Horses and family and convoluted hazel

The Co-Writer does this week’s Speccie diary. I am pretty impressed. Not only is it quite a thing to be asked, but it’s such a very, very difficult medium to master. You have to write six or seven pithy paragraphs, on different subjects, although a theme may develop. The tone is almost always wry and faintly ironical. There is one regular Spectator diarist who takes himself so seriously that I always think it must be Craig Brown, doing a little spoof. It’s an oddly British sin, taking yourself seriously. I suspect that it is not nearly so frowned on in France or Germany or America, although I may be falling into the trap of cultural assumptions.

As I read it I think: I would be absolute buggery bollocks at that. The Co-Writer gets to talk about her husband being on national television, and having dinner with famous historians. The absolute high spot of my week was getting my mare to walk nicely through a gate.

I sort of itch to have a go, though. My dander rises. This would be my diary of the week:

 

(At this point, you have to imagine silence de glace. Fingers absolutely motionless on keyboard. Eyes taking on glazed, faintly panicked look. Nothing.)

I have no Andrew Roberts to fall back on, it turns out. It’s a bloody good thing that Fraser Nelson is not on the blower night and day, offering me a commission. I would have to admit defeat, or crank out something blah and second-rate.

Instead, I have this lovely medium, where I may write what I choose, go where I like, muse on what I wish, in as many paragraphs as I like.

As a faint thaw comes, not enough to get all the snow off the ground, but enough so that movement is possible, I do serious work with my mare. A lot of it, after a bit of a lay-off due to the elements, is getting her to pay attention to me. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal, although it looks like nothing. I am her person, her good leader, and she needs to acknowledge that fact.

When you take a horse out of the field, it will generally look about a lot. The head goes up, on predator alert, the body is braced for strangeness. This is a perfectly natural reaction, and even looks rather marvellous – the ears are pricked, the eyes are bright – and lots of people would not correct it.

But I want her focused on me, not the bears in the woods. So every time she looks one way, I lead her the opposite way. I move, fast and firm, in small circles, reverses, figures of eight. After a moment, I have her absolute attention. If I move a step, she moves a step. We are in sudden, singing harmony. There it is. The head comes down, the eyes soften, the ears relax. By the end of the session, I have taught her to follow me with her head without moving her feet. Left and right, we swing back and forth, like a little metronomic duet.

The thing I love about this kind of horsemanship is that it is all about the small things, and you know I revere the small things. There is no punishment. If she does something I do not want, I gently correct her, usually by turning her in the tightest of circles or backing her up. When she does what I ask, she is lavishly rewarded, so that she feels inordinately pleased with herself. She is a creature who loves to please, which makes my work vastly easier.

It’s a theory which goes along the lines of making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy. I think it could be applied to almost all areas of life. To an observer it would look as if I am hardly doing anything. Yet I am laying great, lasting foundations, which shall underpin our entire relationship, and keep us safe and happy. There are no fancy gadgets or complicated manoeuvres; just time, and patience, and thought. Oh, and love, of course.

By the end, she has had to concentrate a lot. I give her a pick of grass in the wild ground near the woods, and then I take her back into the field and set her free. She hasn’t done this much work in a while, and the sun is shining, and she has spring fever suddenly in her. She takes off with a vaulting leap, flies her tail like a flag, and gallops away to join her herd, calling for them as she goes, as if to say I’M BACK.

When she reaches them, she dances about, does a couple of pirouettes and a Spanish Riding School of Vienna leap. Her girls look at her, nod, and go back to eating their hay. This kind of exhibition is one of the purest expressions of beauty I have ever seen and I laugh and whoop out loud. The pleasure that horse gives me is beyond rubies.

There is further high excitement because the family is arriving for Easter. The Older Niece and the Man in the Hat are driving up the M6 as we speak. The Older Niece puts a picture on Facebook of her dog, in the back of the car, with a rather plaintive expression. The caption goes: Are we there yet?

I rush to the village to get lamb and haggis and a steak pie for strength. As always, I have a perfectly splendid time with the butchers, of whom I am excessively fond. Then I go to the flower shop for hyacinths and tiny delicate ferns and little dark plum carnations, for my Easter table. I love the ladies in the flower shop, because they laugh at my jokes. A smart gentleman arrives, with purpose. ‘I’ve come for the – what’s it called? – convoluted hazel,’ he says.

I laugh out loud. The ladies say, ‘I think you mean the contorted willow.’

‘I think convoluted hazel is much better,’ I say.

Great branches of the stuff are produced and it is very, very convoluted indeed.

And then I come back and arrange everything and feel a flush of achievement. Even Stanley the Dog looks quite impressed. It’s not international historians, but it is my own, small, good day.

 

Today’s pictures:

When I say Stanley the Dog was quite impressed, what I really mean is that he lay down on his sheepskin and went to sleep:

This is a bit more like it:

The clever girl, who got five gold stars this morning:

In which I defy the weather and have A Good Day

The weather is at its most dour and testing. The snow has gone to slush, and then frozen, so it is treacherous underfoot, and there is some charming sleet, blowing in and out over the hill. The sparkling grandeur of Wednesday is a distant memory and now it’s just a question of plugging on through.

I go to the Co-op for supplies. One of the things I like about living in a small village is that you see people you know, whilst out on errands. ‘Hello how are you?’ I carol to the postmistress, whom I keenly admire; ‘Hello, hello,’ I call to the smiling lady who used to work in the newsagent.

There is a warm sense of belonging that comes in a small community, not at all the back-biting, everyone knows everything, small-minded trap of rumour. I like it that when I am cross and tense I can go and have a soothing chat with the librarians, or discuss the terrible weather with the women in the chemist, or buy some tulips from the ladies in the flower shop. I like it that I give the farmer a cheery wave when I drive past him in his muddy blue Landrover, or wave at the postwoman on her rounds.

Today, to my great delight, I run into my friend The Horsewoman. ‘Do you want to meet someone?’ I say, getting Stanley the Lurcher out of the car.

The sleet has blown in, so he is not quite looking at his crest and peak, rather doubtful and damp, but he is duly admired. He is, I discover, admired wherever he goes, and he is charmingly modest about it, as if he has absolutely no idea how handsome he is.

I ask after the horses. (She has a herd of around thirty.) Only afterwards do I realise that I had not asked after the husband or the three charming children. I think I am becoming like one of those crazed cliché horse ladies who can only speak of furlongs and fetlocks, and resolve to do better.

‘Oh,’ says The Horsewoman. ‘I’m so glad you got another dog.’

I think about this afterwards. It is a very, very good and clever thing to say. There is still a tiny, irrational part of me that wonders if it is somehow wrong, that there is a faint disrespect to the memory of my old girls. Then I say to myself this really is stupid, because first of all they are dogs, and do not have coherent thoughts or speak English, and if they did they would certainly say they would not want me moping about by myself. And second of all, they are dead, so are not thinking anything at all.

I think it is very important to honour good lives which brought love. I don’t believe in scrambling to get over it or heal wounds or generally put the thing behind one. I think the trick of it is to learn to carry the departed in the heart. But the lives must be marked; loss must be honoured; respect must be paid. Sorrow is part of that, and there’s no point running away from it. I had some last night, rather unexpectedly and violently, for my Pigeon. But the thing is that there can be room for good things too. It’s not one or the other.

Stanley the dog, it turns out, is my very good thing.

The light fades. It is coming up to three o’clock now and the trees are black outside and everything is low and dull. I have written 1001 words and watched the racing at Sandown, where they are galloping over the bright green grass in fine sunshine, and lost a bit of money on the first couple of contests, which reminds me, as always of my dad. There was terrible drama when Fingal Bay, the odds-on favourite, decided he was fed up with jumping down at Exeter and ran out, crashing into the running rails and hurling his jockey off. (Horse and rider walked ruefully back to the stables, miraculously unharmed.)

I am waiting for lovely new winter rugs to arrive for Red and Myfanwy. Luckily, the smart, athletic chaser Bold Sir Brian has just trotted up in the 2.20, with all my money on his back, so I can pay for them. This victory gives me extra delight because he is trained in Scotland by the brilliant Lucinda Russell, who has had some sorrows of her own in the last year, and deserves the sweetness of a fine win.

The smallest of the great-nieces is being brought to tea to meet Stanley the Lurcher. He is having a little sleep to get ready for his visitors.

In other words, it’s an ordinary day. It’s a good day. If only the nice 6-year-old, Tanerko Emery, can do the business in the 3.30, it will be a very good day indeed, and there will be more rugs for everyone.

 

Today’s pictures:

A few from earlier in the week, when there was light:

Heads down for breakfast:

Stanley the Lurcher:

No hill today; lost in murk.

You do see why I miss this face so much:

Sunday Jubilee

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It was a really happy day.

Very early, I went up to see the mare. She raised her head, whinnied, and cantered from the farthest corner of the field, swirled to a halt in front of me, raising a dramatic cloud of dust, ducked her head, and whickered. She has never done that before. She usually waits, regally, as if she is the Queen herself, for me to come to her. I felt as if she had given me a huge present, and showered her with love and carrots, both of which she seemed to find eminently acceptable.

I did two thousand words.

Then I thought, bugger it, I’m supposed to be working all afternoon, but the Diamond Jubilee does not come along every day, so I went up to my mother and the Lovely Stepfather, and we watched some of the dear old BBC coverage. I have been so cut off from the world in my deadline fever, that the idea of a royal regatta existed only very faintly on the far edge of my consciousness. But oh, oh the boats. The whole Thames was filled with them, everything from dour old working Yorkshire coal boats (the captain of that was my favourite; ‘Here’s one for the North,’ he said, grinning all over his face) to Edwardian pleasure cruisers. There were proper Naval vessels and narrow boats and lovely Victorian rowing skiffs. There were Olympic rowers and, perhaps the thing that amazed me most of all, Venetian gondoliers.

‘Someone went and got VENETIANS,’ I yelled at my mother.

The Queen looked awfully happy, and the banks were lined with Ordinary Decent Britons, yelling and whooping and giving three cheers.

On paper, Republicanism makes perfect philosophical sense; the hereditary principle is, on the face of it, absurd. But on a day like today, it just feels a little bit snobbish and curmudgeonly. There were crowds of people, having a perfectly lovely time, in the gloomy summer weather, and I defy anyone to shake a reproving finger at that.

At four, vaguely aware that there was something going on on our village green (a very rare thing in Scotland; it was laid out on an English model by some old laird who had been brought up in the south) I wandered down with the Pigeon. And there was the village, dancing. They were doing a mass strip the willow, to much hilarity. Then there was three cheers for Her Majesty, and a rendition of God Save the Queen. It was oddly touching. Balmoral is not away, and half our shops have By Royal Appointment signs above their doors; here on Deeside the Royal Family feel like locals.

I loved the whole thing. The older I get, the more I appreciate a bit of good old British pomp. I even rather love the fact that, in London, it was raining. Sunshine would be far too vulgar and faintly European. We are bred to bad weather. On the radio, some onlookers were being interviewed. ‘Is the weather dampening your spirits?’ asked the presenter. ‘Oh, no,’ they said, and with marvellous non-sequitur, ‘You see, we are from Norfolk.’

Yesterday was my father’s birthday. It was the Derby. He adored the Derby. He always went, looking very smart in his shiny black top hat. I was fired with the excitement of the great race, and it did turn out to be a great race, where a new champion was born, and a nineteen-year-old Irish boy called Joseph O’Conner made history, riding his father’s horse Camelot to victory. No father and son combination has ever won the Derby in its 230 year history. I shouted my head off, and missed my own father so much I could hardly breathe.

In the morning, rather madly, I had told the mare the story of how her famous grandfather won the Derby. She listened politely. I wished, suddenly, violently, that my dad could have been there to see her, in all her aristocratic beauty, with her outrageous bloodlines. I cried for him, astonished at how acute and fresh the sorrow still can be, over a year after his death.

So, all human life has been here, in the last 36 hours. The memory of my dad, the sweetness of the living family, the joy of my horse, the best racing in the world, every kind of boat on the dirty old Thames, the village out in its pomp, the celebration of our own dear Queen. And I did over four thousand words, and am closing in on the end of the book. Not bad, really.

 

Today’s pictures.

The village green celebrating the Jubilee:

 

My lovely Red, bowing her beautiful head:

The Pigeon in her special Jubilee lead:

She really does look rather queenly herself.

The hill, rather blurry today:

What I especially liked about the celebration today is that it was all so tremendously British. I’m not sure exactly why, and I’m not sure exactly why that gives me pleasure, but it does.

It was the best of British, and I wave my own little metaphorical flag.