Memories of Kauto.

The sun is shining and I’m determined to mine the beauty and the joy out of this day. I spent time with my sweet mares, drove round the Scottish hills to look at the snow, went to see the dear Stepfather, and then ran home to watch the racing. Many of my old friends are out today, and my heart is beating with love.

Four years ago today, I watched Kauto Star line up for the Betfair Chase. I was with the Beloved Cousin and her small children and my dear old dog, known on this blog as The Pigeon. The consensus on the day was that Kauto’s glory days were behind him. Some people were even quite cross that Paul Nicholls was running him.

I wrote about that day, and I’m reproducing it here because my memories of the bold and beautiful Kauto Star will never die. I’m thinking a lot about the people who are not here any more; that glorious horse is not here any more. I hope they are all running their race on some celestial track, with the emerald turf springy under their feet.

The story of a great race:

(There was a rather long introduction about having chard from the garden for lunch, and about my love for Master Minded, who was also running. Only then did I get to the main action, which is why the start sounds slightly abrupt.)

Kauto Star is eleven, which is old in racing years. Not geriatric, but a sure veteran. The young pretender, Long Run, had come last season and taken the Gold Cup. Worst of all, he had usurped Kauto Star’s crown in the race he had made his own, the King George at Kempton. Bear in mind Kauto is the only horse in history who had won that race four years in a row, the last time by over 30 lengths, against some of the best chasers in the country.

He is the mightiest and most beloved champion since Desert Orchid: first horse ever to win a Gold Cup, lose a Gold Cup, and come back to regain it; the first horse ever to win fourteen group one races. There was a time when he seemed almost unbeatable. In his early days, he used to put in terrifying mistakes, quite often over the last fence when it seemed as if he had everything sewn up; in his later years, he could put in exhibition rounds, making such mighty leaps that it seemed as if he had wings.

The thought was, though, that his great days were all behind him. People were muttering about retirement. Today, he was facing three tough miles, up against much younger horses, at least four of whom had big wins under their belts. He might fall, be pulled up, get tailed off; the talk was that if he did not run well today, he would be retired on the spot, and that is the last we would all see of him.

I’ll give my hero another chance, I thought. I’ll just put on a little twenty, I thought, mostly out of love. I was not sure he could do it. Long Run is a very, very good horse. I was acting on sentiment. Then I got a bit more forensic. Paul Nicholls had trained Kauto to the minute for this race; Long Run would be being saved for later in the season, and often does not run well first time out. I’ve always thought there is a little question mark over his jumping; he can go a bit flat and careless when the pressure is on.

I examined the form. There were definite drawbacks over another of the two main dangers. Damn it, I thought; this really could be Kauto’s moment. Five minutes before the race, I put on another twenty. Sod them all, I thought: my boy is not done yet.

I explained some of all this to the children. They got very excited. They watched the quick replays of his earlier triumphs that Channel Four was showing, and decided they loved him.

‘Come on Kauto,’ they said.

Off the horses went. Kauto Star was jumping very well, but almost stupidly well, standing off outside the wings. I was worried he would take too much out of himself.

The lovely Ruby Walsh, his regular jockey, took him to the lead, and kept him there. He can’t stay in front for three miles, I thought, not at his age. But he kept pinging his fences and was bowling along as if he did not have a care in the world. Ruby was so relaxed half the time he seemed to be riding with just one hand. It was delightful to see the two old pros in such perfect tune with each other.

‘Maybe he can do it,’ I said.

‘Come on, Kauto,’ cried the children.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He can’t do it. It’s too much to ask.’

But Long Run was making mistakes, and running a little ragged. Kauto was collected and foot perfect. He’ll fade, I thought. The younger fellas will come and pick him up.

Into the last four fences. I was on my feet. ‘Come on my son,’ I shouted.

‘Come on, Kauto,’ yelled the children.

The Pigeon was also on her feet, barking her head off, which is what she always does when I shout at the racing.

Three out. Kauto Star still in the lead, against all the odds. At this stage, I actually jumped onto an armchair and was bawling my head off. ‘Come on, you beauty,’ I yelled.

The Pigeon was jumping up and down on all fours.

‘Come on, come on,’ shouted the children.

The younger horses were gathering themselves for their final effort. Ruby still had not asked Kauto the question. ‘Oh, just steady,’ I shouted. ‘Just stand up.’

The great Ruby Walsh kept the old horse balanced and straight and steady, using only hands and heels, preserving all his energy for the final push. Everyone else was scrubbing away. I suddenly thought the mighty champion could do it.

Over the last, everything else faded away. Kauto was tired, but he’s not only a once in a generation talent, he’s got enormous courage. He does not give up. He just went on galloping to the line, brave and true, seven lengths in front.

The crowd went nuts. Paul Nicholls jumped in the air for joy. Ruby Walsh fell on the horse’s neck, hugging him. I was shouting and crying. The children were yelling yes, yes. The Beloved Cousin looked at me in amazement. ‘He looks as if he could go round again,’ she said.

The King was back in his castle. He walked back to the winning enclosure, his ears pricked, his head held high. The crowd gave him three cheers, twice. No one could quite believe it. It was one of the best things I ever saw in racing.

So, it went from an ordinary day to an extraordinary win from a most remarkable horse. I wish my dad had been here to see it.

 

Today’s pictures:

My own little shining star:

Stanley the very Manly:

This is not a funeral.

Today, I said goodbye to my mother.

In a last act of dazzling brilliance, she left instructions that she did not want a funeral. No fuss, she said. So we gave her no fuss.

She would be taken to Moray for cremation, which is what she asked for. My stepfather and step-sister were to go with her. I would stay at home. The mortal remains are gone and mean nothing to me; I did not want to see them burnt. She exists now safely in my heart and that is where I keep her.

All the same, I wanted her to have good flowers, so I did them last night and watched over them until the early hours in a strange sort of vigil. This morning, I took them up to the florist, because I needed more eucalyptus. You can never have too much eucalyptus. The ladies in the florist were perfect. They know a lot of death; I have sometimes been in there happily chatting when the undertaker arrived to collect the wreaths. They knew precisely what to say and they said it and I thanked them.

I delivered the flowers to my mother’s house. I had to take some photographs before they went in, partly because I was swanking at my own brilliance, and partly to show the brothers and sister. I laid them on the ground and was contorting myself to get the best angle when the farmer drove by on his tractor. I adore the farmer. I like to think he sees me as a true countrywoman, a woman of the earth. I talk to him about sheep and weather and dogs. His surprised face when he saw me dancing about a huge floral arrangement with my camera made me laugh and laugh. So when I delivered my rather melancholy burden, I was not weeping but laughing.

The Stepfather, absurdly elegant in a suit of midnight blue, looked faintly surprised but took it on the chin. We looked at each other, a vast ocean of unspoken emotion between us. We did not need to put it into words.

My sister had requested that we pick some flowers from Mum’s garden to put in the coffin, so my step-sister and I did that, finding the last of the white roses, some fragrant rosemary, some delicate marjoram and some shiny green mint. My step-sister made them into a pretty bunch, tied with a white ribbon. They were enchanting.

Then, even though it was only eleven-thirty in the morning, we made cocktails. We drank some very special Scottish botanical gin with blueberries in. (It comes from a small family distillery and on their website they suggested blueberries and we are very suggestible at the moment. It was so delicious that I almost fell over.)

I saw them off and went home and watched the racing for a bit and then I went down to the field to get on my red mare. She was sleeping when I arrived, but kindly rose to her feet and moseyed over to greet me, even though this was not riding time at all. I had set an alarm in my pocket and my plan was to be in the saddle at the moment my mother was cremated.

It was a fucking awesome plan.

(So sorry. Grief makes me very sweary. Also: there is absolutely no edit button.)

The sun, which had not been forecast, had fought its way through the early rain and cloud, and was dancing and dazzling, gentling the good land, lighting the bright autumn leaves so that they glowed with life and promise.

My alarm went off. Stanley loped up the field. The red mare stood very, very still. She had taken me up to the far woods, and I looked into their dim mystery and said goodbye.

I said: ‘You are not gone. You are in the woods, and the wind, and the sky, and the earth. You are in my heart and my mind. I carry you on, safe, free from pain, all suffering fallen from you.’

The mare fell to grazing and I let her. Stanley stood like a statue, scanning the horizon.

Then I sang a song. I sang What Have They Done to my Song, Ma? Because that was her favourite song when I was six years old and I remember it blasting through the house and everyone singing along.

Then I said some Yeats. I spoke the words into the limpid air.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

It wasn’t entirely appropriate, but it’s the only poem I know effortlessly by heart, and Yeats is my old, old friend.

And then I picked up the mare and sent her into her fine, rolling canter. My mother never could believe that I rode her in a rope halter, that she would come to a dead stop from voice only, that she could carry herself like a dressage diva on a loose rein. ‘Do your brilliant canter for Mum,’ I said. And she did. Stanley loped along beside us, his eyes amber in the sun.

Then we stopped and looked through the trees to the south. The mare was very, very still, peace rising from her like a benediction.

Not really goodbye, I said to my mother. You can stay with me now. You can ride with me every morning. Now you are free.

And then I looked at the Scottish light and watched the three mares happily eat their hay and went back to my house and gazed at the hill and felt grateful.

It was a bloody marvellous funeral. I cried, I laughed, I rode, I sang.

I think she would have loved it.

 

Today’s pictures:

I’m too tired now for captions. You know what they are about. They are the story of this most shimmering day.

 

 

 

 

 

As I finish this, I suddenly realise what it was about. It was love and trees. Almost every day I come back to love and trees. Without even thinking about it, without even meaning to, I gave her love and trees. She would have liked that.

Showing up.

The Sister says: ‘Did you ever write that book about what to do when your dad and your dog die?’

My beautiful black dog died four years ago, on the night of my father’s funeral. I really, really wanted to read that book but it did not exist, so I said I would have to write it myself.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘yes, I did. It’s not called that any more. But I did write that book. It’s with the agent now.’

‘And what do you do?’ says the Sister. ‘And when your mum dies?’

‘I learnt what to do from the red mare,’ I say, not even bothering to explain this slightly odd conclusion. ‘She taught me about the ordinary virtues. For the ordinary griefs you need the ordinary virtues. Not brilliance or charm or charisma or talent, but reliability, consistency, kindness, firmness, fairness, steadiness. That’s how you train a horse, that’s why you can get on the red mare and canter about on a loose rein.’

She had just done that, in the open field. She had only ever sat on the mare once before. Red was so happy and relaxed that I had no qualms. I cantered her round the wide spaces of the set-aside first, to check that everything was all right. It was so all right that I threw my arms in the air and whooped into the low cloud and, under me, that mighty horse just kept on rolling, as collected and contained as the ambassadress to Paris. Then The Sister did it.

‘Look at you,’ I shouted. ‘Just look at the two of you.’

The Sister used to be a top show rider and side-saddle diva and some of that never quite goes away. Now she was riding the red mare cowgirl style. For half an hour, in that green field, everything was all right. There was no grief, only this horse, these humans, this landscape, this joy.

‘She learnt to do that,’ I say. ‘She did not just eat magic beans. I taught her to be relaxed and mentally balanced and to carry herself. And I did that by showing up, every day. That’s what you have to do. You have to show up. And maybe that’s what you have to do after there is death. Every day, you show up. And then it gets easier.’

This is my theory and I’m sticking to it. It’s not very clever, or sophisticated, or philosophical. Nobody will put it on a bumper sticker. It has no poetry in it. But it’s mine and I like it and it works, most of the time.

The Younger Brother says, sounding very sane and peaceful, which is not what he is famous for: ‘She is out of pain now. That’s what matters. Nothing can hurt her any more.’

‘And we,’ I say, knowing he will finish the sentence for me.

‘Keep buggering on,’ he cries.

On, on, on we bugger.

I think of the things in which I believe: the human heart, the kindness of strangers, love and trees, the small things. I think of my own private slogans: say the thing; KBO; stare at your demons in the whites of their eyes; be kind. I think of the things I adore: a funny dog, my sweet thoroughbred mares, the brave racing horses I watch every day, my family, this Scotland, these hills, my dear, dear friends. I think of the tender words which have been flying in from around the wilds of the internet and feel grateful for every one. Oh, yes – be grateful – that’s another of my rules to live by.

But perhaps most important of all: you have to show up. Not just sometimes, but every day, in the wind and the weather, through the fair and the foul, the thin and the very, very thick.

I think Mum would approve of that. As long as I said please and thank you.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the family, the last time we were all gathered together, this summer. We knew it would be the last time, and so it was:

And this clever, clever person, who can pull joy from sorrow with her bare hooves. I owe her so much, but never more than today:

National Poetry Day.

It’s National Poetry Day. I love National Poetry Day. I’ve been thinking about poetry from the moment I got up this morning.

The ones that live in my head are mostly Yeats and Auden, snatches of Frost and E.E. Cummings, lines of Robert Lowell, fragments of TS. (Do I dare to eat a peach?)

I thought though that I should find one about a horse, you will be amazed to hear. The best poem about horses is Yeats’ glorious galloping paean to Galway Races, but I posted that on this day last year. I read it at my father’s funeral. The last lines almost finished me off, in the quiet of the small Norman church:

‘And we find hearteners among men

That ride upon horses.’

My father was a heartener.

Anyway, I wanted something new. So I hunted about the internet and there really wasn’t much that would do. There’s an epic poem by Byron but it goes on for about ten years and is quite knotty, although I’ll go back and read the whole thing later. There’s The Charge of the Light Brigade, but that is far too sad for this sunny day. One of the best things anyone ever wrote about a horse comes from Shakespeare, in Henry V:

‘When I bestride him, I
soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth
sings when he touches it.’

But that is not a poem, so today it does not count.

In the end, I found a slender sliver from DH Lawrence, so short that it is almost a haiku, so mere that is it is mystery. I never adored Lawrence’s novels, but I was ravished by his poems. I remember reading The Snake when I was eight years old and being quite mesmerised. I read it forty years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember the feeling of heat and fascination and passion and shame that lived in the poem, and it made me think of snakes in a different way from that day on.

‘And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.’

This short poem is not one I have ever seen before. I felt rather astonished that it was so new to me, and I’m going to carry it with me in the Scottish sunshine.

The White Horse.

The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on

and the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent, they are in another world.

 

That’s it. That is all he wrote. What mystery hovers between those lines. Did the horse and his boy exist in the world? Had Lawrence seen them, one misty morning, and remembered? Or are they symbols, metaphors, shimmering figures of the imagination? There is something almost holy in that tiny poem.

The funny thing is that the really, really good horsemen and women do work their horses in silence. I talk to mine, all the time. I tell her she is brilliant, or clever, or a silly old billy, or quite safe. I tell her that is only a cyclist and not a mountain lion. I say: ‘There are your sheep.’ She loves the sheep. I say: ‘Find your soft place.’ We are always looking for her soft place.

Opposite my house, there is a grand old building with arched windows and soaring roofs which was built a hundred and fifty years ago by some eccentric old gentleman for his cows. It is known as the coo cathedral, and the days are long gone when it housed cattle. It is used now for weddings and balls and celebrations. There was a charity sale going on there this morning and rows of cars were drawn up and people streamed across the grass in the dazzling sun to do their early Christmas shopping in a good cause.

There was no silence, but a great deal of bustle. I took the mare along to have a look. She likes an event. She said hello to some very small children. ‘Look, Fergus, it’s a horse.’

Fergus, who was not quite two, smiled all over his face. The mare blinked at him with elegant pleasure.

‘Yes, Fergus,’ I said. ‘She’s a very special horse indeed. She is a thoroughbred horse.’

I rode her down to the great old building and peered through the window. A lady saw us and opened the door and the mare poked her head inside and observed the throng, sagely. Within moments, she had many admirers. I felt the spreading delight of absurd pride. I love that she loves to greet complete strangers. I love that whenever any human eye falls on her, it lights with pure happiness.

There was no silence. We were in the world.

But when we went back to the quiet field, that DH Lawrence silence did fall on us, and we stood together, in wordless harmony, and we were, for a moment, like that horse and his boy.

Why does poetry matter? Why does it need a whole day, all to itself? Isn’t it too old school, too old hat, too out-dated, for the rushing modern world?

I think it matters because it speaks to the heart. It may console a bruised spirit, or remind a harried mind of a universal truth. It sings a fine and human song, and everybody needs a song.

It doesn’t really need to be for anything. It exists in and of itself: beautiful, immutable, true. It can be funny and it can be shocking and it can be stark. Unlike almost any other form of words, it can be read for the sheer beauty, even if one does not understand the precise meaning. (I have read The Wasteland about twenty times, and I still could not tell you what half of it is about. Some of it is even in languages I do not speak, and many of the classical references are lost on me. Yet, it still is a poem that can brighten my morning.)

If one is flayed or seared or bashed or blue, a good poem may fall on the battered human self like a balm.

I think that is worth a day.

 

Today’s pictures:

I don’t have a white horse. I have a red horse. And she is as bright and bold and bonny as the day is long. If I could write poetry, I should write a poem for her. But I can’t, so I shan’t. She has to content herself with the best prose my fingers can type.

I can’t write her a poem, but she is a poem, so it doesn’t really matter:

Where the heart is; or, the friendly ghosts.

When I was two and a half years old, I fell head over ears in love with a gentleman called Eddie Harty. He had just won the Grand National on a horse called Highland Wedding when I first met him, but I knew nothing of that. I was far too young to be starstruck. I just knew that, of all the people who came to the house, and there were many because the front door was always open, he was the one who made my heart want to burst.

Whenever he arrived, I would run upstairs and put on my best party dress. ‘We sometimes had to wait for you,’ my mother says, drily. Apparently, I would give strict instructions that nobody was to do anything until I was properly dressed. Then I would run back downstairs, cast myself shamelessly onto Eddie Harty’s knee, and gaze up at him in adoration.

Forty-six years later, I still think of that most excellent gentleman. He was not a classical beauty, which apparently gave my mother great heart. She thought that I would not grow up to be led astray by a pretty face. Even at such a young age, I was all about the character. He was brave and dogged and determined and a great horseman, from a dynasty of great horsemen.

I think: it’s funny what one remembers.

When I get on a thoroughbred, I feel as if I have come home. My red mare carries with her the ghosts of all those mighty equine athletes among whom I grew up. I remember many of them too. My favourite was the grey Dolge Orlick. My father had a lot of horses who were named after characters in Dickens, which is quite odd, since he was famous for never reading any book except the form book. Lovely Dolge could not have been worse named, since, far from being oafish and evil, he was bright and bonny and kind.

The mare carries the ghosts too of the great racing men who illuminated my childhood. Quite often when I am riding her I think of Fred Walwyn and Fred Winter and Dave Dick and John Lawrence. She carries the spirit of my old dad, although he would have laughed out loud, in a characteristic mixture of puzzlement and pride, if he could see me riding her in her rope halter with one light hand on the reins as if she were an old cow pony out in the American prairies. My favourite set of books when I was eight was The Green Grass of Wyoming trilogy, and every morning, as we lope around the emerald fields of Scotland, I think of that, too.

She defies the laws of physics, acting as a kind of equine worm-hole, collapsing time and space.

I’ve moved a lot in my life, leaving my childhood home, going through ramshackle, gypsy teen years when we were always packing, having an antic London life in my wild twenties, before finally putting down deep roots in an adopted place which had nothing to do with racing or Ireland or horses or any of the things which were part of my young days. Scotland came about through whim and chance, and yet it is here that I belong. The mare, I suddenly realise, was the last piece in the puzzle.

Some people find thoroughbreds alarming or mysterious or incomprehensible. Some people really don’t like them. Yet every time I sit on that noble back, I am in a place I know and love, a place entirely familiar and easy. No matter how much is going on in my life or in the world, no matter how jagged and jangly I am, the moment I get into the saddle, I am home. It’s a tiny, workaday miracle.

 

Today’s pictures:

The dear Dear Readers gave me such a glorious welcome back to the blog that I feel quite bashful. (I am British, after all.) I can’t thank you all enough. You have put a huge and rather surprised smile on my face. I know you love the pictures of Scotland, so here are some more of Queen’s View, especially for you.

No words left.

I worked really, really hard today, and that work was rewarded. This does not always happen. Sometimes I put in a huge effort and buggery bollocks is the result. But this morning, it all came together. I could see the way. A small green shoot of hope sprouted. It was a lovely feeling.

Since I have wrangled with words for many hours, I have none left now. Sometimes my brain is a finite thing.

Before I sat down at my desk to do the work, I took the red mare out into the wide, open green spaces. It is in just such a space that a thoroughbred is popularly supposed to go crazy. All that flat grass, no fences, nothing to stop her; how could she resist? She resisted. She put on her best dowager duchess hat and gave me a composed trot of such poise and grace that I could hardly believe it. It was as if she were dancing to some internal music. She needed no reminding, no instruction, no correction. She picked her own graceful gait and kept to it. With each step, she grew in confidence and conviction. I could feel something like pride flowing out of her. Perhaps it was even pleasure. I try not to ascribe human emotions to horses, but she seemed delighted with herself.

You can see some of the majesty in this picture. She does have majesty, and it grows in her, day by day:

A good day.

Sometimes, I fall into a defensive crouch. I put so much pressure on myself that I go into a kind of awful tunnel vision. It is dark in the tunnel, and the critical voices in my head like it in there and use it as a kind of echo chamber. Magical thinking, which I try to resist, lifts its head and senses its opportunity, and tells me that I shall never come to any good.

As I wrangle and struggle with my book, I see only the things which are not there. It will never be good enough, I am not good enough to make it good enough, the agent will know it is not good enough and will have to tell me so.

Then a shift in perspective comes, and I go back to the beginning, with clear eyes. Today, my eyes were clear. I started the editing all over again. I could see very well what needed to be done, and I did it. And I found, to my astonishment, that some of it was really not bad.

Just because I think it is good does not mean other people will too. Writing is a subjective business. One is always dependent on someone else’s opinion. There is no certainty, and this is part of what wears away at the troubled, questing, hopeful mind.

But today I know that all the work I have done is worth it, even if I do get rejected. That counts for something.

In the morning, before work, before thought, I ring The Beloved Cousin. At the very sound of her voice, I know that every single thing will be all right. She has that miraculous effect.

Friendship, I think, as I ride out later into the mild Scottish day, the air gentle against my face, never gets the press it deserves. It’s always romantic love which has the classic novels written about it, the songs, the poems, the plays, the films, the sonnets. But friend love, for me, is the one that saves your life, lifts your heart, restores your sanity, confirms your sense of self.

The Beloved Cousin understands every single word I say, laughs at my jokes, unpicks my troubles as if they were her own, makes me feel like a better human, remembers all the things I have forgotten, does not mind whether I am up, down or round the houses, expects me to be nothing but my own flawed, flaky self. She just gets it. (In this case, It is everything.)

As if determined to continue the love and loveliness, the red mare was at her absolute, shining, glittering crest and peak. She rode like a dream, was funny and dear, and showed off her dressage diva trot all the way down the lime avenue, with no reins and no stirrups. She seems to find it mildly amusing that I kick my feet out of the irons and wave my arms in the air, and boxes along in her best self-carriage whilst I laugh with delight.

And then there was the good work and I backed a ten-to-one winner at Goodwood as the ravishing Malabar, the only filly in the race, put the boys in their place, kicking away and streaking down the straight, her beautiful bay coat gleaming in the sun.

There are bad days, and good days. I like to record the good days, because when the shadows come, I find it soothing to look back and remember what the light is like. Today was all light.

A guy with a boat.

Today, I met a guy with a boat.

This kind of thing sometimes happens at HorseBack. My friend The Marine says, as I’m leaving, ‘Oh, there’s a guy with a boat coming.’

I know better than to ask what guy and what boat.

This morning, I get a message saying: ‘The boat arrives in fifteen minutes.’

I drop everything and drive down the valley.

There is the boat.

She’s not just any old boat. She is a boat. Boat is not a good enough word, and all the other words don’t do her justice. I don’t think she is a vessel, or a craft. Actually, the word that sounds best for her is skiff, because that gives a sense of her sleek, athletic, cutting self, but a skiff is a small rowing boat for one person.

This is the biggest ocean-going rowing boat in the world.

The guy with the boat is a veteran of the Royal Navy. He smashed up his leg so badly that his femur was poking out of his hip. He had two years lying in a room to think, as he put it, about what would really make him happy in his life. Quite soon after he got up, he went down to a harbour near Edinburgh and saw an ocean-going rowing boat, and that was it, for him.

So now he has Avalon, and she’s already broken the Indian Ocean World Record, the fleet, flying darling, and now she’s going from Thurso to the Faroe Islands to raise money for HorseBack.

My goodness, the Interesting People.

The sun shone and I was so happy about the boat, and the guy, that when I went down to do the mare, rather later than usual, I stood with her in the field for about ten minutes, just scratching her ears and thinking about men and boats. She liked this plan very much. Partly because it gave her time to put in some practice for the Standing Still Olympics and partly because she really does like having her ears scratched.

We did some gentle work and then we did some more standing. There are days when she is antic and bright, days when all her thoroughbred blood runs through her, days when she is high and comical, days when she is dedicated and active. Some days she is a dancer, some days an explorer, some days a dressage diva, some days a dowager duchess.

Today, she was all Zen Mistress. The sun was glancing about and a quick, dry wind was blowing in from the east, but she had, at the heart of her, a low, spreading calm. It is a peace that comes up from deep within her, and ripples out in waves, something so actual and visceral that I can feel it flowing from her body to mine. When she is like this, she gives me the gift of time. She anchors me in the moment. Most days, I am thinking always an hour ahead. When I am doing anything, I am thinking about the next thing, and the thing after that. It’s a terrible habit, and I’m going to try to train myself out of it.

When the duchess is in her Zen mode, she stops the world. I actually think: it does not matter if I die now, because everything is here, in this moment. All joy and goodness and peace and love is here. All life is here.

I don’t think they mention that in Horse and Hound.

 

Today’s pictures:

This morning.

Pictures.

Crazy working day and there was no time for the blog. Hopeless. Here are some photographs from the last few days to make up for it.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about the smallest of small things – the hills, the moss, the green, green grass of Scotland, the mare, the dog, hunting for beauty and tiny pleasures in each day. I suddenly realise, as I post these pictures, that the small things are all there. The red mare and these Scottish hills are vast to me, but in the scheme of the world they would not even make the back pages. As I get older, the things I love and value are further and further away from the classic headline desires. I’d love my next book to be a best-seller, but only so I can keep the horse in hay. I’d like to make some money, so I can build many beautiful paddocks out of lovely post and rails and fill them with ex-racehorses. I don’t want to be fashionable or famous or feted. I want my fingers to work so I can go on playing with prose, and my body to work so I can still be riding thoroughbreds when I’m seventy, and my eyes to function so I can read and look at the racing and gaze at this beloved landscape. I’d like my reflexes to stay sharp, so I can drive south and see the old friends. I’m starting to think I’d quite like a goat. That’s about the sum total of my ambition.

Love and trees, my darlings. Love and trees.

And sheep, of course. The ewes this year are so elegant I can’t stop staring at them.