No words.

I was going to write you a whole blog about why words matter, but then I decided not to. I’ve been editing all day and my brain is gradually turning to mush and it’s minus four outside and I didn’t sleep very well last night.

Besides, you all know that words matter.

Mr Bobby Jindal sadly had to find that out the hard way, when he tweeted ‘Your welcome’ instead of ‘You’re welcome’, to hysterical and pitiless Twitter derision.

Sometimes, words matter when you least expect them to. I had to write a condolence letter not long ago, to someone I love very much. I always feel that scratches on the page are paltry things, in the face of death. But I bashed on, trying to avoid platitudes, trying to put my heart into my pen. The reply came back today. The words, amazingly, had mattered, even though I feared none of them were the right ones. (What can one say? Really?) I felt the old communion, running between old friends, who do not see each other often enough, but who may still send out little arrows of affection, small balm to shattered spirits. That does matter.

Tiny words mattered this morning, in the arctic chill, from a tiny person. The smallest of the great-nieces had come down to see the red mare. She was defying the weather and wearing her special gold-sequinned party skirt. I know no other human who can get away with gold sequins whilst standing in a snowy paddock. She insists on choosing her own clothes, even though she is only three.

She regarded the mare for a long time, and held out a little hand to stroke the soft muzzle. The mare went still and gentle, as she always does with children, whom she adores. (A lot of thoroughbreds love children, I never quite know why. It’s very touching.)

The small person went on regarding, pondering, observing. The mare snuffled through her nostrils and whickered. The great-niece rang out peals of delighted laughter. ‘She’s so funny,’ she said.

That pretty much made my day.

Then the great-niece told me, very seriously: ‘Rabbits eat carrots so they can see in the dark.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, gravely. ‘That is excellent information.’

Well, it turns out that I did have a few words after all. And now, here are some pictures for you, selected at random from the archive:

 

No words left.

What a blog I had for you today. It blossomed in my head as I brushed my teeth. It unfurled its brilliant petals as I rode the red mare, who was in her best mood, almost certainly because I was not making her round up sheep. It kindly put itself on hold as I wrote 1574 words of book and spent two hours on my HorseBack UK work. It got a little bit grumpy as I watched the 3.20 from Newbury. (It may have also been dismayed that I seem to be mixing my metaphors.) And then, as I sat down to type – phhhtttt, it was gone.

Carry a notebook, I tell my writing students, when I have writing students. You may think that idea is so shimmering with wisdom and grace that it shall never wander away. You would be wrong. How lovely it would be if I could follow my own advice.

Talking of which, I think the mighty blog was about advice. I pummel my cerebral cortex to no avail. There was something about wisdom and ordinary truths and life lessons and learning from the mistakes of others. All I know is that it was going to be a carnival, and now the carnival has moved on, to another town, and all I can do is watch it go.

You have to tell them something, yell the strict voices in my head. It’s Friday. They’ve had a long week. They want to go out with a bang. Give them some good stuff, preferably not involving sheep. If the strict voices were marking my report card, they would write: COULD DO BETTER.

Bugger it, says my human voice. You have written 10, 731 words of book this week. Admittedly, this is a slightly stupid amount, and probably 7,731 of those words will have to come out in the second draft, all the dead darlings lying bloody on the stage, like the last scene of Hamlet. But still. Your brain is telling you there are no more words. Not everything has to go into words. Sometimes, life can just be. You don’t always have to be explaining and investigating and digging for human truths. Sometimes, you can just pull the ragwort and listen to the Today programme and spend time with the family and laugh at the dog and ride the mare and watch the swallows, as they do that precision flying which seems like a miracle every time you see it. Not everything has to go into words for it to be real.

That, my darlings, is my story, and I am sticking to it.

 

Today’s pictures:

All my photographic energies this week have gone into HorseBack, so today’s pictures are a rather random selection from the archive:

Here is one of the HorseBack pictures I took this week. There were a couple that really did make me quite proud, and this was one of them. This gentleman was a navy pilot, and he had never sat on a horse before in his life until Wednesday. Pretty impressive stuff. Oh, and he only has one leg:

I’m ashamed to say that I used to be afraid of physical infirmity. I became hysterically British and embarrassed and did not know where to look or what to say. I was like an absurd parody of Fawlty Towers: for God’s sake, don’t mention the war. Since working at HorseBack, I have become almost blasé about the thing. I hardly notice prosthetics or missing hands or fingers or feet any more, because I have never met so many people who refuse to let physical challenges stop them from doing what they want to do. The spirit and character is so strong that it makes the rest seem unimportant.

And yet, it is important. It is worth mentioning. Learning to ride a horse from scratch is hard enough. Learning to balance in the saddle with one limb is that much harder. At the very same time, the vital part of this picture is exactly what you see, rather than what you don’t.

I’m not sure I ever learnt so much from one group of humans. It’s not just that I am no longer afraid or awkward when I meet someone with a missing limb or crashing PTSD; that I no longer see otherness or difference. It’s that I have learnt from their example the supreme importance of bashing on, rising above, not complaining, seeing the possible, joking about things which probably should not be joked about, refusing to be confined to a box or a label, and just damn well getting on with it.

My friends Baz and Jay went up Ben Nevis this week. They have two legs between them. They are Royal Marines, and Marines can do anything, but even so. Jay told me yesterday, as matter of fact as if he were describing a trip to the shops: ‘When we were lying in Headley Court, Baz said he wanted to climb Ben Nevis. So I said I’d go with him. And that’s how it happened.’

I don’t know about you, but if I were lying in a rehabilitation facility after being blown up, I’m not sure my very first thought would be that I wanted to go up Britain’s highest mountain. But that’s the Marines.

Jay and Baz hate it when I throw adjectives at them. They are too modest. They are doers, with no time for fancy talk. So I’ll confine myself to one.

Dauntless.

Ha. It turned out that there were some words, after all.

A small meditation on words.

I don’t write about writing that much, here. I think about writing all the time, as much as I think about horsing, which is a lot. Every day I try to stretch myself, to pummel my mind to work better, extend my sinews to find a better rhythm, throw the language of Shakespeare and Milton up in the air and try to make it dance. Just as the good horsewoman knows that she will never live long enough to know all that she would love to know about the equine mind, so the good writer will never get to the bottom of learning everything there is to learn about prose.

Yesterday, I wrote that I had forgotten how to write a blog. Quite often, I forget how to write a novel. I have to go and read one, to remind myself. Oh, yes, I say, that’s how you get a character from one room to another.

In some ways, the hardest writing I do is a completely voluntary sort. I do not do it for money, or fame, or any material reward. It is not even done under my own name. I am, for all the right reasons, anonymous. It is a daily lesson in lack of vanity, although, because I am a flawed human, vanity does creep in, like a guilty lurcher after food.

It is the work I do for HorseBack. The men and women I see there tell me stories that I can hardly process, let alone translate into perfect sentences. I am in a constant state of astonishment, awe, admiration, and deep humility. To do them justice, I must draw on every writing skill I ever possessed, and every day, I come up a little short. That’s not quite it, I say to myself, ruefully. Nearly, but not quite right.

Those who have served are such a paradox, of wild courage, filthy humour, quiet stoicism, moments of hilarious braggadocio, deep wounds, and changed perspective, that I’m not sure even Shakespeare himself could quite capture them on the page. They are at once very ordinary and absolutely extraordinary, ultimately straightforward and unbelievably subtle, easily understood and entirely enigmatic. They even speak a different language, which only they really get. A civilian can gain the occasional peek behind the curtain, but it is only a fleeting glimpse.

Today, instead of my usual dash in and out, chasing time as always, I stopped for a while, and dropped my shoulders, and spent some easy time there. There was the usual mixture of unprintable jokes, merciless ribbing, shouting laughter, and sudden, grave, contemplative moments. One veteran showed me a long scar, up his back. ‘That’s from Sarajevo,’ he said.

Tone gets lost on the internet. It’s part of the reason that there are so many fights there. It’s really important to try and express the tone, of these stories. I’ve been told things, under old oak trees, under the benign gaze of these blue hills, which are so extreme, so beyond imagination, that I can never write them down. I’ve heard of things no human eye should have to see, and no human body should have to endure. Sometimes, when the story is a particularly lacerating one, I can feel the very atoms of my own body rearrange themselves, as if the mind alone cannot process the information, as if it goes straight to the viscera, as if the exploded stardust of which my physical self is made is being stirred up by mere words, the telling is so strong. And yet, these stories are related in a down-to-earth tone, as ordinary and expected as if it is no more than a trip to the shops. There is no drama, no show-boating, no look at me. The worse the story, the more matter-of-fact the voice.

I’m very wary of pride. It can slip too often into chauvinism or superiority or narcissism. But I felt proud twice today. The first instance was early in the morning, as the red mare and I did some beautiful things together, our bodies in perfect harmony, our minds melded across the species barrier, our hearts cantering in matching rhythms. I felt proud of her, and I felt proud of myself, for giving it the time, for persevering, for taking myself back to school, so that I could be a worthy human for this great horse. I’ll never be quite as marvellous and shining as she is, but I am close now to doing her justice. It makes me lift my head and feel a singing sense of accomplishment.

And the second time was when I came in and wrote up my HorseBack morning, and, for once, I almost nailed it. I did not wander on, or amplify too much, or use too many adjectives. For once, the words came, good and true, in the right order. I can’t take too much credit for this. There is a moment when you are in the zone, and it is almost as if you are taking dictation. If I believed in higher powers or other consciousnesses, I would say that I am a mere stenographer for the prose angels. Often, when it really works, it feels as if it is nothing to do with you. The sentences are coming from somewhere else. Write it down, write it down, I say to myself. Quickly, before it is gone.

All the same, I did feel a little bit proud. Nearly there; almost right; good enough. For once, good enough.

 

Just two quick pictures today, as I must get on. The first is from my HorseBack morning, and tells its own story. The second, which Icannot resist, is a shot of Red with the very groovy farrier. I rather hate the term horse whisperer (you do not whisper; you listen), but I do think the farrier is a bit whispery. Red adores her. The moment the farrier arrives, my beautiful mare breathes a sigh of relief, as if all is right with the world, and goes to sleep on her shoulder. It never gets old.

Link to my HorseBack post here, in case you are interested:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152506770880568&set=a.269393705567.184638.197483570567&type=1&theaterhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152506770880568&set=a.269393705567.184638.197483570567&type=1&theater

And a final PS, which is to say thank you very much for the welcome back comments. I was really touched. You are very dear Dear Readers indeed.

No words left.

I have no words for you today. I emptied all the ones I had out of my head and onto the page. This might usually be a cause for gaudy celebration. But I am supposed to be editing. I am supposed to be cutting and polishing. I am supposed to be slaying darlings, so that the stage is littered with them, like the last scene in Hamlet.

Instead, I was up until after one last night putting on words. Thousands of the fuckers. And then I put on more again today.

Stop, stop, STOP, I bawl at myself, with my sensible hat on.

But without this new scene the thing makes no sense, says the voice in the stupid comedy hat. And you must explain this. And you must explicate that. And the fingers go tap tap tap and the thing grows terrifyingly big, mocking my puny plan.

The red mare, who knows nothing of words, except for ‘good girl’ and ‘breakfast’, canters up the hill and looks at the view. The view looks back. Please, please, says the sensible hat. No more words. No more.

We walk slowly home, on a loose rein, as the view folds up its tent and disappears from sight. And another idiot new scene unfurls itself in my head.

 

Just time for two pictures today, of my favourite mountain and my favourite dreamy face:

She has gone away into another world in that photograph. She is dreaming of something I cannot even guess at. She is guarding all her equine mystery.

Words.

Today, I am struggling with words. I never struggle with words. Words are the air I breathe and the water I swim in. They are my dear old familiars; they jog alongside me like faithful hounds. They are my people.

Some humans, apparently, see the world in pictures. I see it in sentences. Even when I am at my least cerebral and most instinctive, which is when I am working the red mare, I still distil what we are doing into paragraphs. If there is nobody there to here, I sometimes speak these out loud. (Luckily, Red loves the sound of my voice. She finds it soothing. Sometimes, it even sends her to sleep. I do not take this personally.)

But today, the words are like crazy sheep, and I’m the person on One Man and His Dog with the canine that goes rogue. No matter how much I yell ‘come by’, I cannot get the fuckers into the pen.

The wrangling is so hopeless that it has taken me two hours to write four simple paragraphs for a vital piece of work, and I’m still convinced they are no good. I’ve gone word blind. I stare at the things on the screen, and I have no way of telling if they are in the right order.

It is very disconcerting. It’s like suddenly forgetting how to ride. Or how to walk.

Too much emotion lately perhaps. Perhaps my bruised spirit is saying: stop. Perhaps the words will come back to me tomorrow, and I shall be able to see them again.

In the meantime, there is just the enduring reality of this dear face:

This morning, despite gales and rain, she worked so serenely and well that I wanted to give her flowers. She is going into a whole new dimension: the most gracious and duchessy of all the grand duchesses. If I were only very slightly more flaky than I actually am, I would go and look her up in Debrett’s.

One good sentence.

Sitting in the blinding sun this morning, as a warm, rushing wind hurled itself over the hill and the horses grazed quietly in the light, I said: ‘I’m very good at sentences. It’s a whole book I find difficult.’

This is true, although it is breaking all the rules to state it so baldly. In dear old Blighty, you are not supposed to say, out loud, that you are good at something. You may think it, very, very quietly, alone in your silent room, but you may not say it. Because that is boasting and bragging and not at all called for. (There is still, even now, the very faint implication that it is what They Do Abroad.)

And you know the even more awful thing? I’m really proud that I’m good at sentences. I love being good at sentences. The fear and loathing comes when I have to string them all together and think about pacing and narrative drive and plot and NOT GOING OFF ON TANGENTS. But a single sentence – ah, I can play with that, and make it mine, and make it sing. I can break all the rules and have pure fun. I may begin with a preposition or leave out the verb altogether or make free with adverbs, and it doesn’t matter, because I’m listening to the syncopated rhythms in my head.

The sentence fairy did not just pitch up over my crib and scatter magic syntax dust. My early sentences were awful: derivative and uncertain and filled with a yearning to be anyone but myself. (Mostly Evelyn Waugh and Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker.) The sentences grew strong because I worked at them over many, many years. Someone asked on the internet yesterday: if you were to give writing advice in six words, what would it be? I thought: I can do it in three words. Practice, practice, practice.

Almost immediately afterwards, I read an article in a national newspaper by a non-writer. This person was highly intelligent, very articulate, and was saying something profound and important. But the sentences lay lifeless on the page, flat and flaccid. They weren’t bad, and the informing mind behind them was good, but the words had no vitality, as if they had been bought in a job lot, second-hand, off the shelf.

I think of words as aerial things. I imagine throwing them up to the sky and watching them fall back to earth, wondering where they will land. Good writing takes immense discipline, but it starts in play. There must be something antic and vivid and child-like even, in the initial approach. It is the language of Shakespeare and Milton one is messing with, as I say to myself every morning, but at the same time, it is a living, shifting thing. Too many rules and mores make it turgid and po-faced, and that is when the tired phrases shrivel and die.

I wasn’t going to write anything here today. It’s a lovely, sunny Sunday, and I was going to have the entire day off. But then I started this train of thought, about sentences and why I love them. Even though I wrestle and wrangle with bashing through to the completed article of 100,000 words, and even though I am at the stage where the deadline looms and I am haunted by the fear of not being good enough, I can come back to the simple fact of the single sentence. I can do that.

When I talk about writing, I often say: I can carry a tune. What I mean by this is that I shall never be able to produce the dream book which lives in my head. I shall never be as good as my heroes. I don’t expect I shall ever overcome my narrative weakness, merely paper over the cracks. But I can write one good sentence, on a going day, when the light is coming from the right direction. And that is not nothing. And for some peculiar reason, I wanted to record that thought, because it seemed to me to be a little metaphor for life.
 
Today’s pictures:

Are in fact from the last couple of days, because I forgot to take my camera out this morning. But it is the same dazzling sunshine.











 

Even though this one is rather out of focus, I include it because it gives a sense of the light and the colours down in the field:







The dear old duchess has had a very good roll, and is covered in mud, but even despite that, her coat is still a glorious, blazing red:




I know there have been rather a lot of these free-grazing pictures lately, but it is one of the finest sights of my day. Each morning, I let the red mare out into the set-aside. It is not fenced. It’s about six acres of wild ground, with a treeline which forms a natural boundary around three sides. She could, if she really wanted to, trot off to Tarland. But she does not want to. She merely mooches about in absolute contentment in the long grass, and then, when it is time for breakfast, allows me to lead her gently back to her field. I love it because it gives her a sense of freedom, and when I watch her from a distance, I think she looks as if she is roaming over the prairies of Wyoming. (Too much My Friend Flicka at a formative age.) It is a daily pleasure of the heart, and of aesthetics too:



BASKING:



That’s the look which makes my heart flip in my chest:




The little pony is so white in the light that the camera hardly has enough pixels to capture her:


Of course, after all this, I laugh at my own absurdity. For all that I take pride in being able to string words together, the Dear Readers bring me gently down to earth – one of the most recent comments simply says ‘I always like the pictures the best’. Prose be damned. This makes me hoot with laughter. And probably is another good lesson for life, as well as being a fine corrective for any incipient swishiness.

In which I institute a new rule

Warning for VERY STRONG language.

 

I unfollowed someone on Twitter this morning, because they used the word cunt. It’s become a new rule with me. It’s my Cunt Rule.

It’s easy to forget that social networking (I so wish someone would think of a better name for it) is a very new beast indeed. I skip around Twitter so freely and happily that it is as if it has always been there. But it’s only about two minutes old, and the rules of etiquette are still unfolding. I try to be oddly polite on both Facebook and Twitter. I think it’s important. Just because it’s virtual, doesn’t mean there is no call for manners. Perhaps there is more call.

I still get muddled over small things. When conversations start up, it’s quite hard sometimes to end them without sounding abrupt, or just stopping, leaving a howling vacancy. I find this particularly tricky with Facebook messaging. We need an equivalent of there’s something on the stove/someone at the door/the house is on fire, which is the accepted telephonic finish.

The cunt thing is new. (I really hope that sentence does not get taken out of context.) I’m no Mary Whitehouse. I love a good swear. A judicious bugger or fuck or bastard can enliven writing, and speech, and be used for excellent emphasis or comical effect. But cunt is just a bridge too far.

It’s because it’s a lady part. Why is it that a piece of my anatomy is still the ugliest, most shocking, nastiest swearword? I can’t help it, I see it as rampant etymological sexism.

When I was younger and groovier, I tried to get into the swing, and rehabilitate the word. A lot of women were doing it, in the same way that black people reclaimed nigger, and gay people took back queer. But I’ve never really bought that theory. It might work for rappers and activists, but I really don’t think that Colin Powell or Barack Obama or Denzel Washington skip about happily referring to themselves as niggers. I don’t imagine that Graham Norton or Elton John run about gleefully talking about queers. They are still hideous words, freighted with a history of anger and bigotry.

Cunt is such a word, for me. It has undertones of fear and loathing. It holds the echoes of old ideas about women somehow being unclean. There is even a whiff of the ancient terror of vagina dentata. In my own private book, it will not stand.

It’s creeping into the social networks, flung about with increasing carelessness. I can’t look at it without feeling sad and uncomfortable. So, in the end, a rule was called for.

I’ve made one exception to my new rule. He’s a nice fellow who knows a lot about racing, and I really do want to know about what he thinks will win the Triumph Hurdle. He does not use the word in an angry, threatening way, but in a loose, easy manner, as if it is a simple part of vocabulary. It may be a generational thing; he is years younger than I, and the young ones seem to see nothing wrong in it. I bridle, auntishly, and turn my eyes away from the offence, hoping this one nice man will grow out of it.

But, apart from that, the new rule holds. I am making a stand. No one will care or notice; all the windmills are being tilted at. But I love a good windmill and I love a good tilt. I am riding my very own Rocinante in the privacy of my very own head, with my very own Sancho by my side.

 

Today’s pictures:

The happy herd:

Red the Mare:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Autumn the Filly:

Stanley the Dog:

Hill: