Lost thoughts.

Quite often, I wake up in the morning and write the blog in my head as I brush my teeth. I cannot tell you the dazzling nature of my thoughts at this point in the day. I grow excited, thinking: ah, at last, I have something really quite wonderful for the Dear Readers. There will be existential musings, and the human condition, and darting arrows flying out of the left field. How happy everyone will be.

Then, life happens. I cook breakfast for The Mother and the lovely Stepfather. I walk the dog. I feed the horse, work the horse, ride the horse, settle the horse back in her field with everything she needs for the day. Quite often, when I think I am finished, I go back and have a quick chat with the horse, usually about how much I love her.

Then I canter off to HorseBack and take some pictures and talk about all the things I need to know about. Today, there were two enchanting visitors there, so I talked to them. I come back, edit the pictures, try to keep the archive in some kind of order, decide what posts I need to write, write them, select appropriate photographs to go with them, and put them up on the Facebook. As I am doing this, I try hard to avoid getting distracted by the latest story about Stephen Fry, or a collage of baby pandas.

I have a quick look at the racing, in case I want to have a bet in the 2.45 at Ayr. Luckily, today I did not want to.

Then I write a book. Because, you know.

By this stage, I remember that I have forgotten to have lunch. On tragic days, I make a quick ham sandwich. Today, I am being a proper person and throwing together a little chicken stew with leeks and celery and potatoes. (It was half done last night, and now I’m just finishing it off. I do feel really quite domestic godessy as the homespun smell wafts through the house.)

Then, I decide that all the stupid admin which is waiting reproachfully for me will have to wait another day.

Then I gallop down to the field to give the mare her tea, put out the hay, make a rugging decision, tell her once more about the deep, deep love, give her a good rub, check her legs, and generally make sure she is happy for the night to come. My friend who shares the paddock will be there, and we may discuss weather, water troughs, herd behaviour, or life. Mostly life, these days.

At this stage, I wish I had taken more iron tonic. The brain is beginning to fizzle and crack as if its circuits are starting to short. I review my work, make a resolution to do more cutting tomorrow, sometimes make a plan for another chapter, which is very naughty since at this stage I am supposed to be slaying darlings, not writing more of the damn things.

The morning seems a long, long way away. The dazzling thoughts are quite, quite lost. Did they really dazzle? Were they even thoughts? I decide, dolefully, that I’ll just give you some nice pictures instead, and hope you will not notice the thought deficit. I wonder if I should tell you about the moment, under the glancing Scottish sunshine, when the red mare not only came to a perfect halt off my seat, with no rein at all, but then, from a very slight movement of my legs, took four delicate steps backwards. Backing without reins. Should I tell you that I burst into shouting laughter of joy, and whooped into the bright air, and then fell to laughing again, and flung myself on her neck and told her that she was the best and dearest and most clever and brilliant?

No, I think, don’t tell them that. Poor Dear Readers, they have enough to put up with. They have to hear about that horse every absurd day of the week. This is supposed to be for them, after all, a tiny divertissement in a hard week. Give them a nice photograph of a hill or something, because not everyone has a hill.

Then I read myself a small lecture on the perils of perfectionism, press publish, and give Stanley the Dog a biscuit. Because it is the least he deserves.

 

Today’s pictures:

I went for a quick drive after HorseBack, a little loop to the north, and this is what I saw:

This one is called Queen’s View, because Queen Victoria loved it:

That is why I get a little hysterical about Scotland, and the blue hills, and the beauty. That is six miles from my front door. That is why I can never, ever get over my good fortune.

Posy Posington from yesterday morning:

And the amazing flying ear of Captain Handsome:

The good body and dry stone walls.

So sorry I have been away. My body suddenly went into spasm and that was that.

I felt most inadequate. Where was my stoical spirit, my great buggering on? My father was endlessly breaking things and dislocating things and getting back into the saddle. My body, it seemed, was made of weaker stuff.

The pain, which appeared to have been ebbing, got the bit between its teeth and decided to make an attack on several flanks. It amused itself by wondering which part of the frame it would settle in. It tried the neck; ran up and down one leg; explored every inch of the back. At one point, I was unable to put on a pair of socks, which was absurdly dispiriting.

Bloody hell, I thought, furiously, it was just one slow fall onto soft turf. Actually, I think there must have been a twist, so that things got wrenched, as if nerves and muscles have been pulled slightly from their moorings and this soreness is the re-attaching process.

As I lay, immobilised, for two days, I thought about pain. I know quite a lot of people who live with it daily. My mother does, although she rarely speaks about it. My father did, towards the end of his life, his bent physical self exacting payment for all those racing falls. At HorseBack, I work with people who know its every mean strategy, and have to do battle with it in long sleepless nights.

It made me think about freedom, and privilege. People are writing a lot about privilege at the moment, mostly because of rising economic inequality. There is that terrifying statistic which is going the rounds, about the top 1% of Americans being richer than the next 3 billion world citizens combined. A rich person in the liberal West is probably the freest and most privileged person on the planet, and it is right that commentators get exercised about the awful gap. But I started to wonder whether privilege is being marked on the wrong scale.

What really counts is agency. Fine accoutrements only get you so far. If you live in pain, so acute that even the drugs don’t work, then all the traditional privileges count for nothing. Your good body becomes a trap and a snare.

As I slept and slept, trying to heal, coming back to the old, old wives’ notion that there is nothing a good night’s sleep cannot cure, I wondered what would happen if sleep would not cure. I looked, foggily, at the internet, with its flashing banner about that 1%. I thought of those very rich. I did not envy them. The person I thought of, the beau ideal who kept coming back to me, was a dry-stone-waller I met once whilst staying with the Beloved Cousin in the south. He was a gnarled old fellow, and walling had been in his family since memory began. He could create a thing of beauty out of that Cotswold stone, and he was teaching the art to his son, who was teaching it to his son. I saw the three generations at work one sunny morning, and it was such a delightful sight that I had to try and restrain myself from doing the lunatic grinning which can frighten people.

That man, I thought, as I tossed and turned, has the real privilege, in its best and truest sense. Forget your fancy schools or castles in Spain or fine wines; forget your contact lists and private jets to Davos and seats at the top table. That man, whose name will never be known outside his quiet part of the country, has a good body which works, so that he can create something of use and beauty in the world. I would almost guarantee that he is happier than all those 1% billionaires put together. He is who I want to be, still out in all weathers in advanced age, still physically strong, still of the earth.

The pain is fading now, so that I can think again, although my mind is still a little battered and fogged, and a veil of soreness hangs over me.

Spinach, I think, and soup, and all manner of green things, so the poor body can get back to fighting strength. I see people whose physical selves have been shot to pieces. They still prevail; they ride horses and climb mountains and do jobs and make jokes and brighten the world. They do not complain or give up, but they have to strive. The thing that so many people take for granted, that I sometimes take for granted, is a body which works without hurting, and that is the privilege which cannot be matched.

 

Have taken no pictures this week, but this person has been the best of good companions, and put all his lurcher-ish instincts on hold to sit and gaze sympathetically at my weakened self. Not a hint of reproach in his dear eyes:

And a kind friend stepped in to make sure that the red mare was beautifully looked after:

Just thinking, as I finish this, of another kind of privilege. It is being able to write, without thought: ‘a kind friend’. The other thing, apart from the 1%, which has been doing the rounds in the news is an apparent epidemic of loneliness. I’m always wary when people start leaping on these kind of bandwagons; there is often a lot of hyperbole and why oh why and not much empirical working. But there does seem to be some evidence for an increasingly atomised society. I think there are people who do not always have a kind friend, and certainly not one who will step into the breach at a moment’s notice. It is another gift.

Don’t take anything for granted, say the serious voices in my head. Not one single thing. Riches come not in bulging wallets, but in the good body and the human heart. 

A slender silver lining.

1943 words of book. HorseBack work; interesting new people met. Amazing level of equine sweetness in the paddock.

And: one of the most difficult telephone calls I’ve had to make since I can remember.

The catastrophically stupid thing which I spoke of a while ago, which is too stupid to elaborate, is not just something which I have to fix up myself. It has ramifications. It means that I have had to let someone down. And that someone is one of the people I love most in the world.

It took a week for me to summon the courage to make the call. Not only would I have to admit the shaming thing, but I would have to do the letting down. I played it and played it in my head, and it never came out any better.

Eventually, I made it. I had to do it on the move. Weirdly, I remember this from after my father died. I wanted to speak to the best beloveds, but I could not do it sitting at my desk. The extreme emotions and the truths which must be told required locomotion. I walked round and round the compound, talking and crying into my mobile telephone, whilst the Duchess and the Pigeon trotted faithfully and quizzically behind me. This morning was like that. I just set off walking, and once I was speaking I was concentrating so hard on the difficult things I was saying that I did not think where I was going. My steps, on automatic pilot, took me straight down to the field. There, my other duchess stood, my equine version, as if waiting for me.

Still talking, explaining, apologising, recriminating against my own folly, I stood, instinctively, next to my horse, one hand gentling the side of her cheek as she rested against me. Some of the time, I was so seized in the conversation that I hardly knew she was there. Then, in the pauses, I was acutely aware of her, of her stillness, her kindness, the steadiness of her; she is always there, in the rain and the shine, literal and metaphorical. She does not care that I have done something stupid; she stays by my side because I am her person. I think, abruptly, that probably the only creature in the world with whom I am not stupid is this horse. For some reason that I cannot identify, she brings out my best self, and that is one of her many, many gifts, which she gives so generously, every day.

The beloved human to whom I was speaking made the awful conversation as easy as it could have been, for all my dread. She did not judge or question. She offered understanding, generosity, sympathy, help. Her good heart was open as wide as the human heart can go. I felt humbled and lucky and passionately grateful. Interestingly, she is also one of those ones who bring out my best self. When I am with her, I am just a little bit funnier and cleverer and brighter. I do not have to explain myself or fake anything or worry about flaws.

Sitting now, writing this, I still have crushing angst, because the stupid thing was all my own fault and I should know better. I should not have had to make that call, nor rely on the generosity of the beloved human. At the same time, I am reminded of my astonishing luck to have such a person. I suppose that it is easy to have friends in the good times; it’s when you are up against it that the great ones rise to their full magnificence and show what they are made of.

I shall remember that conversation, the black box of the telephone pressed hard against my ear, my voice rising strained and fraught into the Scottish air, the good steady mare breathing by my side, the good human heart offering only love and understanding on the other end of the receiver.

The silver lining is very, very thin at the moment, almost invisible to the naked eye. But it is there. Every damn cloud has one.

 

No time for pictures. I have hit the wall. But this is the face which greets me each morning; this is the look which she wore today, even though it was cold and dreich and she had rain in her mane, and she has a little bit of a sore shoulder after a slip yesterday. You have to imagine it accompanied by a sweet, low whinny, which is her customary morning hello:

This land

Warning: crazed insomnia last night, so there is a very real danger none of this may make any sense at all.

 

I read something today about how humans miss the natural world without even knowing what it is they lack. Most people in Britain live in cities or towns. Cities are glorious, thrilling things. I think they are good things, because they must surely decrease fear of The Other. The Other is there every day, in the streets, on the tube, waiting for the bus. Insularity must be more difficult, in that great melting pot. And there is culture and entertainment and architecture and all the other sophisticated pleasures of which city life is made. When I lived in London, I loved her like a sister. I used to refuse invitations to go away for the weekend because I wanted to mooch about in the sunny streets of Soho, or go to a double bill at The Electric. I wanted smoke and pavements.

People still think it mildly eccentric that I should live so far north, so deep in the hills, at such a distance from the theatre and good Chinese food. But I’ve been thinking about the whole love and trees thing (and love of trees), which is probably why the article on missing the earth caught my eye.

I struggle, as does every sentient human in the middle of life, with all kinds of frets, profound and superficial. I battle with mortality. I worry about all the usual things: money, death, illness, work. I feel the mid-life regret at the scattering of friends. Some live very far away, across wide oceans. Some are only in the south, but might as well be in Ulan Bator. It’s logistically demanding to get a family of four onto an aeroplane to Aberdeen for the weekend. We rely on the fact that we can pick up where we left off, because we have twenty years of hinterland behind us. But still, I miss them.

And yet, for all the frets, I am mostly cheerful. I am occasionally haunted by the spectres of loss, but I do not wake every morning with the black dog of despair snapping at my heels. I read something lately too about depression, the proper kind, not the mild down-in-the-mouth to which people sometimes carelessly apply the word. This was about the real thing, the kind that makes the sufferer feel as if they are in a dank, slimy pit and may never climb out. I feel incredibly blessed that I do not have to crawl out of that pit. Even among all the worries and fears, I find daily joy. I laugh a lot, often at myself. I have a lot of love. I love my mare, I love my family, I love my dog.

I wonder, suddenly, whether this oddly cheery resilience is lent to me by the place itself. I know I bang on about the hills, but it does lift the spirit to see them each day. I regard green things, growing things, ancient earthed things. On Saturday night I sat outside under a venerable stand of oaks and ate sausages and drank beer. It was the glorious trees that gave the evening its savour. I walk on grass and smell clean air. I hear birdsong. I watch the swallows fling and play, as they teach their young ones the mastery of aerodynamics. I stare at lichen and dry stone walls and bark. I happily observe the sheep.

Everyone, even the most fortunate human, needs a little help. Life is baffling and inexplicable and sorrows are inevitable. No one may insulate themselves from loss and heartache. Everyone needs an existential walking stick, to negotiate the rocky paths. I think this dear old land is my stick. Perhaps that is why I show you the daily pictures of it. Look, look, I am saying: this is what saves me.

I think far too much, always have. This is a good thing, and a bad thing. Too much thinking can lead to despair. There are too many unfairnesses, tragedies, inexplicable cruelties, for one paltry mind to reconcile. Love and trees, my darlings, love and trees. And hills and sheep. And Stanley and Red, out in the gentle Scottish air, where they may stretch and play and become one with the majestic landscape they inhabit.

 

Today’s pictures are a little selection from the past few days. No time for the camera today. I’ve been doing actual work, 1648 words of it. Something, as always, has to give.

In random order:

Cheltenham, Day Three.

Very tired. All my beloveds got beat today, yet there was some glory in the losses. First Lieutenant and Hunt Ball ran doggedly on up the hill in defeat, and made the frame, and they reminded me that it is not all about the winning, but the taking part. The first two days were about untrammelled victories: Hurricane Fly, Quevega and Sprinter Sacre, flying home, laughing at lesser mortals. I had so many doubles and trebles with them in that I was miles up on the meeting, so I could afford to bet for love today, and did not mind the setbacks.

There was a lot of joy and laughter, as unfancied long-shots came roaring home, and the mighty stables did not have it all their own way. It’s always lovely to see the less sung yards have their moment in the sun, when it’s not all Henderson and Nicholls. There was also some keen delight in watching two old veterans, Celestial Halo and Tartak, run huge races at wild prices.

There was a shadow though, the first there has been over this morning’s sunlit Prestbury Park. Two jockeys were taken to hospital with critical injuries, and one lovely chaser was put down on the track. Racing is a hard sport. I grew up in it, and know the peaks of triumph, and the troughs of despair. I remember many hushed hospital visits to my dad, and there was a time before I was born when he was told, gravely, by men in white coats, that he must never sit on a horse again. That was after he broke his back and his neck for the second time. A year later, he ignored orders, and rode in the Grand National. He rode out every day for years afterwards. I remember too his tears for horses lost, a visceral grief that leaves a stamp on the heart.

I struggle with this sometimes, as I turn on the racing. But then I remember the nature of risk. All life is risk. Humans and equines both cannot be wrapped in cotton wool. A horse can die in its box, if it lies down at an awkward angle, and cannot get up again. (It’s called being cast.) It can die in the benign surroundings of a green field, just from cantering the wrong way. A human can die looking the wrong way, crossing the street.

So, it was a more mixed day. But I saw fond old friends, and gazed over the natural beauty of that lovely amphitheatre that is Cheltenham, and I spent the day with the dear Older Brother. I got to see some of the horses I love the most up close, in all their easy, athletic, thoroughbred fineness. I watched the people who work with them, day in and day out, and saw, in every touch of the hand, and tilt of the head, and softening of the eye, the fondness they hold for their brave equine charges. Some people think racing is too flinty and ruthless, but if they could see the lads and the trainers and the jockeys, who really do wear their hearts on their sleeves, I think they might reconsider.

 

A couple of quick pictures, from the pre-parade ring and the paddock:

The day is saved

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

The Apple outbreak amongst the readers made me laugh a lot. I had no idea that there was so much Mr Jobs love in these halls. And I’m afraid, at this stage, it prompts me to a most shameful admission. It is: I do not like the Apple Mac.

There, I’ve said it. There is the streaming relief of confession.

Not liking Apple is something one keeps very, very quiet about. Not just because the Apple devotees are so passionate, but also because not liking Apple marks you as an unimaginative plodder, a bourgeois moored in moribund tradition, a suit, a grouch and a staid. The groovy, creative people are Apple people; the PC people are just drones.

I don’t like Apple for some really odd reasons, too. I should stress here that I am not saying Apple is no good; it’s just not for me. My reasons are tiny, personal, and faintly pedantic.

The number one dealbreaker is that I do not like the operating font. I said this to someone once, and it was as if I were speaking Urdu. Alarmed incomprehension spread over their face; I had to make a joke and change the subject. I have not mentioned it again, until this morning, when I made the crazed admission to the World Traveller. She has seen me straight and seen me curly, and takes my idiosyncrasies in her elegant stride. Amazingly, she immediately understood. Oh, oh, I thought, perhaps I am not such a freak.

I would imagine that some people do not notice, or care about, fonts. I really, really do. I cannot write a document in anything but Georgia, or Times New Roman or Cambria. I have had computers which default to dull Courier or bland Ariel and it makes me nuts in the head. I don’t know what the Apple font is called, but I cannot be doing with it. It looks like the print equivalent of baby food; there is something unformed and juvenile about it.

The other thing, which is so stupidly small that I can hardly bear to tell you, is that Apple computers do not click. I imagine many people love this. There is just a smooth patch where you may tap your finger to indicate command. I like a proper button with a satisfying click to it, so I know I am doing something. I also like the right click function, where a full menu comes up, offering me lists of choice.

I suppose it’s a bit like a car. I’ve driven a stick shift all my life. I can see why people love automatics; I can see their merits; but I want proper gears, for roaring round corners and tackling hills. When I drive my stepfather’s automatic, I keep putting my hand out to change gear and stamping my left foot into vacancy where the clutch should be, the muscle memory is so strong. My muscle memory is not geared to Apple, for all its virtues.

Finally, people love their Macs because of all the wonderful creative things they can do. The Younger Niece is always making wonderful videos on hers. The Man in the Hat practically writes symphonies on his. But even though I am supposedly ‘a creative’, all I really use my computer for is tap tap tapping at the keys. I need to look things up on the internet, store photographs for the blog, write books, listen to music, and read a paper, and that’s pretty much it. My creation lies all in the mind, where I try to think of interesting ideas and ponder the human condition and dream up sentences that swing. The computer I need for that is a very basic tool indeed.

All of which is a very long way of saying, I got a lovely new Hewlett Packard. It was a piece of glorious serendipity. I’d looked all over the internet and decided a nice g6 would do me perfectly. (I’m never going back to Dell again.) I could not face going into the city, and an online order would take two days. Next day delivery, I discover, means: if you live south of Edinburgh. On a chance, I decided to see if the Tesco up the road might have something; they very occasionally stock the odd computer. There are no electronic shops in our local town, but the little supermarket there, built rather charmingly in the style of a Swedish holiday cabin, does a few televisions and a very occasional laptop.

Nothing there when I arrived, just rows of pointless flat screen televisions. I supposed it was too much to hope for. A smiling young fellow approached, seeing my bewildered face.

‘I don’t suppose,’ I said, diffidently, ‘you have any computers? I seem to remember you sometimes did in the past.’

He regarded the empty shelves without optimism, but he was a helpful man, and he said he would look in the back. I had very little hope.

Presently, he came back bearing a box. ‘This is the only one we have,’ he said. I peered at the uninformative cardboard. On the side, in very, very small print it said: Hewlett Packard Pavilion G6.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, in rising excitement. ‘That’s the exact one I wanted. It’s a sign.’

He smiled, a little baffled.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You have saved me the long trek to Aberdeen, I can’t thank you enough. There are not enough words to express how happy you have made me. I need new words for happy.’

He looked faintly startled, but then he seemed to realise that he had really added something to the sum total of human happiness that day, and the thought appeared to please him.

‘You are very, very kind indeed,’ I said.

It was a shade under three hundred pounds. On the internet, these machines are over five hundred. I don’t know how my tiny Tesco up the road does it; sometimes I have dark suspicions that they get them off the back of a lorry. Still, I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth, and this is a very shiny, prancy show pony of a gift.

As I went to the car, I suddenly realised that, in my exuberance, I had not even checked the specs. Oh well, I thought, as long as it has 320GB of memory, that will do. I peered at the tiny print. SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY. I laughed out loud, frightening a shopper who was getting out of a car nearby. To get an Apple with that much juice I would have had to shell out over two and half grand. Even if Frankel wins every single one of his races this season, I can’t pay for that with my William Hill account.

There was one final glitch, too dull to go into, but it involved a call to the Hewlett Packard help centre. There, I found the other kindest man in Britain, a man called David from Newcastle. Usually, when I ask about a problem, I am braced for refusal. ‘Oh,’ he said, a smile in his voice, when I explained my glitch, ‘that’s really, really...’

Oh no, I thought, he’s going to say impossible, disastrous, beyond the wit of man.

‘Easy,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I shouted. ‘You have made my day.’

I showered him with thanks and compliments, and we parted on terms of high amity. If Hewlett Packard has more operatives like David from Newcastle, they can have my business for ever. Until the next black screen of death, I suppose.

I am typing this now on my lovely new machine. I may again work and blog and look up obscure things on the Google. The keyboard is delightfully springy, and my fingers appreciate it keenly. It also has a robust delete button, unlike my last one, which was on a hair trigger and drove me mad. I resolve to install the strongest anti-virus known to woman and never to pour water all over the keyboard, which was how I killed the computer before last. And, I am certainly taking the Dear Readers’ advice to take the poor old machine to some young computer whizz and see if the photographs may be retrieved from the black screen of death.

But all two hundred and sixty something of my word files are safe, and that is all I care about now.

 

As I was sorting everything out and downloading all the programmes I like, I came upon some photographs of the garden from this time last year:

And there was the dear old Duchess, looking grander and more beautiful than any dog has a right to. Goodness, I do miss her still:

And from the garden today:

Red, from a couple of days ago:

She was especially lovely today, when I went up for her lessons. I am teaching her quite a lot of new things, and she is a very quick and docile study. She also is much happier after her training than before it. I think that it reassures her. Even by very gently getting her to do quite small things, I establish myself as the lead horse and that makes her feel safe. Being the lead mare is a rotten job, and quite tiring if you are an actual horse; it’s lovely for them if someone else takes up the gauntlet. So she ducks her head and blows gently through her nostrils and blinks in dozy joy as I scratch her sweet spots, knowing that I have her back.

Pigeon putting on her questing face:

Look at those eyes, filled with sky.

Hill, in the spring rain: