The Royal Meeting.

In the end, because I gave myself permission not to write the blog, I wanted to write the blog. I am stupidly cussed.

I was thinking, as I rode this morning, getting the mare to do her dowager duchess dressage diva schtick, which she eventually did after some persuasion, about the things about Ascot that I shall miss and those I shan’t.

In the very old days, I used to see my father in the Irish Bar, usually with a tall elegant gentleman whom he would introduce as ‘my friend Bill.’ My friend Bill, charming, very funny, dry as a bone, and so self-deprecating it was as if he had done a course, turned out to be a man of some distinction. I only discovered much later that he had fought with the Royal Hussars in the Second World War.

Eventually Dad turned against Ascot. He grew tired of the hats and the heels and the cocktail party crowds, and he lost so much money there each year that he said it was cheaper to go on holiday, so he would firmly take himself off abroad.

For a long time, I agreed with him. Pushing through crowds who are all looking the wrong way (at each other rather than at the horses) became rather dispiriting. There is a yahoo element that is a little bit sad. But however crowded it becomes, however many absurd tottery shoes there are, and self-parodying braying hoorahs, and people who don’t know a pastern from a hock, through it all runs the enduring element: the finest thoroughbreds in the world. So I went back.

I had forgotten how beautiful Ascot was. The new stand is perfectly hideous, but it is well-laid out and convenient, and it cannot take away from that ravishing emerald sward that opens up in front of it like a history book. The history lives, out on that storied course. It was Queen Anne who started the Royal Meeting, because she wanted something nice and close to Windsor, and it is from Windsor that our own dear Queen comes, trotting down the straight mile in her open carriage with her match greys, an elegant echo of her ancestress. A band, usually someone like the Welsh Guards, strikes up, and all the gentlemen take their top hats off and wave them, with old school courtesy, at their monarch. I understand perfectly well all the arguments against a hereditary monarchy, in this day and age, but when I see that, I get chills up my spine, and I love the Queen and all who sail in her. No race meeting in the world has such a beginning.

Up where the old paddock was, there is now the pre-parade ring, a gentle calm before the storm, with ancient trees and quiet grass, and a perfect hidden place right at the end where one can observe the dazzling athletes, walking round like old dressage horses, before they are saddled. It’s as hushed as a church service, and the only time I’ve seen it mobbed was when Black Caviar flew over from Australia, and every single trainer, even the jumps boys, poured into the place to catch a glimpse of the super-mare. In my secret spot, away from the crowds, there is usually just me and another reminder of the old Ascot, a lady of venerable age and immense chic (and sensible shoes), with whom I made friends, both of us being wild about the fillies.

I can’t go this year, and I shall miss that moment of communion in the pre-parade ring, the extraordinary privilege of getting up close to that much equine beauty and talent. Television can’t quite capture the full majesty of the thoroughbred; it’s as if half a dimension is missing. Frankel, who brought me back to Ascot for his rampaging Queen Anne victory, was much more fine and delicate and handsome in life than he was in front of the cameras. It sounds odd, but there’s something too about getting the smell of them, and seeing the relationship they have with their lads and lasses, and being able to look into their deep eyes.

I’ll miss the wild roar that starts when a favourite hits the front and starts to motor, a soaring, swelling sound, so visceral that it runs right through your body, so overwhelming that it brings on magical thinking. In that Frankel Queen Anne, I quite genuinely wondered whether the roof would come off the stands.

I’ll miss running into my racing friends. I like seeing George Baker, with whom I used to go and watch Desert Orchid when we were in our raw twenties. He loved racing so much that he chucked in a perfectly respectable job and took out a training licence. When I see him, he twinkles at me, all those old memories still alive, and says, with some amazement: ‘I’m living the dream.’ I’ll miss going to see the horses with James and Jacko Fanshawe. James Fanshawe is not a trainer that many people outside racing have ever heard of, he is so modest and low-key, but he’s a flat specialist who has won two Champion Hurdles. Most National Hunt trainers have not won one Champion Hurdle, so for a flat trainer to win two is something out of the common. He’s a horseman to his bones, and watching him assess a young sprinter is one of my all-time great pleasures. (His brother sold me the red mare, so the Fanshawe family is very, very high in my hall of fame.)

I won’t miss the frantic dash to the train and the panicky picking up of the tickets and the failure to find a seat and the rather tiring uphill walk to the course. I won’t miss the crowds and the queuing and having to canter my way through the throng in my sensible boots to see my equine heroines and heroes, and getting stuck with a dead bore just when I want to go and see a Best Beloved in the paddock. I’ll miss my sneaky half pints of ice-cold Guinness and making friends with the random American military gentlemen who seem to favour the Guinness bar. (I love a bit of gold braid.) I’ll miss the august old gents in their special uniforms who guard the entrance to the Royal Enclosure. I’ll miss the atmosphere.

But the television is a good show. Channel Four Racing, after a rocky start with its new team, have settled down into harness now, and Nick Luck with his sharp tailoring and his sense of humour and his enthusiasm has grown into an outstanding broadcaster. I can watch the replays and see clearly the pattern of each race. I don’t get that on the course, because my race glasses are usually shaking too much. I’ll still have a great shout, and Stanley the Dog will bark and jump up and down, and I’ve even shipped it in a bit of Guinness, which is very, very naughty on a school day.

It’s all power and glory. The best in the world, up against the best in the world. They are flying in from Australia, America, France, Ireland, Hong Kong and Japan. All those hopes and dreams, all that thought and care, all that breeding and brilliance will be out there, where the flying hooves thunder down the track. It really is like Christmas and Easter.
 
Here is the old lady, many of whose cousins will be running today, very happy that she is no longer required to do all that galloping at top speed nonsense:



I’m hoping that the cream will rise to the top today, and that Solow and Gleneagles do the business. If my old friend Sole Power can weave his way through the field with his thrilling late run, I shall cry tears of joy. And my each-way bet is the very lovely Buratino , a juvenile who is more exposed than his rivals, but with such a turn of foot that I hope he might see them off.
Be lucky, my darlings.

The red mare makes my heart sing.

Author’s note: I really had intended to tell you something which was not about the horse today. But the red mare was so lovely this morning that it had to be recorded. My work is on full beam stress at the moment, with all kinds of pressures. In the midst of the maelstrom, this kind horse gives me a still small voice of calm, and there are not that many people you can say that about. So she gets her moment in the sun.

 

Quite often, I want to be somewhere else. When I am buying boring food in the boring shop, I want to be at home, at my desk, writing my book. When I am running dull errands to the post office, I want to be wrangling with the pacing in Chapter Fifteen, and working out whether that sudden tense shift works or not.

The place where I do not want to be anywhere else or think about anything else or fret about anything else is on the back of my mare.

We went for an adventure this morning. The little Paint had done a majestic escaping act yesterday, due to my arrant incompetence, and had been on a Magical Mystery Tour of her own. It seemed only fair that today they should both go out. It was the prettiest autumn morning and we had the time.

We took them on a new route, a perfect carnival of every single thing that should make a flight animal roll its eyes. Flapping washing, builders’ fencing, shiny tarpaulins, mysterious collections of barrels, men with power hoses, workers in high visibility articles, savagely barking German Shepherds hurling themselves against a boundary fence – not one of these could make the clever girls turn a hair. ‘Ha, HA,’ I shouted, hysterical with pride. ‘See how brilliant they are. All that groundwork really paid off.’

As I was gleaming with delight, showing off my thoroughbred champion through a pristine housing estate, the most prim and proper collection of houses I’ve ever seen, without a speck of dirt on the roads or a rogue leaf on the lawns, I imagined people inside, peering out, thinking ‘I wonder if that mare’s grandsire won the Derby?’ The Paint filly’s father is so famous that people send their mares to him from far and wide, and he has won so much silverware that I imagine his local joiners are in full employment, building new cupboards for the cups. Any silent observers were surely in for a treat.

At this point, the red mare, who likes to bring me back down to earth when I am going loco, lifted her tail and dumped a lovely line of healthy green dung on the immaculate tarmac. ‘Oh, I expect it will blow away,’ said the Horse Talker, quite unfazed. ‘Don’t worry.’

But I have a terrible bourgeois streak in me. I could not leave the mess. I leapt off, told the mare to stand, and left her slightly baffled in the middle of the crescent whilst I hid the droppings under someone’s laurel bush. ‘Compost,’ I shouted. ‘They won’t mind, will they?’ I raced back to the mare, who had not moved a hoof, and leapt on. The street reverted to its previous untouched state.

On the way back, I was in full bragging mode. The Horse Talker is used to this and listens kindly, in quiet amusement. ‘Oh, they are so perfect,’ I bawled. I listed all the frightening things they had walked past without batting an eyelid. I noted that both horses had been on the buckle the whole time, in their rope halters with no bits in their mouths, relaxed and biddable and like the polite ladies they were. ‘You know,’ I shouted, ‘I really think they are miracle girls.’

At which point, a black and white cat shot out from behind a dustbin. The red mare is used to dogs, but the sinuous flash of a feline is novel to her. Neat as a cat herself, she pivoted on her hocks and performed a dashing pirouette, worthy of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna. It was a fast turn, quite unexpected, and in the old days it would have had me off. This time, I went with her, not even unbalanced, as if I had asked for the manoeuvre myself. She and I are one person, I thought, happily. She snorted. I could feel her heart beating. She had had a proper fright.

‘It’s all right, old lady,’ I said, rubbing her withers. ‘It was just a cat.’

In the old days, the dial would have gone to ten and stayed there, and I would have had to get a horse packed with adrenaline home, clinging on with more hope than expertise. Now, quickly reassured, comfortable with herself and her world, she understood that the danger had gone and was not really a danger anyway, and reverted to her dear old donkey self and put her head down and stretched out her neck and walked home without my hands on her reins.

‘That’s the difference,’ I hollered, in wild joy. I was so happy, I laughed and laughed and laughed, as if someone had made the best joke in the world. ‘Best spook in the world,’ I cried. ‘Just one little moment of alarm and then back to sweetness and dearness.’

There has been an outbreak of anti-thoroughbred prejudice on the internet in the last few days, and I had got angry about it. I was going to write a whole essay about the might of the thoroughbred: the beauty, the bravery, the power and the glory. I was going to prove, point by point, how remarkable the breed is, how fine, how clever, how bonny and blithe. I would give examples; I would show my working. Those idiot people with their narrow minds would rue the day. Yes, there is a lot of power under the bonnet, even in such a dear old slowcoach as the red mare, who could not be fagged to race when that was her job and merrily sauntered round at the back, not seeing the point at all. There is that blue blood and that high spirit. But all they need is a steady human and good work and they become steady themselves, as docile as the sweetest cob.

I won’t write that essay. Closed minds will stay closed, however much I ransack the thesaurus for different words for wonderful. There is no point my ranting and raving. I can just tell the small story of the perfect ride and hug the memory of my poster girl to my heart and bask in the joy she brings. The pressure of work pushes on my head like a heavy iron plate, but every time I am on her back, the lightness comes and my monkey mind is stilled and my sense of self is restored and my sanity is preserved. Everyone needs their one true thing, to keep them whole. She is my one true thing.

PS. One of the Dear Readers asked about the Paint and whether she is ridden. She has a lovely owner who shares the field with me, and, as you can see, we ride out together when time allows.

PPS. The Horse Talker sent an email to the owner of the laurel bush, explaining about the droppings and apologising. He sent the loveliest message back, saying that he had been longing for dung and could we bring him some more. Clever red mare, I thought, even happier than before. Clearly she took one look at that garden and divined that her offering was just what was needed. She really is Champion the Wonder horse and no mistake.

A morning story about thoroughbreds and too much love.

‘I worry about you and that horse,’ says my mother, at breakfast.

‘I know,’ I say. I do know. I know at once what she is going to say. ‘Because I love her too much.’

My mother nods.

‘You love her too much.’

We do not need to spell out what this means. It means that if anything were ever to happen to her, I should be undone. This is true, and it is one of things which occasionally haunts me at night.

‘If one of these books takes off,’ I say, ‘I’ll get in touch with Lucinda Russell or Nick Gifford and see if they have a little mare who needs a nice retirement home.’

(Both these trainers have excellent rehoming schemes and run brilliant yards, producing kind, polite horses.)

My mother frowns.

‘Does it have to be a racehorse?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

She has good memories and bad memories of the racehorses. She used to have to qualify hunter chasers with the Surrey Union drag. Eight times out, minimum, to be witnessed by the Master and Field Master, or some such. ‘It was funny country,’ she said. ‘Lots of woods, lots of trees and ditches. And I was qualifying this horse and it turned out that he hated trees. He used to go round in circles and try to get me off. People were quite shocked.’

She paused, taken back into the distant past. ‘I’m not sure that all of the Surrey Union people were so very sophisticated.’

I love the idea of sophistication being needed to understand the mazy workings of the thoroughbred mind.

She smiles, blindingly. ‘But then I had Vino,’ she said. ‘He came from Ireland and he had never seen timber before. I had to teach him. You know, to jump gates and things. But he was brilliant in the end. Oh, I loved him.’

I can hardly imagine this tiny creature up on a great big hunter chaser, going hell for leather through the woods. Dragging is much more frightening than usual hunting, since the artificial scent is laid and all the huntsman has to do is follow it. There is no stopping and milling about outside coverts. It’s just galloping and jumping all day long. My father’s mother, even tinier than my own mum, used to hunt sidesaddle. ‘I was so terrified,’ she told me once, ‘I used to take a huge slug of brandy and then shut my eyes.’

After Vino, there was Mary, another Irish hunter chaser, whom my mother loved even more. She knows all about the love and the loss. Vino got a horrible disease and had to be put down. She can still remember the moment that Frank Mahon, our adored vet, came into the kitchen and said there was nothing more he could do for the old fella. It must have been almost fifty years ago, but that snapshot lives vivid in her mind. ‘Oh, how I cried,’ she says.

‘A racehorse,’ I say, reverting to the original subject, ‘has seen everything and done everything. And you know, if you get one who hasn’t taken to racing much, they are so happy just to live the quiet life. A nice slow old plug.’

My mother brightens. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘A slow old plug.’

‘Besides,’ I say. ‘They are home to me. They are what I know. They are what I grew up with. I love all those Quarter Horses I see at HorseBack, but it is still an unfamiliar breed. I have to learn them, from scratch. When I’m with a thoroughbred, I think: oh yes, I know you. You are my people.’

There is an odd thing about breeds. All horses are complete individuals, so making sweeping generalisations is mad and wrong. On the other hand, certain horses are bred for certain jobs. A Highland is going to be very different from a thoroughbred. Within this imperious breed I love so much, you will get brilliant ones and dull ones, goofy ones and lazy ones, sharp ones and funny ones. The ex-sprinter I know up the road is a very different character from my sweet, dopey red mare. But all thoroughbreds do share characteristics, going back to those three foundation sires and the good English and Irish mares they were bred to.

They tend to be quick, sensitive, clever and reactive. Most of them are very honest and try very hard. They are bred to go forward, and they are creatures of the air, not earthed like the native breeds. I think they have what humans would identify as pride; most of them know when they have won, and are keenly pleased when they have done anything well. They are tough, in mind as well as body.

A lot of them are also extraordinary gentle, especially when faced with vulnerability. You hear endless stories of thoroughbreds being enchanted with children. My own mare goes into a trance when she sees a child, becoming very still and fluttering her eyelashes and breathing out in delight through her nose, holding out her velvet muzzle to say hello. My father did not think twice about letting me go in to the match-fit chasers he trained, when I would try and help him out on dark winter dawns at morning stables, when I was too small even to lift a full water bucket.

Those early mornings are too almost fifty years ago. Well, forty-three years. There is a lot of my childhood I can’t remember at all. But I remember morning stables. I remember those horses. They were where I started; they are what I have come back to, with gratitude and love.

If one of the books takes off, I shall get a dear mare, who never quite made the grade out on the bright green turf, and the red duchess shall have a friend, and there will be someone to console me should the worst ever happen, and my mother can stop worrying.

Out in the field, Red lays her head gently against my shoulder and I meditatively scratch her sweet spot and get the glorious scent of her in my nostrils, and say: ‘I do love you far too much.’ She nods. She knows. She doesn’t mind.

 

Today’s pictures:

A lot of work at the moment, so the camera has not been out. I am still trying vainly to rationalise the archive, and here are some old shots I found:

Girls and Stanley the Dog, let out to graze at liberty in the set-aside, before the second paddock was built:

This is one of my favourite cow shots ever:

The look of love. The thing that makes me laugh is that it was a very windy day, and the red mare’s mane is blowing up in the air like that of a punk rocker. My tragic helmet hair, on the other hand, does not move:

I do remember this day. I took about forty snaps of the duchess, because of the whole thing with the red coat and the autumn leaves and the symphony of colours:

I love that she is so soft and meditative in this one. I do talk all the time about her Zen aspect, and she does sometimes go off into a little dream, as if she is contemplating the Universal Why:

(Actually, she is almost certainly wondering when the hell the humans will stop taking damn photographs and give her some tea.)

PS. The last thing my mother said to me this morning made me shout with laughter. We were talking about one of those legendary huntsmen that all old horse people know. ‘You know,’ she said, with a bit of a twinkle. ‘He had an extraordinary success with women. I don’t know why. He was very hard on his wives, as hard as he was on his hounds.’

Small pause.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I think he was harder on the wives. He liked the hounds better.’

Rage.

Things have changed, in the horse world, since the days when I grew up in a racing stable in the Lambourn Valley. Some of those things have changed for the better. The new rug technology, for instance, is splendid. I have no nostalgia for the flat green canvas of the New Zealand, or the heavy sacking of the Jute.

Some things have changed for the worse.

The language is failing. What I refer to as a thoroughbred is now called, almost universally, a TB. I try not to get angry about it, because what can it really matter and because perfectly nice people use it. They do not think it a slur. But today I am in a hot rage, and all my ancient fury is flying into the yellow air.

TB is the most reductive acronym you can use for a horse. Its proper usage is for a disease which, before modern medicine, ravaged entire populations. Consumption was, most often, death. TB Sheets was the one Van Morrison song to which I could never listen.

Quite apart from that, it is ugly. It is an ugly reference to one of the most beautiful, majestic breeds ever invented. Thoroughbred has a euphony to it, fit for the fleet, proud animals who have illuminated the sport of kings. The word used to be spoken, in my youth, with tones of admiration, affection, even awe. I grew up knowing that these mighty creatures were the empresses and emperors among horses, bred over three hundred years for courage, speed, agility, stamina and strength.

Even worse, people now casually refer to what they call, with varying degrees of resignation and wryness, ‘a typical TB’. What does that even mean? Was Arkle a typical TB? Was Mill Reef? Was Dancing Brave? Was Red Rum?

Was Frankel a typical TB? When he stretched out over the Knavesmire in the Yorkshire sun, leaving Grade One horses flailing like selling platers in his wake, was that typical? When Simon Holt shouted, with joyous disbelief in his voice, ‘they can’t even get him off the bridle’, was that typical?

Funnily enough, I think he was perhaps typical of his breed, although he was the most exceptional example of equine greatness the racing public has seen in many generations. He was proud, intelligent, courageous, strong, brilliant, fast, and, in the end, once his humans had worked their magic with him, biddable. That is not the typical that those other people mean. It is what I mean.

Other ghastly, intellectually lazy, reductive collocations abound. Moody mare, there is another. People even put it on t-shirts. They speak the words as if they are carved in stone. The man in whose yard I have just spent a week, a horseman so blindingly good that he has forgotten more than I shall ever know, only buys mares. He is a professional. He makes his living from horses. He can afford no sentiment. He buys mares because he knows they are the best.

There is nothing finer in the world than a really tough mare. If you handle them right, they are more loyal and more brave than any creature on earth. They will give you everything, when it seems nothing is left. Was Dawn Run a moody mare? Was Oh So Sharp? Is Quevega?

Was Kincsem moody, as she won her fifty-fifth race on the trot, a record that stands unbeaten to this day? (She was born in Hungary, in 1874, and she routed them all over Europe, as dazzling as a queen, and when she died the Hungarian newspapers were edged with black in her honour.)

There are many more horrid, confining expressions doing the rounds. I hate them all. One of those which makes me want to punch someone in the nose is ‘field ornament’. This refers to a horse which can no longer be ridden. Its implications are nasty in about five different ways. Horses are not ornaments. They are not static, decorative items. They are living, breathing, sentient beings. Just because they can no longer ride or compete or race, it does not mean that any of their intrinsic qualities are lost. They may have honourable retirement. Was Desert Orchid a ‘field ornament’, as he drowsed away his final years in a quiet paddock, dreaming of the days when he set the crowds at Cheltenham and Sandown and Kempton on a roar?

The reason I am in such a rage about all this is that today someone suggested that the red mare might be a headshaker.

It was not meant unkindly. It was intended in the spirit of helpfulness. It is just the way that many people now speak about horses. It is the putting in a box, the applying of a label. It is this labelling that sends me into a frenzy. As I heard it, all the subterranean resentments burst into raging, scarlet life, and I was so angry I had to walk away, before I said something unforgivable.

Red and I, as the Dear Readers know, sometimes have our scratchy days. Sometimes, this takes the form of a sort of yawing with the head and neck. Usually, if I concentrate, I can work through it. We always, always, find a good note on which to end.

It does not happen often, but it has been there, on occasion, from the beginning.

On the other hand, the vast majority of our days are composed of harmony and light. This is one of those moody mares, typical TBs, of which the idle speak. Just to put a cherry on the stereotype, she is chestnut, with almost four white socks. (One is so tiny it hardly counts as a sock, but the superstitious would still look askance.)

This mare, most days, will stand still on command, will move one foot when I point at it, will back up her half-ton body when I twitch my little finger. When leading, she will halt when I halt, back when I back, vary her pace when I vary mine. I can free-school her, which is like lunging, except with no halter and no line. She will canter in perfect circles around me, make transitions from voice, come to a dead stop when I simply shift my body. Under the saddle, she will go kindly in a rope halter, make complicated changes of direction from a signal so subtle that it can hardly be seen, give me a sitting trot of such collection and smoothness that it is like riding the air. She will do a breeze-up on a loose rein, in open fields, and come back to a walk when I merely move my seat.

She is damn well not a headshaker. She is a horse who sometimes shakes her head.

Whatever it is, I shall get to the bottom of it. It may be pollen, it may be blood pressure, it may be sunlight. It is one of the mysteries of the horse world. I shall investigate.

But this miraculous, funny, brilliant, idiosyncratic, kind, clever, beautiful creature is not, ever, ever, going to have a label slapped on her. Her loveliness is so extreme that it often leaves me lost for words, and words are my business. Nobody is going to reduce her to three syllables.

As I finish writing this, I feel the tide of rage ebbing away. We shall be all right, me and my girl. It may just be that there will be days when the shaking is on her, and on those days, she will have a little holiday. The thing causes her no distress. She is, at heart, a supremely happy horse.

I hear a line, from my distant past. It makes me smile. It is from a film. It goes: ‘nobody puts Baby in the corner.’

I dream of Tidal Bay.

Over at Leopardstown today, a late chapter in a long and glorious story will be written. The veteran Tidal Bay is crossing the water to have a pitch at one of Ireland’s best chases.

Old horse runs in race is not the stuff of which headlines or fairy tales are made. But this is not any old horse, nor any old race.

Tidal Bay is one of the most intriguing and idiosyncratic horses in racing. He has a peculiar running style, with his head stuck in the air, star-gazing all the way round. It seems almost as if he defies the laws of physics, for a horse should not be able to travel at velocity whilst making that shape.

He also has very strong ideas about the world and what he wants to do in it. He quite often moseys round at the back, as if he really can’t be fagged, and whilst the rest of the field are getting on with it, he and his jockey (mostly Ruby Walsh, lately Sam Twiston-Davies) will be having what looks like a fairly comprehensive conversation. The chat generally goes on for about three-quarters of the race, and appears to run along the lines of: not sure I want to; yes you do; still not convinced; come on it’s mighty craic; oh, all right.

You cannot tell this horse to do anything. He is stronger and more determined and more cussed than any puny human. Riding him is mostly a matter of nuanced and intelligent persuasion.

Once the conversation is finished, Tidal Bay makes up his mind, starts galloping in earnest, and quite often moves from last to first. In the old days, because of all this head-in-air orneriness, Timeform put the dreaded squiggle next to his name. The squiggle is like the Black Spot. It means unreliable, ungenuine, not to be trusted. But the funny thing is that Tidal Bay, in a tight finish, is all heart and guts. His cussedness comes into its own, as he gets a bugger off look in his eye, and goes from mule to alpha horse in a matter of strides. Suddenly, he damn well is the herd leader, and he’s going to boss the lot of them.

In the Lexus last season, he gave the racing public a finish for the ages. Half a length covered the first four home, and it was Tidal Bay, with a never-say-die surge of speed and guts, pushing his way through an impossible gap between two gallant, fighting horses, who prevailed, to roars of disbelief and joy. I have watched that race ten times, and I still have no idea how he got up.

The squiggle was quietly removed.

This season he has been mighty in victory, and amazingly courageous in defeat. He humped top weight through the mud at Chepstow last time, and finished a running-on third. He still runs with his head in the air, and he still tends to stalk round at the back for the first circuit, but the clever people at the Nicholls stable have found the key to his battling heart.

Today, probably for the last time, he goes up against the best of his peers in a Grade One chase. He is thirteen, which is old, in professional terms. The diamond brilliance usually loses its lustre when racehorses pass eleven. He had a hard race only a month ago, which can take it out of any horse, let alone one of his venerable years. He is up against First Lieutenant, a lovely, talented nine-year-old. First Lieutenant is a favourite of mine; I love his rangy, athletic build and his honest Roman nose. But I shall be shouting for dear Tidal Bay today, although I think the odds are against him.

He will be reunited with his old pal, Ruby Walsh, and who knows what chats they shall have, as they wander along at the back? If anyone can do the improbable, Ruby can.

Tidal Bay is not a horse of ease and grace. He is a horse of character and grit. That is why I love him. I think that is why he is adored by the crowds who come to watch him run. He’s not quite like anything else. And he’s been around so long, and given a huge amount of joy. If the auld fella can pull it out of the bag, there will not be a dry eye in the house. Certainly not in this house.

 

I can’t put a picture of him here, because of copyright. There is the red mare instead, who never won a single thing in her short and undistinguished racing career, but is of course the Grade One champion of my heart. She gave me a canter today of such lightness and delicacy that it was as if we were floating.

Not what I meant to write at all.

It is a horrid, dirty, rainy day in Scotland, although we are very lucky in not getting the gales which are battering the rest of the country. I quietly contemplate the new secret projects which are growing in my head like saplings, and take one last day off as the Christmas season rolls to its close. I am now at the stage where I have had enough old lady early nights and days of thinking of nothing but my beautiful red mare and walks and laughter with my dear family to restore me to agency. I look forward to getting galvanised again, and pummelling my brain back into action.

I’ve been reading all my Christmas books (very well-chosen this year by kind relations) and playing about on the internet, where there is a lot of sweetness and funniness, and watching the racing. I’ve even had time for cooking.

As I was wandering about on Facebook this morning, I saw yet another doleful story about someone having to put up with ill-mannered and ill-bred remarks about thoroughbreds. At once, I wrote a furious defence in my head. I was about to post it here. It was going to be very long, excessively detailed, based on empirical evidence, and shatteringly comprehensive.

Then I thought: bugger it. Stupid people will think stupid thoughts and say stupid things. Almost all prejudice comes from ignorance and fear. I’m not sure that anything I can write will counter it.

I think: living well is the best revenge, and the best refutation too. Each morning, I get to stand with my beautiful, kind, clever mare, and admire her. I never get tired of admiring her. She is my great professor. She has taught me about the fine virtues of consistency and patience and kindness. She brings out my best self. I am slightly ashamed to admit that I probably behave better with her than I do with humans, because she can’t speak English, so I can’t explain myself to her.

I have to show her, every single day, that I may be relied on, through actions. You can’t say to a horse: I’m so sorry, but…

You cannot wave your hands in the air and relate how you would have done this if only you had the time, or you forgot that because you had a deadline, or you really did mean to do the other but were prevented by circumstance. You have to damn well DO THE THING. Day in, day out; whatever the weather, whatever your mood, whatever demons have you in their crocodile jaws.

And she teaches me that if I can do that, she will reward me with a sweetness and loyalty that has no end.

It’s not just that thoroughbreds have strength and courage and speed and beauty. It’s not only that they are intelligent and willing and generous. It’s not merely that they have unheralded comedic skills. They turn out to have a PhD in life too.

When I got a horse again, after so many years, I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be good for me to be physical, to get fit, to be rousted from my desk. I knew dimly, although I could hardly admit this, that it was a way of staying close to my darling old dad, because he was a horseman to his boots. It held strong memories of the best parts of my childhood. Thoroughbreds are what I grew up with, and when I sit on Red, I feel as if I have come home. What I did not expect was that it would make me a better human being.

A single mare cannot wipe away all my flaws and frailties. I’m still disorganised. I still procrastinate horribly. I am still flaky. My time management is rotten. I still get myself all jangled up and fall prey to horrid imaginings and crashing angst. I still do really, really stupid things.

But this remarkable horse has taught me about the things which are really important, and they are not the shiny, glittering, headline things. They are the good honest quiet things, which come from the earth, and from the heart. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank her enough for that.

PS. I had not actually intended to write this. I was just going to tell you it was a rainy day and that I was not doing much and that I would be back to full blogging strength on Monday. This all came flying out, rather unexpectedly, from the depths. I think perhaps the love has to go somewhere, and sometimes it is too vast to be contained in my puny chest. It has to soar into words, as if I am laying down a marker, offering proofs, or, perhaps even more importantly, recruiting witnesses. You are my witnesses.

I imagine that you all have sentient beings, animal and human, who make you feel this way. I imagine also, especially if you are British, that you might be a little shy about expressing that feeling. It is not what Ordinary Decent Britons are trained in, here in funny old Blighty. One must be ironic and self-deprecating and restrained. Gushing really is a bit of a cardinal sin. But as the Dear Readers know, I sometimes think one has to SAY THE THING.

I am also keenly aware that I have written versions of this before. I fall into the wicked pit of repetition. But when something is so true, I think, I hope, it can bear a little repetition. I like to remind myself of it. I like to have it written, so that I can take down this book, and slowly read, as Yeats said.

Thank you for listening. You are so very patient and good. I feel better now I’ve got all that off my chest.

Oh, and since you have got this far, here is a little reward. I suddenly think: I’ll give you the full Yeats. It’s one of my very favourites, and one of the few poems I can recite by heart:

 

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.

 

There is a man who knew all about the power of repetition.

What made me the happiest this week.

Just pausing in my hectic work day to give you a little Friday loveliness. (I say that with great certainty. It is loveliness to me. I quite accept it shall not be to everyone’s taste.)

There are many, many reasons I love my red mare. I love that she turns all stereotypes about thoroughbreds, ex-racehorses, chestnuts and mares on their head. Any good horse person knows that an equine will reflect back at you exactly what you put in. Breeds do vary – some are bred for speed, some for strength, some for steadiness – but all horses are individuals, and have characters as discrete as snowflakes. To say that every cob is this or all Arabs are that is as inaccurate as saying that all men like cars or all women crave shoes.

A thoroughbred is likely to be sensitive, clever and fast. That is the result of years of careful and tightly controlled breeding. Many of them are also very brave, and exceptionally willing. But you will get dear old dopes, and ones who are a bit windy, and others who are absolute jokers. Some are as genuine and straightforward as the day is long; some are entirely idiosyncratic and capable of being a bit of a monkey. Some like strength and drive from their riders; some yearn for quietness and softness.

My girl is clever, funny, generous, willing and kind. She likes steadiness and calm. She adores routine. She has a goofy love for very small children, who make her flutter her eyelashes and soften her eyes. She has a mighty talent for stillness, which is why I think of her as my Zen mistress. She likes listening to conversations, twitching her ears and going into a little doze of pleasure. She is fond of humans, thinking them good things.

She is about as far from the loon thoroughbred of ill-informed myth as you could get.

I love her for all these reasons. But the thing that made my heart lift most this week is that she makes my mum smile.

My mother is not terribly mobile and has to deal with a lot of pain. She is very stoical about it. To cheer her up, I ride the half mile to her front door, to show her Red’s sweet face. Each time, my mother’s own face lights up. My dear stepfather feeds the good mare apples. Only he is given special dispensation from our strict rule of not feeding by hand. Red is gentle and polite with him, lipping quietly at his fingers until all the deliciousness is gone. This makes my mother laugh out loud.

Then I show off a few paces, and do some figures of eight, and trot off down the long field towards home. The mare pricks her delicate ears, leaving pleasure trailing in her majestic wake.

What is it with the horse? an old friend once wrote, a while ago. There are a hundred answers to that question. I could get philosophical and say that horses teach humans everything about authenticity. They are perfect professors of existing in the present moment. They have their priorities straighter than anyone I ever met. They care nothing for the superficial, and everything for the profound, unshowy virtues, like reliability and kindness and understanding.

I could say it’s a matter of aesthetics. In an often ugly world, a good horse is a still point of beauty. I could say it is the challenge – my old saw about the half ton flight animal under the ten stone human. Sometimes, I think it is the most simple thing – doing honest, physical work in the open air. And there is the funniness. Red is a natural comedienne, and makes me laugh every single day. She is a fascination of complexity too – both a duchess, and a conscientious and responsible lead mare. (It touches me daily to see how seriously she takes that important job.)

But just now I think it is that this delightful creature can bring a dancing smile to my old mum’s face, by the very fact of her simple presence. She is better than any medicine. There is something in that which goes beyond words.

 

For some reason, as I put up these pictures, a line from Prufrock comes into my head –

‘Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.’

This was our visit:

Dozing, listening to chat, with the ears switching back and forth to get all the finer points of the conversation:

Are there APPLES?:

My mum, who was a pretty serious horsewoman herself and taught me the vital importance of light hands:

And off we go, with Red preening for the camera, and me still trying to explain to my mother why I have no bit in my thoroughbred’s mouth:

A story which almost has a moral to it.

Author’s note: sometimes I write a blog and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s right and tight and pointful. Sometimes I am unsure. I wonder, dolefully: does it make any sense? This is in the second category. Also, it has quite a lot of horse in it, and I had been planning to give the equine stuff a rest. But there we are. I publish and be damned because that is the nature of this medium. It is amateur: from love. It is not about shiny perfection or showing off. It reflects life as it is lived, and there are days in life when I make no sense at all and there is no point trying to pretend to you that I do.

 

As the Dear Readers know, there are many things in life which drive me batshit nuts in the head. Dangling modifiers; the Universal We; assumptions; management-speak: all send me wild. But perhaps the thing I dislike most is the putting of things into boxes. Yes, girls go over here, in the pink fluffy box, and boys go into the manly action box, and toffs go into the useless box, and Italians go into the lovably excitable box, and The Gays go into the musical theatre and comfortable shoes box, and country people go into the yokel box, and bankers go into the evil box, and politicians go into the They Are All the Same box.

Load of buggery bollocks.

There is a huge box for thoroughbreds, especially those who have been near a racecourse. It has to be big, because it has so many nasty adjectives written on it. Hot, unpredictable, mad, bad, impossible, over-reactive, hard-mouthed, unreliable write the idiots, with their felt-tip pens. Get a cob, they say. If you want to get out alive.

This morning, I took my red mare out into a new field for the first time. It is vast, and rolling, and when you get to the top you can see the country open up like a Russian novel, all epic hills and melancholy indigo vistas. The cows have gone for the winter, and now we may play in it. To blow the demons away, I thought I’d let her run. I stood in the stirrups, threw the reins at her, and whooped go, go. We had acres of grass, and I wanted to let her fly.

She cocked a duchessy ear at me, and dropped into a stately rolling galleon of a canter. ‘You really can go,’ I told her. Yes, she said, I know that, but I’m quite happy rocking along at a nice dowager pace. At the end, she fell back to a kind walk and I could almost feel her grinning at me, as if she were teasing, just a little. It made me laugh and laugh.

‘Are you sure you were a racehorse?’ I asked her. We did not mention the fact that she had been the slowest racehorse in England. She was bred to win the Oaks, and I do not like to dwell on her lowly career, flogging round the back at gaff tracks.

Walking home on the buckle, I thought about the boxes. (We were not actually on the buckle since I have no buckle; I do not use reins, just a bit of rope. It was the equivalent of buckle.) I wanted an easy horse, so I made one. I taught her slowness and stillness. Her life had been all speed. When she arrived she made it clear that she did not think much of the change from her professional set-up to my amateurish operation. She was spooky and uncertain. The whirring rattle of a pheasant could send her four feet in the air, in a vertical cartoon jump. The raw material was good, because she came from a great yard and a great horseman, but her job had been all about speed. I wanted to introduce her to something different.

It took her a while to get it. Now steadiness is her default. She swings through the world at a calm pace, at ease with herself and her place and her human. She does not see the need to rush. She knows perfectly well she could take off. Even if I did have a bit in her mouth, if she decided to tank she would have the power to do it. She still has some of her polo muscles, and a mighty arse on her, packed with power. She is half a ton and I am ten stone. There is no contest.

Despite my hatred of the boxes, I do have a theory about thoroughbreds. I think they are creatures of the sky, of the air. Everything about them tends upwards. They often carry their heads high; when excited, they stretch up their necks, bracing skywards. If frightened or claustrophobic, they are much more likely to rear than to put their heads down and buck. Red stood up a few times, in the early days, doing a sudden Champion the Wonder Horse impression, front hooves pawing at vacancy.

As well as slowness and stillness, I taught her lowness. I wanted to bring her out of the clouds and root her in the earth.

It all depends what you want. Some people like to keep the quickness, and that aerial quality. I wanted a horse that was so easy that I could get it out of the field, jump on, and slope off, without thought or doubt. I am rusty and creaky and forty-six. I had all my adrenaline in my twenties. Now I want to be able to mooch about and look at the hills and think thoughts and not have any surprises. So I kicked over the box and made the horse I needed, whatever the people with their adjectives had to say about it.

As I write this, I think – why did I start this story? I keep feeling there is a moral in it, that there is a lesson in there for the ages. It’s practically a fable. But I can’t quite grasp the moral. I feel my fingers reaching for it, and not getting a grip.

I think - it’s something to do with things not being set in stone; something to do with humans not having to settle for the inevitable. Wise people say you cannot change the thing, but you can change the way you think about the thing. I think sometimes you can change the thing. You don’t have to be confined by the boxes. The boxes may be wrong.

I think it’s something about possibility, and hope. In the wilder shores of my mind, there is a voice crying: if I can do this, then anyone can do anything. I do not have special skills. I have forgotten as much as I ever knew. I had to be humble, and start learning again, both from real people who came to help, and the wonderful virtual people out there on the internet, who generously share their knowledge and wisdom. (Nothing I love more than looking up a bit of cowboy sagacity from the Dorrances and the Hunts.)

But most of all, I believed in this glorious mare. I had faith in her. I have faith in her great kind heart.

Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s the lesson. Get past the labels, and have faith in what is real and good and true.

Or something like that.

 

Today’s pictures:

She’s a bit blurry today, but I wanted you to see the sweet expression on her dear face, and this was the one that captured it best:

A rather wonderful new arrival.

When I do my stuff for HorseBack UK, sometimes it is quite straightforward. An obvious photograph presents itself; the words that go with it spring easily to mind. Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of concentration and may not be dashed off in moments. It requires a frown and a wrangle and a squaring of the shoulders. It takes time. Today was such a day.

There is a new project afoot, and it is one that is close to my heart. HorseBack has got together with Retraining of Racehorses and taken on an ex-racehorse. Two of the brilliant women who steer the great ship that is RoR, Di Arbuthnot and Emma Balding, came to Scotland a while ago, and discussed the slightly outré notion, and, good as their word, found a candidate. He is a glorious fella called Peopleton Brook, and he was a sprinter. He won nine races, and when he came to the end of his racing life, there was not an obvious place for him to go. That was when Retraining of Racehorses stepped in. Brook was to come to Scotland, for a very new life indeed.

There is so much prejudice against thoroughbreds and racehorses, and even more against sprinters, who are often considered the nuttiest and most untameable of all. So to take one and introduce him to the HorseBack way of working, including Western saddle and riding in a rope halter, might be considered quite a stretch.

He loves it. He was pretty speedy when he put on his sprinting shoes. Now he is learning to take things very, very slowly, and you can see the surprised delight on his face.

I think he will make a course horse. He would not do for a double amputee who had never sat on an equine before, but there are veterans from the Household Cavalry with PTSD who would benefit mightily from such a Rolls-Royce of a ride. I love the idea that like those veterans who find a renewed sense of purpose when they come to HorseBack, so may dear Brook discover a meaningful role in life. He already has a new look of happy purpose in his eyes, and he is quick and willing to learn.

In my own little field, my lovely red girl is a bit sore after pulling a shoulder muscle. The wind was up and she was charging about the field as if back to her own racing days, and her cornering skills are not what they used to be. So I’m taking her for gentle daily walks in hand, until the slight stiffness passes.

I think of how all the ex-racehorses are called crazy and good for nothing. I think of the people who insist that thoroughbreds are impossible to handle. I think of Brook, up at HorseBack, in the wild hills, cleverly learning an entire new way of life, with all his intelligence and fineness. I look at Red, as we amble through the oaks and the beeches and the Wellingtonias. Her eye is soft, her head is down, her ears are in their dozy donkey position which signals ultimate relaxation. She is bred for ultimate speed, yet she absolutely adores these gentle morning walks. We step out in perfect time. She is polite and biddable, at my shoulder, never pushing or barging.

My heart expands, as it often does. It’s not just her profound sweetness and beauty that make my idiot old heart rise like a balloon, it is the thought that she quietly disproves all that prejudice, all those assumptions, all that lazy thinking, by her daily being.

They’re not a very likely pair, Red and Brook. He was bloody fast and won nine races. She trailed round at the back, never troubling the judge, despite the clutch of Derby winners in her glittering pedigree. But there they both are, in these blue Scottish hills, proving all the doubters wrong.

 

No time for pictures today; the work is getting on top of me.

Just two quick Best Beloveds:

And, up the road, sweet Brookie has a very well-deserved and joyful roll, after all his hard work:

There are links here to many, many shots of the glorious Brook, for your viewing pleasure:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151893608995568.1073741916.197483570567&type=1

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151893592920568&set=a.269393705567.184638.197483570567&type=1&theater

Why I love racing; or, the mystery of the thoroughbred.

One of the things I like about Facebook is that, rather oddly, it does carry a lot of wisdom on it. People find old sayings or famous quotations which speak to them, and paste them up, and since I need all the wisdom I can get, I feel rather grateful. One of the perennials is a variation on the theme of: the only way to be free and be happy is to stop caring what people think.

Any shrink will tell you this is true. People will think what they will; often, you cannot persuade them out of their staunch opinions. If they sincerely believe you are a lunatic, no amount of empirical proofs of sanity will convince them otherwise. The only answer is to make your peace with it, and carry on your merry way.
I know this to be true. I think I’ve even written a version of it myself. Follow your own goofy star, I say, every other day.

And yet, for all that, I occasionally find I want to explain myself. I am faintly aware that my intemperate passions and wild enthusiasms and dogged obsessions are slightly odd, or may be perceived so. What I should say is: let the perception stand. Instead, there is an absurd part of me which wants to say: no, but look, look, this is why.

I was thinking today about the horse thing. It’s not just the mare, who excelled herself in about eight different ways this morning, so that I spent about ten minutes stroking her neck and saying ‘Clever girl, clever girl,’ over and over. All summer, I’ve been immersed in the racing. I wake on big race mornings and think, like a child at Christmas – it’s Sky Lantern day, or Estimate day, or Dawn Approach day. Or, in the case of this morning: it’s Al Kazeem day. Nothing else matters. By the time of the big race, I am in a state of swamping nerves, my hands literally trembling, my breath shallow, my heart banging like a timpani drum.

It’s not just the mighty Group One horses who stir my blood. I fall in love with doughty handicappers, or little baby maidens, who are just learning their craft (there is something very touching about a talented two-year-old running rather green, looking around as if to say What the hell is this all about?), or the old-timers who won’t give up. I love the dogged stayers who go through the mud, and the fleet sprinters who skim over the firm going.

It’s the beauty, of course. The thoroughbred is one of the most aesthetically pleasing creatures in the world. I love it that they come in all shapes and sizes. There is a horse today of whom I am very fond, called Montiridge. He’s a big, burly fella, deep through the girth, muscled in the neck, all power. A couple of weeks ago, I won money on the lovely Tiger Cliff, a completely different type – lengthy and athletic, built more like an old-fashioned chaser than something which wins on the flat at York. Lethal Force, another favourite who runs today, is a neat, compact sort, with a big, intelligent eye and a handsome head, whilst the Queen’s great filly Estimate is a much more lightly-furnished type, with a delicate, narrow face and an enduring sweetness about her.

But also, it is the mystery. In perhaps no other spectator sport, in no other gambling medium, are the imponderables so imponderable. Yesterday, a filly called Filia Regina looked nailed on. She is bred in the purple, well-named since her sire is a king among horses, and she had absolutely cantered up last time out. She was long odds-on. She tamely dropped away to finish ninth, whilst a 20-1 shot took the prize. The stewards were so astonished that they called in the connections for a stern word. It was reported in the paper that the trainer ‘had no explanation’.

It might have been the ground. The weather had turned nasty in the north, and the going had gone from good to firm to good to soft in a heartbeat. Everyone is wildly discussing the ground today for the big race at Leopardstown. Declaration of War prefers it firm; no, no, has won on soft in earlier days. Al Kazeem needs give in the ground; but then he has won four times on firm. Despite this, his trainer, Roger Charlton, is reported as ‘praying for rain’. Racing people are not a godly lot as a rule. The churches where I grew up, at Lambourn and East Garston, were full only at Christmas. Yet in stables all over the country, people will be scanning the skies and sending up little prayers for rain or shine.

The ground does matter, despite the theory that a really good horse will go on anything. But it’s not the only thing. Filia Regina might just not have had a going day. They are like that, thoroughbreds. They can get out of bed the wrong side, just like humans. No one really knows why some of them are much better going right-handed than left-handed, why one horse will be brilliant at York but ordinary at Ascot. Horses that start their careers needing to be held up at the back will suddenly develop into front-runners. There is the inexplicable ‘bounce’ factor. There is also the arcane equine-human alchemy. No matter how talented the jockey, some horses react better for one human than another. Some prefer a quiet rider who just sits and lets them get on with it; some need to be galvanised and bustled along.

I don’t know why the mystery enchants me so much, but it does. I feel that horses live in a parallel universe to humans. The worlds overlap, but are also discrete. In a faintly preposterous way, I feel that they graciously allow people to share their world, even as the human brain will never fully understand it. They are essentially wild flight animals, all instinct and power and heart. They step, delicately, beautifully, generously, into the human sphere, and consent to stay for a while. To me, there is a profound magic in that. And perhaps we all need a little sprinkle of magic to go with our daily reality.
 
Just time for one picture today, since I must get my bets on.

Talking of mystery, nobody knows why this mare, whose grandsire won the Derby and the Triple Crown, who can trace her bottom line to all three foundation sires, ended up trailing round the back of moderate fields in her racing days. And nobody knows why, with all that famously hot thoroughbred blood in her, she will follow me round the field like a dozy old donkey:



Except, of course, that she has the sweetest heart of any horse I ever met. But that’s a whole other story.

Derby Day; or, my racing heart

It is Derby Day.

This is the day that I go down to my quiet field, ringed by Scottish hills and deep woods, and tell my mare of the great moment in 1970 that her grandfather won the storied race.

This is, of course, absurd, and not just because she does not speak English and the name Nijinsky means nothing to her. He was a prolific sire; there are hundreds, possibly thousands of his descendants running round green fields and emerald racetracks.

And yet, it is a daily source of idiot pride to me. It is one of the things that makes me singingly happy. On dark evenings when my spirits fall, I lift them again by going back through her pedigree, finding the mighty names of Hyperion, Gainsborough, St Simon, Mahmoud, Eclipse, and all three of the foundation sires.

Pedigree is what everyone is talking about today. The breeding of racehorses is a science and an art. It is also a lottery. My darling Red was the slowest horse in England, despite her illustrious bloodlines.

The question now is how will that lottery shake out for Dawn Approach. His sire, New Approach, won the Derby himself. New Approach’s daughter, Talent, won The Oaks yesterday. There are no stamina worries there. But it is the bottom line that people often say counts for more, and although there are stayers further back in his dam’s pedigree, Dawn Approach’s mother never raced over further than a mile, and ran mostly at shorter distances.

This is what makes today most extraordinarily exciting. Dawn Approach is a beautiful, well-made, athletic horse with a thrilling degree of natural talent. He also has the advantage of a glorious temperament, taking all the hoopla and razzmatazz of big race days with a gentlemanly calm. Nijinsky, by contrast, used to get wired to the moon. My mother still remembers watching him getting hotter and hotter in the paddock, even after forty years. It was only the genius and patience of Vincent O’Brien that made him into the racehorse he was.

I think of Nijinsky today too because people forget that many serious pundits said he would not stay. He too had questions over his bloodlines, but Lester Piggott and Vincent O’Brien had faith, and he repaid it in spades. He not only won the Derby but completed the Triple Crown when he trounced them in the St Leger, winning on the bridle with Lester cheekily easing him up at the line.

If he stays, he wins, is the line on Dawn Approach. His good temperament will help to conserve energy; his soaring talent will see him through. I’d love to see him make monkeys of them all, with his good heart and his big white face, but there is a possibility he will just pack up two furlongs out, and the glittering dreams will smash to the ground.

The truth is, nobody knows. We shall not be certain of anything until about four minutes past four this afternoon, when the cards are played and the hand revealed. Because of this uncertainty, it is one of the most exciting Derby days I can remember. We have an unbeaten colt, of visceral speed, incredible ability, high class, in the hands of a master trainer. And we have the hovering question mark, dancing over his lovely head.

As I write this, my fingers are trembling faintly. My heart is beating in my chest. There are still three hours to go and I can hardly sit still. I always ask myself why, on these great days. It’s just a race, it’s just a horse; what can it matter?

It is love, for me. It is an antic, vivid, visceral love. I love these racing horses because they are so beautiful, and brave, and bold. So much is asked of them, and so much is given.

But thinking now, I wonder if it is something even more profound than that. Despite Dawn Approach’s lovely, easy temperament, there is something of the wild still in these fast thoroughbreds. They are different from other horses in their pure breeding for the perfect combination of strength and velocity. Any of them, running from the gaff tracks to the famous courses, must go back through eight straight generations even to take part.

I think there is something in that purity, which produces the brilliance and the will to win, which touches an untamed part of the human self. Racehorses are not quite domesticated in the way that riding horses are. It is fanciful, but I think they still hear their ancestral voices, calling down the generations. There is something untrammelled and uncontained about them, which touches the depths of my own human heart.

In life, especially in middle age, I must learn to be sensible and practical and reasonable. (I do not always succeed.) I must live in the civilised world and play by the good rules of civilised society. Watching a great thoroughbred, at full stretch, with all that mighty, wild brilliance, that soaring spirit, that fierce determination, that gleaming loveliness, I feel released from my ordinary, workaday self. I too am untrammelled, taken back to the elemental, wild parts of my sometimes confined spirit. In some odd way, these brilliant creatures set me free.

I love them because they are beautiful, and I love them because they are true. They are truth and beauty; that is all I know and all I need to know.

And I hope that Dawn Approach does defy the doubters. I hope he does stay. I hope he swoops round the impossible camber of Tattenham Corner and sets the crowd on a roar. I hope his sun also rises.

 

Only time for two pictures today. I wanted to show you Red at her most thoroughbred and aristocratic. You can see her here after a damn good gallop round the field, her veins up, her grand blood coursing through her. I had to go back to last year for these, because now she is so relaxed that she rarely breaks out of an amble, and spends most of her time looking more like a dozy old donkey than a descendant of Derby winners:

Have a great day, my darlings. Win or lose, I think it will truly be a race to remember.