cooler, making her look like a proper show pony:

I didn’t take any pictures of Robert working the mare, because I was avidly absorbing everything with my human eyes. Here he is with Brook, waiting for softness. He’ll wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. As long as it takes. That patience is one of the great lessons I take from all this. You can’t rush this, or skip parts, or think that half a loaf is a good enough. You’ve got to wait for the golden moment:

I try not to fall into anthropomorphism, but my idiot brain says the mare is flirting. I don’t blame her. Brook is a very handsome fella, as well as a very nice one. Actually, she is not really flirting, she’s just saying hello. But there did seem to be some sweet sense of recognition in her. They are related, after all. You have to go back four generations on his side, and three on hers, but there it is – Northern Dancer, in black and white, the grandaddy of them all. Maybe that good Canadian blood really is thicker than water:

Thank you to HorseBack, and thank you to Robert. It was a huge day.

In which I cast off my British reserve, and say the thing. Because sometimes you just do have to say the thing.

It’s been a mighty, mighty week, and there is so much I would love to write for you. I have, however, reached the stage that the poor Dear Readers know so well, when my bamboozled old brain is trying to crawl out of my ears and find a place of safety. Still, I’m going to type a line or two, and hope that I make at least some sense. (At this point, there is a very real danger that I won’t.)

There is a line in The Big Chill, one of my favourite films of all time, which goes something like: ‘How much fun, friendship and good times can one man have?’ Of this week I feel like saying: how much learning, revelation, brilliance, elegance and sheer poetry can one woman take?

I could fill a volume with the specific things I have learnt from watching a great horseman in action. I’ve already applied some of them to the red mare, and even though I am clumsy and bumbling in comparison to the grace and accuracy of Robert Gonzales, we have still made a glittering leap forwards. This week, we rode round a huge open field, with no reins, in a steady sitting trot. NO REINS. I tucked them safely under the pommel of the saddle and lifted my arms in the air, and let the good mare find her own direction. The important thing was that she should keep the same, even gait, with her neck nice and relaxed, going kindly within herself, which she did, with all the fine poise of a dowager duchess.

We did it on two consecutive days, so it was not a fluke. I was so proud of her I felt like crying absurd tears of amazed joy.

I am still in the scrubby lowlands, but I can raise my eyes to the hills, and that view shines like diamonds in my mind and heart.

But perhaps more importantly what I learnt was a human lesson. When somebody is really, really good at something, and has all the quiet confidence that brings, they do not need to hector or swagger or showboat. They do not need to prove anything, or cast anyone else down, or put out more flags saying Look at Me, Look at Me. They quietly go about their business, drawing other humans in through gentleness and politesse. They make their point by shining example. They remain absolutely present, in the moment, carrying their talent and their assurance lightly, so it is a lovely generous thing which sheds its refracted light into observing eyes. Perhaps most importantly, they are entirely themselves.

That is what I saw this week, and it was a great privilege. For once, I am not reaching for creaky jokes, or clever lines, or antic paragraphs. I am committing the great British sin of being as serious as stones. But sometimes in life you see something which is serious, which leaves a profound mark you know you will never forget, which is so beyond the run of the ordinary that it lifts you up and gives you a new and gleaming perspective. Respect is due.

Because I am British, I can’t possibly speak these words to the gentleman in question. In real life, I have to scuff my foot along the ground, and be ironic, and smile a goofy smile and look away. But I can write the words, in the shelter of the page, even though I feel quite shy about doing even that. Sometimes though, you’ve damn well got to say the thing. Because life is too short.

So - thank you, Robert. You are a remarkable horseman. But you are an even more remarkable human being.

 

Today’s pictures:

Happy friends, sharing their morning hay:

Stanley the Manly, ear flying, with a triumphant stick. It’s not the best picture I ever took in my life, but I wanted you to have the action shot:

I grew up in a racing and showing yard, where every single equine was gleaming and pristine. I could not hold my head up unless each hoof was gleaming with oil, and manes and tails were neatly trimmed, and coats were shining from grooming. I used to brush my ponies until my arm ached. Now, even though I can still appreciate a Best Turned-Out, and know how much work goes into a polished horse, I appreciate a different kind of beauty. It is the beauty of a mare just being a mare; hairy, scruffy, unadorned, covered in the glorious Scottish mud, with no prizes to win or points to prove. Herself is herself, and that is the thing I want most for her:

A glimpse of the mountain peaks.

I am in a slightly overwhelmed state. The regular Dear Readers will know that one of the things I love most is watching people who are really, really good at something. I adore brilliance. I doff my hat to it, and observe it with awe and wonder.

Today, I saw a horseman so good that it was like watching Nijinsky dance, or Olivier act, or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello.

I was doing my work at HorseBack, cantering about as usual with my camera, thinking of the Facebook posts I would write. I was very excited that Robert Gonzales had come all the way from California to share his knowledge and wisdom with us, and at first was only concerned with capturing the best shot. But after a while, I realised that something so rare was happening that I dropped the camera and merely stared with my eyes. At times, I could feel my mouth dropping open in cartoonish amazement, or my face falling into a foolish grin of pure delight.

Sometimes, at HorseBack, I hear stories from the veterans of the extremes of human experience, so bad and so far from my imagination that I can feel the very atoms of my body rearranging themselves, as if in outrage. Today, the atoms were on the move from the experience of seeing something so fine, so light, so ravishing, that it had a visceral effect of joy instead of sorrow.

What was it, this brilliance? It was so subtle that I can hardly capture it in words. It does not have soaring words to go with it, although it was a soaring thing. It was to do with steadiness, attention, timing, feel, a beautiful sure touch, a sense of something authentic and enduring. It was smooth and certain; there were no jagged edges. The thought was all about the horse, and getting that equine mind to a soft and easy place.

I thought I’d been doing pretty well with my red mare. I’d had moments of pride, which sometimes slipped into hubris. Now, watching the real thing, I realised that I was like a pub singer compared to Caruso.

That’s not the worst thing. I do not feel discouraged or downcast. At least the pub singer shows up. I feel humble, set in my correct and lowly place, but inspired to keep on going down this long and winding road until I can get within hailing distance of that kind of excellence. It will always be ahead of me, way out on the horizon, but if I could just catch a glimpse, I should be happy.

I love that there are people in the world who do such glorious things with horses. I love that the word they use the most is softness. I love that they are fascinated and enchanted by the equine mind and give it the respect it deserves. Until now, I’d only seen them on the small screen – old footage of Ray Hunt and the Dorrances, the documentary about Buck Brannaman, the brilliant training videos of the gentleman I take my instruction from, Warwick Schiller. But I’d never seen it in life before, and, up close, it is quite another thing. It is like a ravishing dance, and it made me smile the goofiest, happiest, most blissful smile in the world.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just time for two, since it’s been a long day, and I’m good for nothing now.

The magnificent Mr Gonzales, with Brook the ex-sprinter. This does not look dramatic, but it was one of the most striking aspects of the whole morning. It was simply standing and waiting for the horse to soften after a bit of work, standing and letting the new piece of learning soak in, staying quiet and still until the head came down and the muscles in the neck relaxed and the eyes went soft. Sometimes it took a moment; sometimes it took many minutes. It was the unforced, patient waiting, the sense of having all the time in the world, the offering the good horse the space to work it out with no pressure on him that was so very lovely, and it was oddly emotional to watch:

My furry, muddy, red mare and I have miles to go before we sleep. (The woods are lovely, dark and deep.)

But we shall prevail. Because we might have our hopeless moments and our bad hair days and our one step forwards two steps back, but we are triers. Like dear old pub singers everywhere, bellowing out ersatz versions of The Streets of London, we show up. Which must be half the battle:

The nicest of them all.

At last, my mother is home from the hospital. I lie on her bed and talk of Michael Scudamore, who has died.

‘I can see him now,’ says my mother. ‘Sitting on the lawn, in a director’s chair, drinking Pimm’s.’

­­­­I think how racy my mother must have been, to have a director’s chair on the lawn in the late fifties.

‘He was a very good jockey,’ she says. ‘He rode with your father. But the real thing about him is that he was so nice. He was the nicest of them all.’

Nice is considered a poor word. Writing manuals strictly instruct you not to use it, not if you want to be taken seriously. I like it. It is a small, humble, unassuming word. It does not show-boat, or take up all the oxygen in a room. And it does, whatever the sneery received wisdom says, mean something.

When I was young and heedless, I suspect I probably agreed with the sneerers. Who wanted to be nice? It was so dull, so safe, so workaday. Much better to be charming or wild or reckless. Now I am older, and chipped around the edges, I crave niceness. How lovely and reassuring to be nice, in a rushing, technological world, where internecine battles break out at the drop of a hat, and trolls stalk the internet, spreading their bile.

He was a nice man, Mr Scudamore, and that is a proper epithet for a gentleman of the turf.

My mother tells me about Dave Dick, who was the joker of the pack, and drove a car like a maniac. ‘He never had his eye on the road,’ says my mother. ‘He was always looking at you to see if you got the joke of the week. Oh, I was so frightened.’

‘Fred Winter was my hero,’ says my mother. ‘Because of how he rode a horse. He was the most beautiful jockey I ever saw over a fence.’

She pauses, remembering. ‘Then Francome came along. And he was beautiful too.’

I remember watching John Francome ride. There was a poetry in it.

‘The one I love watching at the moment,’ I say, ‘on the flat, is Ryan Moore. I watched him educate a two-year-old colt in a race the other day. He took him through the whole thing, very gently, step by step, letting him find his stride, sitting perfectly still, and then picking him up a furlong out and letting him rock into a flying rhythm and showing him his business. He won, and he never picked up his whip, just hands and heels.’

‘So the horse would not know he had a race,’ says my mother, smiling. ‘Scobie Breasley used to do that. He was a genius with two-year-olds.’

We talk of the Hannon two-year-olds, and how beautiful they are. Many trainers have a stamp of a horse. You can often tell, seeing the mighty creatures in the paddock, which yard they come from. The Hannons love big, strong, close-coupled horses, very deep through the girth, with short, powerful necks and finely-carved heads. ‘And Mark Johnston,’ says my mother, ‘likes those honest, long horses, rather old-fashioned types.’

‘Who look as if they might go hurdling,’ I say.

Almost under her breath, almost wistful, my mother says: ‘The most beautiful of them all was Frankel.’

We remember Frankel, as if we are paying homage, which in a way we are.

‘They have a presence,’ I say. ‘Those great ones.’

‘Nijinsky had it,’ says my mother. ‘You could feel it the moment you stepped onto the course. Although he wasn’t much fun to see in the pre-parade ring.’

‘Because he got so lathered up?’ I ask.

‘Oh,’ says my mother, indulgently,as if describing a naughty schoolboy, ‘he got himself in such a state. But it never seemed to make any difference. He just went and won anyway.’

‘Michael Scudamore,’ says my mother, reverting to our point of origin, ‘made a dynasty. Imagine that. His grandson is riding now.’

‘Tom Scu,’ I say. ‘He’s a lovely jockey. And a gentleman too.’

We contemplate the Scudamores, the nicest of them all, a family which knows horses like sailors know the sea. I think of the brothers, who only this week carried the coffins of their grandfather and grandmother into a Norman church. The old lady died, and her husband followed her three days later.

What loss they must be feeling: two blows coming so close together, two mighty oaks felled. I look out at the sunshine. It was sunny like this when my father died, that impossible, improbable sun which is not supposed to shine on dear old Blighty, not on these islands of mist and rain. The Scudamores must have that same feeling of unreality that I remember so well. They must be looking out into the blinding light and waiting for the world to make sense again.

 

Today’s pictures:

The red mare is having a well-deserved day off. Today, she just gets to be a horse, out in the long grass, with her dear friend for company and the sun on her back:

The Great Moment.

Warning: this is crazy long. It also involves an awful lot of horse. It’s a story I really wanted to tell, and it has taken many, many words. Feel free to skip on and come back tomorrow, when there will be pith.

 

The Great Moment arrived.

Of course, in the manner of so many great moments, it did not turn out quite as I had dreamed it. There was no swoony Disney effect, with a sweeping string section and not a dry eye in the house. No Hollywood producer, had she been passing, would have stopped and said: ‘I must make a damn film out of that.’

It was very ordinary, and very, very sweet.

I’d worked the mare on the ground and under the saddle for a long time in the morning, to prepare her. She did an enchanting free-school, with floating transitions between walk and trot from my body only, and then hooked on and walked round the field with me, her head low and her ears in their donkey position.

In the saddle, I did something which I should have been doing every day, and have not. As I learn this new kind of horsing, I get so excited that I skip parts and jump around and do not do the things in order. Let’s do that today, I say to myself, galvanised because I’ve just seen it demonstrated. Or let’s try this, just for fun. In fact, one should roll through the foundational steps, in their right sequence, every single day, as automatically as if one were brushing one’s teeth.

I finally got the message, and put into action one of the most brilliant techniques I have ever learnt. It is a mental thing. You get on your horse and you say: where would you like to go today? The horse moves off. Usually it will go to the gate or where the feed is or the place where its buddies are hanging out. When you get there, you make it work. You disengage the hindquarters and turn it in tight circles and, as Warwick Schiller says, the brilliant Australian horseman from whom I learnt this method, annoy the hell out of it. Not in a mean way, but just because you are continually asking something. Then, when you are facing away from the favourite spot, you let it go on a long rein and the moment it moves off, you leave it alone. You go from work, work, work, to bluebirds and butterflies.

Sure enough, Red wanted to go to the top gate where the feed lives. Circle, circle, circle. She got the message very quickly. Off we went in the opposite direction, on the buckle. Then she tried the bottom gate, where the grazing is. Circle, circle. Then she tried her little paint friend. Circle.

She is so clever that she got it at once, and she stretched out her duchessy neck and strode off, athletic and relaxed, to the easy places.

I love this method because it means you are not saying no. You are saying: of course you can go over here if you want, but if you do, there will be work. On the other hand, if you go over here, where I want, there will be only lightness and ease. It’s what Buck Brannaman calls offering the horse a good deal.

Usually we have a bit of an argument as we leave the field. She wants her breakfast; she wants her pal. I want to go riding. Argy, bargy. Today, because I finally went back to proper basics, there was no argument, only a polite conversation.

It also has the miraculous ability to relax them. I’m still not sure entirely why it has this effect, but it is as if some lovely Zen mistress has come and sprinkled cooling fairy dust in the air.

Out in the hayfields, we did another foundational exercise, again of a simplicity so delightful that a child of nine could do it. If your horse wants to go left, you turn it right, and vice versa. Again, the miraculous relaxing. We did this out in the hayfields, and at one point she actually breathed out a gusting sigh of happiness and relief.

This was the preparation. I write it all down because the work to get to the Great Moment was as important as the moment itself.

Into the brave new world we went. It was twenty times better than yesterday. There was no snorting, and no spooking. Buses honked and hissed, tractors and trailers clanked past, bicycles whooshed by. The red mare twitched her ears and walked boldly on. We met another tiny child. There was the same awe-gazing that we had seen before. My heart, as it always does when I see this look cast upon my beautiful red girl, flew into the light Scottish air.

Down to the care home we travelled, going kindly within ourselves. And just as we arrived, and I was about to break out the swoony string section in my head, the mare, with perfect bathos, lifted her aristocratic tail and took a huge dump right by the tubs of begonias.

I let sentiment go by, and laughed and laughed. ‘Good for the roses,’ said one of the carers, staunchly.

Out came the old people. All of them were suffering from the various indignities of age, as time ruthlessly ravaged their minds and bodies. Some were in stages of dementia, some had physical infirmities. Some had words which made no sense; some had no words at all. One or two were hovering on the cusp, just holding on before the final infirmity caught them in its crocodile grip. They came out with sticks and walking frames and wheelchairs. The carers, capable and brisk, said: ‘Look, here is a horse. A HORSE.’

‘This is Phoenix,’ I said. ‘She is a thoroughbred.’ And, I’m ashamed to say, I told them, because I can never resist it: ‘Her grandfather won the Derby.’

‘Hello, Felix,’ said a chorus of amazed voices.

She did not, as I had slightly hoped she would, at once stick her dear face out and tickle them gently with her whiskers. She was a little astonished by such a gathering of strangers. A great murmuring had broken out, a chorus of exclamation. It was a very familiar sound to me and it took me a moment to realise what it was. It was the exact same noise that the crowds make when they gather round the winner’s enclosure at the races. At last, I thought, this finely-bred racehorse, who trundled round the back at gaff tracks, is in the winning circle.

Like a winner, she caught a wing of adrenaline, and stuck her head in the air and let out a calling whinny. The old people found this hysterical. They smiled at her and laughed at her and gave her carrots. She was a little restless, more reactive than I would have liked, but it was a small space, filled with humans she had never met before, and, considering it was only her second visit to the village, I thought she comported herself amazingly. She took the carrots and amused her audience by flinging little orange scraps about the place as she chomped.

It was not quite the Disney moment. She did not lay her velvet muzzle on a frail old hand and let out a low breath of recognition. She was not yet relaxed enough for that. But she will be, in time. We shall go again, and she shall get to know them, and I’ll work sternly on those foundations, and we’ll get that magic moment.

It was an ordinary grey day, in an ordinary little village, outside one of those ordinary buildings thrown up in the 1970s with no thought for aesthetics. It was an ordinary group of humans, carrying the ordinary afflictions of age. It was an ordinary horse, with her ordinary rider.

It was not a movie. It was real life. And damn, she did make those people laugh and smile.

 

Today’s pictures are a photo essay of the morning:

Before work:

After desensitising:

Free-schooling. Notice her ear turned in towards me:

Transitioning down to walk:

Hooking on:

Resting, after all her good groundwork:

Out into the hayfields:

At the care home, I walk away to take pictures. Big whinny. WHERE ARE YOU GOING????:

And what’s over there?:

Well, I suppose it is all right:

Are we really on the Deeside way?

Answer: yes. And there is the village:

And the hills:

And the long view east:

And back to the village again:

Going home:

The end of the mighty ride. She can hear her little Paint friend calling:

Hosed off and shaking it all out:

And having a well-deserved pick in the long grass:

There is a postscript to all this.

Because I had made my offer to go to the old people, I really had to go back and concentrate on the work I do with this mare. You can’t just take a thoroughbred on a mission like that and kick on and hope for the best. I grew up in the old school of kicking on and hoping for the best, and I don’t disdain that. Using those traditional English methods, I did dressage and working hunter and cross-country and showing and won many red ribbons and silver cups.

But I like this new school because it has a simple solution for every problem. The minute you see the world through the horse’s eyes, everything can get fixed. I find a delightful utility in it. I like it too because although I think of it as a new school, it is in fact very old. It does not belong to anyone. The great horsemen are like aristocrats with their stately piles: they are not owners, they are custodians, passing on the wisdom to the next generation. The knowledge that I now use was passed along by Ray Hunt and the Dorrances, men whose names I did not even know until two years ago, men now departed on whose sage words I hang.

Through the miracle of the internet, one of the holders of that flame makes it available to neophytes like me, in a practical, easily accessible form. I went back to the school of the magnificent Mr Schiller and did not muck about this time. The mare and I had a serious purpose, and I could no longer be cavalier. I had to be rigorous, and follow the steps. The difference in my horse was immense.

The discrete purpose had a lovely unexpected consequence. It set us free. Even though I’m very proud of everything the mare has achieved, I still was conscious that I had a great, powerful thoroughbred under me. Because I am still in the learning stage, there were days when she could be unpredictable. I am middle-aged, and I have not ridden seriously for thirty years. I saw no reason to take unnecessary risks. We kept to the safe places, the quiet fields and tracks near home. The main road was a Rubicon for us; there was no thought of crossing it. Why should we? We could play in the hayfields and the sheep meadows and the home paddocks.

After we left the care home today, I took her out on the Deeside way. I would never have dreamed of doing this before, in a million years. Why not? I thought, seeing the sign; let’s just go. And suddenly there were the bright open fields and the long blue hills and the unknown spaces. And there we were, in them, on a loose rein, in perfect harmony.

I realised that I had been hamstrung by fear, by horrid imaginings, by doubt. But because I had gone back to the beginning, and concentrated my mind, and applied the proper techniques in the proper order, I was utterly liberated. We could go anywhere, in our rope halter.

She had a bit of a look, and a bit of a tense, and then she took confidence from me and walked out, easy and relaxed, with that lovely sway of pride that the fine ones have.

Who would have guessed, I thought, that a visit to the old people would have set us free?

 

And finally, this quote about the horse from Ray Hunt is like a prose poem. I’m going to recite it in my head every morning:

‘You want your body and his body to become one.
This is our goal.
It takes some physical pressure naturally, to start with, but you keep doing less and less physical and more and more mental. Pretty soon, it’s just a feel following a feel, whether it comes today, tomorrow or next year.
So one little thing falls into line, into place.
I wish it would all fall into place right now for you, but it doesn’t because it has to become a way of life.
It’s a way you think.
It’s a way you live.
You can’t make any of this happen, but you can let it happen by working at it.’

Red mares and life lessons.

Author’s note:

This is for the horsey ones. To the other ones I apologise and say please do come back tomorrow. It does contain some human life lessons, but it centres around the horse. It is also absurdly long. So sorry about that.

 

The kind of horsemanship I practice has many names. The one that people seem to dislike is natural horsemanship. I can see why. It is a contradiction in terms. There is nothing natural about horsemanship. You are taking a herd animal out of its native habitat, strapping a bit of another animal to it, this one dead, and asking it to perform actions it would never dream of in the wild. You carry your hands exactly where its predators sink in their claws when they strike. You stroke it in the exact place that those predators plunge in their sharp teeth, to sever the spinal cord. Just because you keep it in a field and work with it at liberty and try to mimic its lead mare does not mean any of this is natural. That is why working with a horse is so elemental and astonishing, because, mostly, it gives its consent to all this.

I think of this new horsemanship, which is in fact very old but never had a name before, as mostly practical. Sure, I get a bit misty and hippy from time to time, and think about the universe, and believe that my mare contains it in her deep eye. I like to believe that these methods have taught me to understand her and be in harmony with her. But mostly, they have a strict utility. I grew up in the old school, where the solution to most problems was hard schooling and more tack. The idea was that you got so good at riding that you would not come off when they bronced or bolted or bucked. If a horse was a rearer, it was a rearer. If it was a spooky bugger, it was a spooky bugger. If it was a bolter, it was a bolter, and you either rode it in the strongest bit you could find, or you just stuck on and prayed. There was absolutely no notion that you could change any of these behaviours. You might be able to teach a horse to settle in a race, to conserve energy, and you could brush up its jumping; you could educate a pony to go on the bridle, and make some nice transitions; but that was it.

This new school says that you can get a horse so relaxed and responsive that it will not pull, or buck, or shy, or rear, or charge off into the blue horizon. You can teach it not to barge, not to rush, not to bash into your personal space. The techniques for this are not complicated, but they require a lot of patience, consistency, thought and time. You can’t get lax or skip bits. You can’t take your frets and tensions down to the field and expect your horse not to notice. You have to be your best self, the good leader, who will keep your kind equine safe from mountain lions.

The red mare has been a bit reactive and tense in the last couple of days. She went from dozy old donkey, walking out so relaxed that I dropped the reins and the irons and just rode her with my body, to fired-up thoroughbred, snorting and staring and jumping at shadows. She even did a fabulous cartoon spook at a duck, with skittering hooves and airborne leap, something she has not done for months.

Well, I thought, she was a racehorse. Her grandfather did win the bloody Derby. I’m still riding her in a rope halter. We have not ended up halfway to Inverness. And she is a horse, after all, whatever human methods I apply to her.

There is a tremendous Australian horseman called Warwick Schiller, whose precepts I follow. There are many great horsemen and women on the internet, and I learn avidly from all of them. Some of them are no longer here, but their words and wisdom survive, in the ether. I learn from the late Ray Hunt and the Dorrances; I learn from the very much alive Buck Brannaman and Ian Leighton and Richard Maxwell and Robert Gonzales.

Schiller is particularly good, because he puts up practical videos, where one can see the ideas in action, and he also has a forum, where he patiently answers endless questions about groundwork and lateral flexion and all sorts.

On this forum, yesterday, I posted a question. Will a horse always be a horse, I asked, and have its moments of reaction to unexpected stimuli, or, if you are doing everything right, should it remain relaxed and soft and focused? I think I was looking for excuses. I think I knew the answer to my own question. I think I knew that when the tense snorting comes, it is always to do with human failing. Still, everyone was thoughtful and kind, and people wrote of the importance of building the foundations and remembering to take Square One with you wherever you go and minding your body language and getting your head straight.

Inspired by these good reminders, I took the red mare out this morning and went through all the foundational steps, one by one. I did not let anything slide. I was firm and rigorous and fair and even. I thought a lot about feel, and practised it. And I got my lovely, low, easy girl back again.

SUCCESS, I shouted in my head, like John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. Success. We were Olympians; we were Grand National winners; we were golden.

And then, fatally, I got cocky, and pushed her a little too quickly, and everything fell apart. I could not get the canter. Her stride was all broken up, her head was in the air, her neck was braced, she was rushing and pulling and not listening to me. I had envisaged a beautiful cowboy lope, and instead we had a Calgary Stampede plunge. (My old dad once rode in the Calgary Stampede. It was not his most glorious moment. ‘On for nine seconds,’ he said, laconically, afterwards; ‘and out for nine hours.’)

I was furious with myself. Fuck bugger bollocks and arse, I shouted in my head. My unbalanced horse was all over the shop. Her unbalanced human was all over the shop. Failure, I thought bitterly. Failure, failure, failure.

I took a deep breath, and went back to the beginning. We are going to be here for hours, I thought, in rage and I’ve got work to do. I counted to ten. I did the lateral flexion. I got the easy walk on a loose rein. Her ears flicked back towards me, listening again. I thought beautiful thoughts and relaxed my body and invited her into a canter, trying not to expect the awful ragged gait we had just suffered through.

And suddenly, like a miracle dropping from a fine blue sky, there it was – light as air, easy as breathing. ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, out loud. The reins were loose, and I kept my hands soft, opening the door for her. She went through the door. She was carrying herself. I went with her, keeping out of her way, letting her feel the confidence of being a horse at home in her own powerful body.

We went round again to check it was not a fluke.

It was not a fluke. We were flying like the swallows which swoop over this wide green meadow. We were of the earth, the sky, the trees, the hills. There was no telling where the world began and we ended.

As we walked back, her head low, my hands off the reins, I gently scratched her withers in love and congratulation, and I thought about all the things this great professor teaches me.

There were two huge lessons. The first is: everything is my responsibility. Mares have different moods and off days and mornings when they get out of bed on the wrong side, just as humans do. But if I am doing my job well, she will be well. I can’t blame her, or her high breeding, or her previous job. I can’t blame what is going on in the world. If I am right, she is right. My absolute number one job is to let her know, at every moment I am with her, that I have what it takes to keep her safe. Actions have consequences, one of the great rules of life.

There was a small sub-lesson in this one too, which is: you have to be dogged. Never give up. Don’t let discouragement whack you round the head. Keep on until you find that lovely shining note, on which to end.

And the second lesson was how I thought about that morning. I could have taken the negative from it. The rotten part was pretty rotten. We were both at our worst, for those horrid minutes. I could have seen this as a rank failure and castigated myself and decided all the work I have done so far was for nothing and I should not be allowed to keep a gerbil, let alone a thoroughbred. Instead, I decided to take heart from the beautiful parts.

There were two steps backwards, and I shall learn from those. But there were floating, dancing, magical steps forwards, and they cannot be sullied by what came before. They existed; they shine in my memory as I write this. Nobody can take those away from us.

And perhaps my last great lesson is a very simple one, which I should really know by now, but which I need to be reminded of, often. It is: if you want something lovely and fine and effortless, you have to strive. You have to practice. You have to be rigorous. It’s exactly like writing. Gleaming prose is not sent by the language gods. It is the result of daily struggle. If I want a soft and happy and light horse, I have one great tool at my disposal. It is free, and it is available to everyone. It is the most valuable bit of kit in any horsewoman’s box. It is: time.

 

Two quick pictures, after all that ridiculous prose -

After a hose-down and a damn good roll, she moseyed over with her Minnie the Moocher face to have one last scratch before I left her:

And then a very well-deserved drink:

Oh, that face. It never fails to make my heart sing.

Happy Birthday.

Today would have been my father’s 84^th birthday. I sometimes think he should have lived to be a hundred, but the truth is that he hated old age. When he died, he was ready to go. He wasn’t even particularly ill. He was in hospital, but not for anything catastrophic. He sang a song he had just invented specially for the sweet Australian nurse who had taken his fancy – Dahlia from Australia, he sang. Then he drank some Guinness which was smuggled in for him. Then he said he was going to have a little sleep. He did not wake up.

It was a bloody brilliant way to go. There was no drawn-out departure, no beeping machines and snaking wires. For a long time, his bashed old body had been failing him. He was a physical man, strong and hard in his prime. Even when time put weight on him, his arms were still like steel hawsers, from years of holding strong horses. As he went into the twilight of age, all the crashing falls and breaks and dislocations caught up with him. He had, after all, broken his back and his neck twice. The bones protested and cried out. His back stooped and hunched. He could no longer do the things he wanted to do. He grew fretful and melancholy. He would have loathed being a hundred. He had run his race.

I think of him every day. I can hear his ghostly laughter, as the last leg of my 3000-1 accumulator gets beaten a short head. I remember him as I work my mare. I think the sole reason I got a horse after thirty years was to feel closer to the old horseman. The funny thing is that he was not a brilliant rider. He was not the most stylish, or the most technically accomplished. But he had such dash and courage and sheer guts that horses responded to him. They are telepathic creatures, instinctive herd animals. He gritted his teeth and threw his heart over those great birch fences, and the horses, infected by his Corinthian spirit, would have gone with him anywhere.

He never really knew what the internet was. He was the oldest of the old school. But the internet knows him. As I rummage about the Google, I find kind words and happy memories from Brough Scott and Martin Pipe and regular punters and people who lived in the Lambourn valley and the Amateur Jockeys’ Association, of which he was chairman.

There is an old tweet from George Baker, who trained Belle de Fontenay to win a charity race at Newbury run in my father’s name: ‘To win anything named after the legendary Gay Kindersley is a privilege.’ I remember George when he was a young racing fan, devoting every spare moment to rushing off to Sandown and Newbury. Eventually, he chucked in his sensible job and followed his dream, and last season he lived the very pinnacle of that dream, leading the doughty campaigner Belgian Bill into the winner’s enclosure at the Royal Meeting. He is exactly the same person as a professional as he was when he was a fan: smiling, enthusiastic, fired with love for the mighty speed and strength and courage of the thoroughbred. The thought of him remembering Dad is very touching.

More touching still, I discover a photograph on the Amateur Jockeys’ Association website, of the Fegentri World Cup at Goodwood. There is my dear old Fa, aged but still doing what he called his grinny face, having just presented the trophy. To his left is the winning trainer, John Hills. John died last week, at the absurdly young age of 53. His race was not run; it was cruelly cut short. He too was a horseman and a gentleman. He and his brothers were a pulling thread that ran through my childhood. I have snapshots of my head of them flinging their ponies over massive jumps at high speed. They rode like cowboys, with wild élan. In the sadness of John’s death, I find a glitter of light, as I see him smiling next to the auld fella, both of them brought back to vivid life.

Mortality tugs at my sleeve, as I think of the Dear Departed. There are too many of them. They no longer come as single spies, but as battalions.

I think of Dad, and wonder what he would say. He would sing a song, and laugh a rueful, self-mocking laugh, and drink a drink. He would not put it into so many words, but by example he would tell me to live every moment as if it were the last.

He never gave me any advice, except not to back odds-on favourites. Instead, he showed me many good life lessons by example. Be generous, laugh at yourself, never give up, always be the first to buy a round. He judged humans on their true selves, not inessential externals or societal yardsticks. He lived high life and low life and saw no difference between the two. He did not understand any set of rules, but made up his own as he went along. He had the wonderful talent of bringing fun with him, wherever he went. Soon after he died, I ran into a gentleman who had been a steward with him for many years. ‘Oh, your father’ he said, his eyes lit with memories. ‘Every time he walked into the stewards’ room, it was a party.’

I ponder the imponderables of life, and I know exactly what my Dad would say. He would say: ‘What the hell is going to win the 7.30 at Windsor?’

 

Today’s pictures:

Very young and rather serious. Top boot action:

He did a huge amount for the amateur riders, and he loved doing it. The jocks and everyone at the AJA loved him right back:

The old riding style makes me laugh and laugh. Several things about this picture bring me joy. There are the tremendous britches, Dad’s traditional gritted teeth, and the bright face and pricked ears of his horse. I’m not sure which one it was; I’ll have to ask my mum. She remembers them all. She was the one who had to watch him roaring over those obstacles at high speed, sometimes through her fingers:

He would have loved this beautiful girl:

You’ve all seen this one before, but it remains my favourite:

And many, many years later, at Goodwood, with age on his shoulders, but still that blazing grinny grin. Dad is second from the left, then the winning jockey, and then John Hills: