In which the kick has gone.

A bit despairing today. I am like my mare: I can bear one thing, I can bear two things; it is the third thing which tips me over.

Despair is an interesting word, but it is the one I want. It indicates a kind of melancholy infected with hopelessness. It is most unlike me. It makes me realise how lucky I am, because generally I am cheerful and hopeful. I am always a bit bashed and battered around the edges, but the hopefulness keeps my engine chugging along.

There is hope, every day. There is hope that I shall write a singing sentence. There is hope that I shall do something joyful with my red girl. (This hope is, every day, fulfilled. Just think of that for a moment. I think of it. I think of it with awe.) There is hope that I shall make my mother laugh, which is important, because most of her body hurts. (Eat your calcium, I want to say to the young, banting girls. Or your poor old bones will break in a distant future you cannot imagine.) There is hope that the sun might shine, that Stanley the Dog will at last find that mouse in the feed shed, that I shall back the winner of the 2.15 at York. There is hope that I may finally, finally, answer the question of the Universal Why.

Today, there is no hope. Someone came in the night and stole it away.

Today, I am useless and pointless and feckless and there is no good in me.

Even as I write that, the voice of the older generation comes into my head, the voices of my old gentlemen, my Dear Departed. They would not say so, because they are too polite, but they would regard this as sheer self-indulgence. I can feel their stoicism, that finest of virtues, flying out of the ether. Press on, they would say. Kick on, they would say. Worse things happen in Chad.

I am usually so good at kicking on. I am slightly ashamed to say I quite pride myself on it.

Today, there is no kick. My kick has gone, galloped off over the horizon to join the circus.

Ah well. I expect it shall come back tomorrow. The circus is, it will learn, a load of buggery bollocks. It will return, slinking back with its tail between its legs.

It’s just life, I tell myself.

I tell myself, ruefully, that I am human. There is no defeat in that. Sometimes, oddly, paradoxically, bafflingly, it feels like a defeat.

 

Today’s pictures:

At least there are pictures. There is my one true thing, my many true things – the growing things, the beloved things.

This photograph is blurry and all out of kilter, but I love it because it shows Stan the Man in all his quiddity:

These are of the garden. The garden is a mess. It is one of my despairs. In my frantic work drive, something had to give, and one of those things was the garden. It is where the wild things are. Yet it still has these beauties in it:

My girl:

In which life takes me out behind the woodshed and gives me a good pasting

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Do you ever have days when it all gets too much? I am having one of those days. I woke up wobbly, grew progressively wobblier, and then fell right over, flat on my face.

It was nothing in particular. I love the particular. I crave the discrete. It’s that rational, empirical part of my brain kicking in, the one I believe in, the one that will keep me safe from magical thinking and conspiracy theories and false promises. I like reasons for things. This happened because that happened; x plus y equals z. I like things to make sense.

A voice is now shouting in my head, like a rather exasperated person calling from the next room. ‘It’s life,’ the voice is shouting. ‘That’s life.’ The voice puts its hands on its hips and rolls its eyes and goes off to do something more interesting.

When it is this non-specific sorrow, it’s always the smallest thing that sets it off. Sure, you’re a bit tense, your teeth are a bit grindy, the weather is shit, everything is getting on top of you, but you’re fine, because you are a healthy human living in a free democracy in the 21^st century and you have all your fingers and all your toes and a roof over your head and the ability to type. And then, you suddenly find yourself sobbing in the kitchen because you burnt the soup.

I am fretting about my book. It’s not just the glitch. It’s that I didn’t nail it. I worked and worked and bloody worked. I worked evenings and weekends. I murdered all my darlings. I wrangled and strangled and struggled and strived. And it’s still not right. Sometimes a book just falls into place, like a gift from the sky. Backwards was a bit like that. Sometimes I dance with the book, whilst a full orchestra plays in the background. And sometimes, it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try, it just won’t come out right, and instead of a full sense of achievement I am left with a haunting sense of lost chance.

My poor mum is not very well, and I wish that were not so and that there were some miracle doc who could make her better. She is very brave and stoical about it, but I wish she did not have to be brave and stoical. There is a low humming fret about the dear old Pigeon. She looks well and runs for her stick and her coat is glossy, but sometimes now, when she gets up after a long sleep, she is a bit wobbly on her pins; she sways like a sailor on a high sea. This is the small, terrifying reminder of her great age, a daily sign that I may not have her for so very much longer and I try not to think about it, because it kills me.

Every day at the races last week, for all the joy, I saw the ghost of my dad. I remembered him in the Irish bar, which, like him, does not exist any more, drinking Guinness with his tall friend Bill. I’m really sad he could not see Frankel run his great race.

So, all these small things gather and swarm but I am fine, I am fine, because look how lucky I am. I sometimes refuse to give in to melancholy, on rather bizarre moral grounds. If I give in to sadness and grouchiness, when I have so much outrageous fortune, then I feel it is somehow offensive to those people who have terrible lives. If I am living in a war zone, or in fear or tearing poverty, then I may complain. It’s a bit nuts, but it also contains a grain of truth. I get very grumpy with those people who have good lives but still complain and whine and make dramas where there need be none. One damn well should appreciate one’s good luck, if one is lucky enough to have it. Otherwise it’s such a waste, and I hate waste.

I knew that life had beaten me, for this one day, when the smallest of small things precipitated a storm of grief. It was the horse. I went up this morning and she ignored me. (I am ashamed even writing this it is so stupid, but the blog is the place of truth, so you must have it all.) Sometimes she does this. She is doing horse stuff; she is not necessarily in the mood for human contact. Usually it makes me laugh, and I rib her about being a dozy old donkey face. Sometimes she raises her head and whinnies and gallops to me, and that makes my heart rise like a helium balloon, but sometimes she is just eating, and does not wish to be disturbed.

I should be pleased about this. It means I have produced a relaxed horse, an animal who is not needy. She really is at home here. But because of all the swirling non-specific stuff, today I took it as a terrible rejection. All my abandonment issues gathered themselves into a mighty army and marched out to do battle. The inner wail, armoured in wrong constructions and category errors, rose in despair. My mare does not love me any more, it cried, idiotically. I had no defence against it, so there I was, stomping about a green field in my muddy gumboots, tears streaming down my face, whilst my horse quietly grazed.

And that was when I started writing this in my head. Writing is the thing that makes sense of the things that do not make sense. The exasperated voice is right: it is just life. Sometimes I find life very confusing indeed. But if I can put it into sentences, with their lovely commas and semi-colons, their cadences and phrases, their sub-clauses and modifiers, then it takes on some explicable form. I really do think that is why I write at all, because the only place that life may make any sense at all is on the page.

I am winding down now, my fingers tapping slower and slower over the keyboard. My shoulders are coming down. The storm is passing. I feel the echoes of it in my body still, like an ebbing tide. (I always know when my emotions are high, because I start mixing my metaphors.) The Pigeon is dozing beside me. Outside the window, a rare sun has appeared from behind the clouds and is brightening the beeches and the chestnuts to a singing lime green.

It is very simple, after all that. Mostly I am cheerful, but some days I am sad. Today I was sad. It’s not failure; it just is. I am going to sit very still for a while. Then I shall watch the Northumberland Plate. I’m going to have a tiny fiver each way on the mudlark Montaff, and give him a good shout. Slowly, slowly, if I do not make any sudden moves, everything shall return to normal.

 

Today’s pictures:

The Duchess’s little apple tree. I thought too of her, today:

DO NOT DISTURB ME. I AM EATING:

I, on the other hand, may be disturbed at any moment of the day or night, as long as there is love or stick or biscuit in the equation:

Today’s hill:

Caesura

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I know I’ve got the perspective police and my admiration for the stoic and my good, phlegmatic British blood. I know that I am not supposed to wail, because you all have your own wails to be going on with. I know that this is a public space and therefore I should expect slings and arrows; I know that my skin is stupidly thin and I should butch up. I know that I’m a bit over-tired just now, hazy with fret, and prone to taking things too much to heart.

But I had a comment yesterday which I am finding stupidly hard to deal with. It wasn’t horrid, really, or mean. There was, in fact a very nice compliment in it. My God, when I look at what people on newspapers have to put up with, it was milk and honey. Yet bash bash bash it went, into my fragile heart.

Anonymous wrote: ‘There are times when I find your blog maddening, but today your words are jewels of sensitivity and good judgment.’

You see? That’s very nice, in the second part. Really, really kind. But why did there have to be the maddening bit? What purpose does it achieve? May I just wave a magic wand and not be maddening? Is that what is expected?

This blog is free. I do it because I love it. No one forces anyone to read it. If someone asked you to tea, would you say: ‘Oh, these cucumber sandwiches are disgusting, but I really love the ham and cheese?’ Of course you would not. You might think the cucumber is revolting, but manners will stop you saying so. If you visit someone’s house, would you remark on the idiot mistake of choosing carmine red for the downstairs study, whilst congratulating them on the lovely sage green of the kitchen? No, you would not. You would damn well bite your tongue about the carmine, because it’s done, and it’s their choice, and to say so would only cause unnecessary hurt.

You would not march up to someone in the street and tell them that their hat was horrible or their hair a mess. There are things we do not do.

I fully accept that, as one reader remarked not long ago, I can be boring, although I try very hard to avoid dullness; I am sure I can be maddening, as I have now been told. But these observations are, apart from being disobliging, without utility. I write as best as I can, often after a long day. There are sometimes editing errors or non-sequiturs, moments of monomania, occasions when there is not much life in my prose, however hard I try. The readers’ wonderful liberal choice is not to read. They may come back on a better day, because everyone has off days.

Besides the lack of utility, the lack of specificity is not helpful. Maddening how? Maddening why? (Actually, please don’t tell me; it will only make me sadder.)

I really love this blog, and I love the variety of the readers and that they come from all over the world. I don’t expect to be told that I am fascinating or brilliant. The compliments, when they arrive, are always like getting a present, and make me feel humble. But I am not robust enough at the moment for what my mother calls personal remarks. Read, don’t read; find a writer who does not madden.

I try not to give in to weakness. I can usually talk myself down off the ceiling, count the blessings, take my iron tonic, shrug it off. But I’m a bit battered and tired now, so I’m buggering off for a bit. I’ll be back when the book is finished, I have had some sleep, and my armour is back on.

Oh, and PS. Last time I admitted to hurt, the Dear Readers were very kind and rallied, but I had the uncomfortable sense that the volume of comment felt a tiny bit like ganging up, although I know that was not at all how it was meant. This is, above all, a polite space. Don’t abuse Anonymous; they have the right to write exactly what they will. I have the right to take it or not take it. Just now, my very personal choice is: not.

In which the thing I dread comes to pass

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Quite often, when I am pretending to be sage, I tell people that the thing they are dreading will turn out to be nothing like as drack as they thought. It’s the reverse expectation game. So many times one will go to a thing, the thought of which makes one’s heart plummet, and find it is rather lovely. Or the awful, put-off telephone call will go with a swing. Or the necessary confrontation will yield results instead of pointless shouting and strife.

I think about blogging quite a lot. The very novelty of the medium fascinates me. I watch it taking form, growing from a very niche, even slightly geek enterprise, into something which begins to touch the wider consciousness. I observe people approaching it in different ways, readers and writers both. I see the prejudices it engenders, and the elephant traps it presents. I watch it develop sub-sets, and off-shoots. I see it generate its own internal set of rules and mores, as if some collective consciousness is at work. No one sat down and invented the blog rules, and in some ways the first rule is that there is no rule. Yet it has already its conventions and politesses.

I was thinking how incredibly lucky I was that in over two years of blogging I have only ever had one very slightly snide comment. I wondered what would happen when the dark day came, as it must, when someone was angry or unkind. That was my dread. I realised that I have been cocooned by the generosity of the Dear Readers, and might be unprepared to deal with anything other than sweetness.

Well, the thing I dread has come to pass. It is not crossness or rudeness in any guise; but I have pushed a Dear Reader beyond the limit of her endurance. I woke early this morning, and, before going up to the mares, checked my email. That is where the comments are sent, and there, waiting for me, was the voice of exasperation:

‘Just wanted to let you know that I am so very, very pleased that your mare has made such a positive impact on your life and has quite clearly made you so happy, BUT - for the love of god woman - please write about something other than the horse!!!! I know that you do not want to pander to your readers, but by the same rule, do you wish to lose a great chunk of them? I have always relished clicking on to your blog - my daily treat if you will - so it is so disappointing to find that it has become so monotonous, and quite frankly, boring. ‘

There it was, the thing I had been dreading. I fret always, whatever I am writing about, that it will be of no interest, that it may be indulgent, dull, incoherent or shallow. I have a fatal tendency to obsession, so when I become entranced by a subject, whether it is American politics, or racing, or building a relationship with a new horse, or tracing the contours of family life, it is often all I can think about. I know women have a reputation for multi-tasking, but I tend to plunge deeply into one fascination at a time.

The worst criticisms are always the ones that you have suspected yourself. I had feared that I was turning into a one-trick pony. Aware of this, I had hoped that I could broaden out something very specific to me into a set of wider reflections, which might be of interest to a general reader. There are parables here, I had thought, small life lessons about patience and shifts in perspective and seeing the world through another’s eyes. But no, after all, it was just boredom and monotony. The awful thing was that I had gone from daily treat to ghastly, droning dreariness.

One of my deepest fears, apart from going mad in the night, is that I shall be dull. Anything, anything, but that. The words cut into me like sharpened swords. I felt my heart start to beat faster in shock. I felt physically shaky, and tearful. In some ways, I am not much cut out for public writing. However hard you try, there will always be people who hate what you write. I have not much hide to speak of, and take each criticism or rejection as a blow to the heart. I have developed a fairly good facility for talking myself down off the ceiling, but I have never managed to avoid the initial pain. And it is pain, as actual and felt as if someone landed a punch.

This pathetic fragility is enhanced, just at the moment, because of the year of grief. Loss has many interesting ramifications. It is not just simple sorrow. One of the things it does is strip away a layer of skin. People say this grows back, but it takes a long time. As a result, I have found that I have absolutely no defences; the smallest knock whacks me to the ground. Butch up, I tell myself. Where is that vaunted British stoicism that you admire so much? Where is your sense of perspective? For heaven’s sake, I tell myself; you are not five years old.

I dig and scratch, thinking there must be a life lesson here, too. Freedom of speech is one of my most cherished beliefs; everyone must say what they will, and think what they may. I sometimes think that as I get older the only thing I do know is that I know nothing. But one thing I have learnt is that, whatever you do, however hard you try, you cannot make people think what you want them to think. You have to, as the self-help groups like to say, let go with love.

There is also the thing of the bargain. In everything one does in life, there is a deal. By loving someone, you risk heartbreak; by holding any strong opinion, you risk dissent; by scratching a word on a page, you risk criticism or rejection or flat-out failure. That is life. One cannot sit in a darkened room, wrapped in cotton wool, cocooned against consequences.

I think of my playwright. He has his first big production coming on in the summer. Because I know him to be a man of soaring talent, I have no fear for him. But he must know that there is the danger that a dyspeptic critic will take against him, or a tired matinee audience may sit silent at the jokes. Does he flinch? Not he.

I think of the blithe, heedless people, the ones who laugh in the face of catcalls; the duck’s back people, who shrug off water. I think, as I so often do, I must learn from them. Although I do wonder sometimes if they really exist. I mean: are they really as impervious as they seem? Do they go back to their quiet rooms and admit to secret sorrows, when there is no one there to watch?

In my rational mind, I think, come along, this is part of the deal. In my irrational mind, I think: oh no, oh no, I bored a Dear Reader. The Perspective Police are off on another mission, and I am left, unmoored, covered in shame and melancholy. The thing I dreaded came to pass, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

For a moment, I thought: I cannot write today. I’ll just put up a picture and wait for the storm to pass. One thing I do know how to do is put ballast back in my boots. It takes a while, but it is always done. Then I thought: the thing that horses have taught me is that you have to get straight back on after a fall. Even if your confidence is shot to pieces, you have to take a deep breath and fake it until it is real. So, shaken and bruised, I get back in the saddle and trot on. And to the poor, Dear Reader, bored to sobs, I can only offer heartfelt apology.

 

The rain still rains, so the camera may not come out. Here is a blinky Pigeon, from the one moment yesterday when it was not bucketing down:

And the hill remains lost in the cloud.