Random Friday

Here is a random Friday for you:

1. I’ve been a bit tense and unsettled this week, not sleeping that well, and not getting things done in the way I would like. I thought it was the weather, perhaps. Sometimes I just have a bit of a scratchy week. It’s just a thing, not a three act opera. But last night, I discovered what it was. I have been missing my dad.

The missing comes and goes. Sometimes I remember him with smiles and ease; I laugh when I think of him. Some days I accept quite naturally that he is not here any more. That is life, that is how it goes. And then, usually out of the blue, there are moments of absolutely streaming fury and grief, a feeling of utter unnaturalness, as if the fact that he died ripped some ghastly tear in the space time continuum and spun the universe off its axis.

The violence of this feeling takes me by surprise. It comes up right from the gut. It is elemental and overwhelming. The only thing to do is to let it have its course. I shout and cry a bit, and then it’s all out, and I can move on.

Today, after the swamping tears, I feel lighter and more human. I move through the drear weather with a feeling of being present in the world.

The missing is strange because sometimes I don’t know I am doing it. I suppose one misses the dear departed always, really. The trick is to fold the lack into one’s daily life, to find a good place for it. Because I like reasons for things, and places for things, I think I should almost schedule a moment of missing into each week, so that it does not build up and whack me round the head. There should be a moment at four in the afternoon when I stop the clocks.

This is absurd, of course. There is no order to it. He was a lovely, flawed, funny, brave man, and he lit up every room he entered, and a light has gone out. Of course I miss him. He was my dad.

2. The thing, conversely, that is making me laugh the most this week is that the Etonians have gone viral. Some funny schoolboys have made a video in the Gangnam manner (I am far too great-auntish to know what this is), taking the piss out of themselves. The Lovely Stepfather is sometimes concerned about toff-bashing; I think he finds it rude and intellectually lazy. I could tell him this morning that the toffs were fighting back, through the medium of dance. He looked slightly surprised.

Over at The Guardian, one writer was very snarky about the whole thing. In the comments though, the paper’s Dear Readers were rather staunch, pointing out that it was a cheap shot to bitch up young schoolboys, however rich their parents might be.

Go and look for Eton Style on the You Tube. It’s a perfect diversion for a rainy Friday.

3. The Health Secretary surprised me this morning. In the 8.10 interview on the Today programme, he was asked about his personal belief that abortion should be outlawed at twelve weeks. This is not government policy, and he voted for it on a free vote, but still, that really is something the people have a right to know about. He was asked, most politely, three times, to cite the ‘evidence’ that he said his decision was based upon. He would not answer the question. He said that talking about this would only get him into trouble.

People who know Jeremy Hunt say he is a nice man. He does not have a good public image though. Quite apart from questions of humanity and morality and honesty, surely sheer strategy would tell him that dodging such a question would not endear him further to the population.

I’ve banged on about this before, but I genuinely don’t understand why politicians can’t see that not answering the question makes them look absurd and shifty and rather ill-mannered. Michael Heseltine used to deal with it brilliantly. He would roar with laughter and say: ‘John, you can’t possibly expect me to answer that.’ Quite often, he would say why. He was honest and humorous about his refusal to answer, and the interviewer would move on to more fertile pastures. Now, the operatives revert to po-faced talking points, as if the audience will be too stupid to notice. It is patronising and wrong and I wish they would stop doing it. If only so that I don’t have to shout at the wireless each morning: ‘ANSWER THE SODDING QUESTION.’

3. I’d slightly forgotten my technique, on awful weather days, of looking very closely at the small things of beauty, so as not to be overwhelmed by the dirty brown hideousness of the day. Even Scotland, with her vivid colours and her mountains and forests, cannot look lovely with the weather this stinking. The country looks drowned and defeated. But I managed to find some lovely lichen and some fallen leaves and a bit of moss to get my aesthetic hit. You shall see in the photographs. It brings me back to the little things, which are of paramount importance, especially if the big picture is murky, literally or metaphorically.

4. I think, about once every hour, of Frankel. I think of his brilliance, his grace, his power, his intelligence, his beauty. I think of all the hearts he has lifted. I think of Sir Henry Cecil, who says the horse is his inspiration.

I think: I hope it is not raining at Ascot.

5. Interestingly, despite all the pundits and prognosticators calling the American election as tight as a drum, with Mitt Romney moving ahead in some polls and the slow economy still a drag on the President, William Hill has Mr Obama at five to two on. In racing terms, this is a prohibitive odds-on favourite. Mitt Romney is two to one against. I wonder: does Mr William Hill know something that Mark Halperin and Joe Scarborough do not? (I’m still quite cross with those fellows for being smug and patronising about the whole binders of women thing.)

6. As I write this, I gaze out of the window. The sky is the colour of old washing and the trees are gloomy shadows and everything is wet. I think it is time for chicken soup. This may be the only answer. Also: chocolate. I hate saying that because it’s a lady-cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason, and that reason is that they are often true.

Chocolate it is.

 

Today’s pictures:

Red’s View, drowned in the rain. There should be a whole mountain there. WHERE IS THE MOUNTAIN???:

Moody trees:

But then I saw the silver birch wood was actually looking ravishing, so I took about twenty pictures of it, to cheer me up:

Back at home, there was the old iron fence and the fallen leaves:

The canopy of limes:

One leaf:

Rickety shed:

MOSS!!! I love MOSS:

Leaves and lichen. All the Ls:

The herd was in a surprisingly happy mood, considering. Autumn the Filly:

Myfanwy the Pony:

That nose wrinkle is because she is doing her little whicker of hello. Kills me every time.

Red the Mare:

The good companions:

If we just close our eyes will the weather go away?:

Regal Pigeon:

No hill today. Lost in cloud.

Happy Friday.

Random Wednesday

First, I was going to do politics. Then, I decided on a reflection on my own geekishness, which is currently soaring to new heights. (This morning at breakfast, I told my mother and stepfather gravely: ‘I think about the repeal of the Corn Laws most mornings.’ They laughed, slightly nervously.)

Then, I had a whole riff going on about the intellectual laziness of according moral significance to different types of education. I was getting a bit grumpy about the snaking notion now abroad that only bounders come out of private schools and perfect saints issue daily from comprehensives. I admit this is only implication from the Miliband tendency, but it’s annoying me because it’s so cheap and vapid, and Mili E is a clever man who should know better.

I toyed with giving you a description of the herd antics I saw this morning; the prancing and puffing and dancing and wheeling of my absurdly duchessy mare in order to tell her new arrival who is the real Queen of the World.

But none of these would quite cut the mustard. I got a little distracted by the news that Frankie Dettori is going to ride Camelot in the Arc, which, in racing terms, is about as Hold The Front Page as it gets. My adoration for Frankie knows no bounds, and I wondered if the recently disappointing wonder horse might have one last little bit of fairy tale in him, so I had an ante-post fiver at 3-1. (I still suspect there was some tiny thing not quite right with him at the Leger meeting.)

Instead, here is a quick burst of randomness, because we have not had one of those for a while.

1. I’m always banging on about life lessons, mostly because I really, really need them. I feel that life is a sort of endless project, which I shall never quite complete. (On my deathbed, I shall be shouting: ‘But one more thing...’) There are a lot of things that I know intellectually, but forget, or do not quite believe in my gut. One of them is something I say all the time, and always, always have to be reminded of. It is: people are almost always not thinking what you think they are thinking.

Today, one of my nearest and dearest told me a very kind and understanding thing that another of the Dearests had said about me. (That’s another good life rule: always pass on the kind remarks made out of earshot.) The interesting thing is that I had been fretting that the Dearest might have been harbouring the exact opposite idea. I had put thoughts into his head that were not there at all. I had been fearing I was a burden and a bore, when all the time he had been regarding me in a wonderfully benign light. There was not boredom, but sympathy, not in its cheap sense of compassion, but in its lovely profound sense of a harmony of feeling.

I was intensely touched, and rebuked myself for indulging in idiotic speculation.

2. Outrage of the day:

On the Today programme this morning there was a piece about girls not doing physics A level. A female teacher came on and said, quite seriously, that girls tended to take biology instead of physics because it develops the ‘softer skills’. Implication again, and of the shoddiest kind: that girls are somehow automatically built or programmed for softness. We are not a bloody Andrex advertisement. My fluffy, girlish brain practically exploded.

As always, I asked myself the enduring question. Did Mrs Pankhurst really chain herself to the railings for this?

3. Terrifying and oddly unremarked on headline of the day, from the Telegraph:

“North Korea and South Korea are ‘on the verge of a nuclear war’”

WHAT? WHAT?

Now, as well as building a winter shelter for my horses, I shall have to build a bunker and stock up on canned goods.

4. Things in which I know I should have an interest, but can evince none:

JK Rowling’s new book.

The Virgin franchise fiasco.

The levels of Kevin Pietersen’s contrition.

The return of Megan Stammers, the errant schoolgirl. (Very important to her family and friends, but I never quite understood why the whole thing was turned into a rolling news story.)

Naomi Woolf’s new book.

The mental state of Abu Hamza.

5. Person of the day:

Evan Davies, for his polite, humorous and forensic questioning of a rather evasive Mr Miliband.

6. Quote of the day:

‘It is my hair and it’s an amazing thing.’ Donald Trump.

(I was going to find you something enchanting and inspirational, so you could face the rest of your Wednesday with a lifted soul and a spring in your step, but this was so silly I could not resist. Perhaps it inspires in a different kind of way. If things get very bad, you can always tell yourself: at least I am not Donald Trump.)

And finally:

Weather report: cloudy with occasional glimpses of blue sky.

Mental report: oddly sanguine, tempered with mild moments of self-reproach, involving the usual domestic and organisational failures. (Cross voice in head shouts: just take the bloody library books back.)

Overwhelming impressions of the day: loveliness and goodness of family. Sweetness and beauty of horse. Enduring fidelity and gloriousness of dog.

Not a bad little troika, for the middle of the week.

 

Some quick pictures for you:

My posse:

The hill:

A quick gallop through the week

In the end, I’m not doing my HorseBack UK story today; I’m doing it tomorrow. I’ve already written 1588 words today and my brain is starting to crack and fizzle like an electrical circuit about to short.

I’m doing random portrait of the week instead.

Here it is:

Thought a lot about my dad.

Made chicken soup.

Had one perfect ride, one rather wild and spooky ride, one proper schooling ride, and one gentle cowboy mooch. Did groundwork, and felt happy that I returned the mare from a rather unsettled state in the windy middle of the week to a state of blissful calm by the end. As always, she expanded my heart, with her sweetness and goodness.

My dog, my stepfather, my mother and my horse all made me laugh.

Was the recipient of a random act of kindness so kind that it made me quite teary.

Saw people doing things very, very well.

Read four books.

Wrote part of one book.

Started a new secret secret project.

Dreamed of the stable I shall one day build.

Spoke to the Younger Brother all the way out in Bali, where he lives. Wished that he lived in Scotland.

Watched the racing. Had one very, very nice treble. Pushed very quickly from my mind the accumulator that was, perfectly plausibly, going to in win me £34,679. (I quite often do one of these for a pound, and every time, I am perfectly convinced that it is money for old rope, and I can buy Red a nice new winter rug, and then am slightly astonished and affronted when all six good things get stuffed.)

Renewed my interest in the American election. Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

Thought: must write that damn Mitt Romney post I keep promising, but wondered if it would make any sense. The man does not. Everyone who knows him says he is a good, honourable, family man; loves his wife, loves his sons, gives to charity, helps friends in need. And there he is, out on the stump, saying wrong and untrue and disobliging and hypocritical and idiotic things. (There is the weird thing about the dog though. Everyone says Who is the real Mitt Romney? If poor Seamus the Dog is a reflection of the real Mitt Romney, then the Republicans are in a world of trouble.)

Thought about poetry.

Wondered if it could really be true that the Chief Whip just said ‘fuck’ to a policeman. (Surely not?)

Felt mildly furious that my horrible mobile telephone which I hate went and died on me.

Sent a very long, catching up email to my dear friend The Expatriate, in California. Missed her, a lot.

Wondered if anyone will ever agree on how to sort out the economy.

Said goodbye to the swallows, who flew south to Africa for the winter.

Said hello to the geese, who starting migrating over from the north, in great, honking V-shapes in the sky.

Felt stupidly lucky that I have mountains to look at.

Maintained my absolute lack of interest in the iPhone 5.

Met some ravishing new horses.

 

My quote of the week, because there must be a quote of the week, comes from yesterday. A retired soldier who fought in Afghanistan was giving a fascinating talk, and in amongst all the interesting things and pearls of wisdom he said this: ‘It’s not weakness to ask advice from someone; it’s weakness to think you know everything and carry on regardless.’

I thought: those really are words to live by.

 

Today’s pictures are what the auctioneers would call a mixed lot.

Have been going through my endless photograph files, trying to prune the excess, and pulled out a selection of pictures from the last few months:

I LOVE that last face. What is she thinking?

Have a very happy Friday.

PS. Feeling very goofy indeed, and have a horrible feeling this post is filled with spelling mistakes and typographical errors and grammatical howlers. I squint and squint at the screen and cannot see what is right and what is wrong. So please forgive.

Either feast of famine; or, in which I apologise for too few words instead of too many

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Ah, ah, brain has nothing in it. At this point you must imagine a klaxon going off, a disembodied voice shouting: Empty brain alert, please walk calmly to the exits.

I dig and prod a bit. Surely there must be something? Could I not describe the lovely pastrami sandwich I made for lunch (oh, the fascination), or the new row about Scottish independence, or the vigilant sweetness of The Pigeon?

No.

No, I could not.

All systems are down. I stare and squint at the screen, as if English has suddenly become my second language.

All I can say is: I am experimenting with Mung beans. (This is not code.) Wish me luck.

 

A few pictures for you now:

Oh, and actually I do have one thing for you. I have a Fact of the Day. It is: the great psychologist Alfred Adler died whilst giving a lecture in Aberdeen. Aberdeen is my nearest city, and I love reading Adler, so this gives me an odd kind of slightly spurious pleasure. Even though it is, of course, rather a sad fact.

And, one very final thing: I would like someone to tell the Scottish MP, whose name I did not catch but who appeared on The World At One, that it is 'fewer voters', not 'less voters'. Tsk, tsk. If our elected representatives do not set an example for the young people, then I do not know who will.