Sunday

A rather busy Sunday, in the end. So busy that now it is almost six and there is little brain left for the blog. I am hock deep in logistics and domestic activity. I go away next week, and dog-sitters will be arriving for Stanley. I cannot bear to send him to kennels, because of him having been abandoned twice, and I feel it might set up acid flashbacks in his poor mind. So now I look at the house and think everything must be organised, so the sitters do not feel as if they have come upon the place of a slattern. I am even eyeing the Cupboard of Doom, just in case they might open it by mistake and get a horrid shock.

The sweetest moment was working with Red. We did all kinds of groundwork. We went out into the wider field, beating the bounds, encountering new and sometimes faintly alarming objects. We did controlled circles, standing, stopping on command, and then some lovely liberty work, where she follows me without a rope. She was calm and good and responsive.

All the time I was working though, I felt a spark in her, some banked fire. When I finished, I thought she might go off and do some bronco tricks, but she just ambled off. Then, as I turned away, I heard a sound, and there was my duchess, heels in the air, doing her best slo-mo Spanish Riding School of Vienna trick. No matter how many times I see it, it never fails to make me laugh. It really is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Then she stopped, and stood very still, and gave me her dear old donkey, shucks Ma, it was nuthin’ face.

She made me happy and she made me laugh and she gave me a sense of achievement. That’s pretty good for one Scottish Sunday.

A day off

For the first time in about three weeks, I am taking a whole day off. No blog, no HorseBack work, no writing at all. The Horse Talker is even going to do evening stables for me. It’s just going to be me, and this fella, working out what is going to win the 2.35 at Fairyhouse:

Oh, the luxury.

I hope you may have an equally indulgent Saturday.

Horses, work, time and slightly surprising hats. Or, the end of a really rather lovely week.

Another packed day. There was so much to do that I did not have time to do any serious work with my mare. Still, we achieved something rather miraculous yesterday, so I decided to give her a complete day off.

This morning, I found her, with her little herd, standing under the great tree in the middle of the paddock, which is her favourite place. I stood with her for twenty minutes, and told her, for the hundredth time, of the great day in 1970 when her grandsire won the Derby.

‘See,’ I said. ‘No one really knew if he would stay. He’d never run over that distance before. But Lester thought he would stay; Mr O’Brien thought he would stay. And he came rolling down that hill with a double handful.’

She nodded and dozed and rested her head against my chest and let me ramble on. She is very forgiving, like that.

I should really be getting her ready for riding now. I should be doing all the proper groundwork that goes into that. Even though today’s hiatus was officially because my time management is in tatters, actually sometimes I think one of the best things you can ever do with a horse is simply be.

That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Then I went up to HorseBack, to see Jim Dukes, their most excellent vet, in action. There is almost nothing I love more than watching really good vet at work, and, when it comes to horses, Jim is the high crest and peak.

But there was also a serious purpose. I’m trying a new thing with HorseBack, which is to show all the work that goes on behind the scenes.

There are the banner days, such as on Tuesday, when a member of the government comes to visit, and there are the busy days which will start again quite soon, when the courses are in full swing.

Yet, even on the quiet, unsung, ordinary days, keeping an organisation such as theirs ticking over takes a whole team, working hard together. I thought it would be interesting to show some of that, so I took a little photo essay of the vet doing his job.

Then there was work; then there was a very quick peek at the 3.25 at Sandown; then there was the making of a soup and the considering of all the logistical things which keep my own tiny organisation going.

There are so many things that happened this week which I would like to tell you, but the brain is frazzling now, and it is time to stop. My eyes squint and my fingers crab and my grasp of the English language grows faint.

Still, it was a good week. I had high excitement, a moment of very private achievement, some new ideas, a lot of animal love, the good feeling of being part of something more important than I, a great deal of laughter, a handy little treble which came in at 14-1, a surprising hat moment, a rather unexpectedly touching communication with a stranger on the internet, and, just this morning, in real life, one damn fine compliment.

It was a short compliment, not more than five words. It contained no curlicues or flourishes, no flowery language such as I would employ. It came from someone who does not hurl the things about like confetti.

It meant a lot.

 

Today’s pictures:

The vet at work at HorseBack UK:

Rodney, the most patient patient:

With my friend The Horse Talker, who is a long-time volunteer there:

In the beautiful granite stables, for a little box rest:

Meanwhile, out in the paddock, there is my special friend Gus the Foal, with his heavenly white face, and his insatiable curiosity:

Some quick garden pictures for you:

Myfanwy has had a lovely time this week, getting very muddy indeed:

Autumn the Filly, on the other hand, is looking very pretty and pleased with herself, after a series of excellent adventures:

Since the inexplicable hat proved such a hit, I can’t resist giving you a couple more of those:

That dozy face never fails to lift my heart. (Red’s face, not mine.)

I’m starting to think this might have to be my Cheltenham outfit. It’s the kind of thing Sprinter Sacre would surely appreciate:

Stanley the Dog has been exceptionally good and sweet this week, and had a lot of fine stick action:

And through it all, sails the calm blue presence of my beloved hill:

And since it is a Friday, and if you can’t be a bit self-indulgent on your own blog I don’t know where you can be, here is one final shot of Red and me. I like it because there is the funny juxtaposition of my most speccy geekish incarnation with the affectionate dreamy sweetness of Herself:

I hope you are all having a lovely Friday afternoon, wherever you are.

In which the unexpected happens. Or, the Dear Readers make me laugh.

Occasionally, I give writing workshops. One of the first things I always tell my students is: never, ever try to guess what your readers want.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that you can never know. I don’t care how many market trends you study, or sales figures you pore over; guessing what the public desires is a fool’s game.

The second is that it bleaches the life right out of your writing. The minute you start thinking about any given audience, a chilling effect descends. It’s the literary equivalent of What Would Your Mother Think? Well, Aunt Edna would not like that, or Uncle Bert hates too many semi-colons, and if I talk about naked women my respectable relations will throw the book on the fire. And so your prose dies on the page, in the face of the wagging fingers in your mind.

It sounds odd, but you have to write for you. If you fascinate yourself, then you have a chance at fascinating someone else.

As always, I fall into the tumbly old elephant trap of not heeding my own excellent advice.

My rule on this blog is not to look at the numbers. It’s not about numbers. I freely admit I started the thing with the cunning plan that it should go viral and then millions of people would buy my book and I could retire and open a racehorse sanctuary.

Viral, schmiral. Luckily, I discovered I liked blogging for its own sake. I came to love the fact that I had a small, very select band of Dear Readers. I know many of your names, and get little slivers of your lives.

I saw a blog yesterday which had over 200 comments on one post, and I thought oh, no, that’s too much. That spreads too thin for the community aspect, which is the thing I love here.

All the same, when I’m feeling a bit grinny and groany, I do occasionally look at the pesky graphs. If the lines fall downwards off a cliff, as they sometimes do, I feel momentarily sad, before giving myself a firm talking to. I am not so free from amour-propre that I do not get a little burst of delight when one post generates a lot of traffic.

So, here is the thing that really made me laugh. Today, after all the work and excitement and effort of this week, I was feeling a bit tired and cross. The weather has gone back to chill filthiness and my time management is still all out of whack and I’ve got a sore eye and that bug which was trying to get me a few days ago is back for another go. It is always in this kind of mood that I look at numbers.

Today, the story was a happy one. Up, up, up, went my beautiful balloon.

I laughed, because it was the picture of me looking nuts in a hat that did it.

There was no good prose at all. I had done nothing lovely with the language of Shakespeare and Milton. There was just a mildly inexplicable photograph.

You see, when I think of all the millions of people writing away on the internet, I realise I must offer something different or extra or valuable, to make it worth your while coming here. The only thing I had which marked me from the madding crowd was an occasional way with a sentence. There’s a lot of shoddy prose out there. I thought that at least I could give you a faint dose of lyricism, or a nicely-turned phrase, or the odd unexpected idiom.

But, my darlings, it turns out that all you want is crazed women in hats. I love you very much for it, and it has made me laugh and laugh.

It feels like a life lesson of the most profound kind, although I can’t quite yet work out what that lesson is. Something about expectations and assumptions, perhaps. Once I have distilled it into pithy, parable form, I shall get back to you.

In the meantime, I may have to buy that damn hat….

 

No time for the camera today. I’ve still got twenty things to do and no time to do them in. So here are four photographs from this week.

One is of HorseBack, one of the beauty of Red the Mare, one of Mr Stanley with his stick, and one of the lovely harbingers of spring:

 

 

Oh, and have been meaning to say: I’ve been hopeless at replying to comments lately. Some of you have asked questions, to which I have rudely not replied. I’ll do a Dear Reader round-up at the end of the week.

For which I have absolutely no explanation

Shattered after yesterday’s monumental day. I did not finish work until ten-thirty, so have no words for you.

Just one picture.

There are people who say, and I am of them, that one of the great things you can teach your horse is to lead quietly on a loose rope. If you can get the head down and relaxed, and the ears in the dopey, donkey position, so much the better.

Clearly, I also believe that if you can do whilst wearing a scarlet hat and waving at someone in the middle distance, so much the better.

HorseBack UK, and a serious visitor. Or, in which I am not cynical about politics.

It was a red letter day at HorseBack UK. This is why I have not been able to sit down and write the blog until eight o’clock at night. I have been photographing and writing and taking notes and even talking to actual humans, the whole livelong day.

At nine this morning, I rushed into my mother’s house.

‘How do you address the Secretary of State for Scotland?’ I shouted.

She looked puzzled and mildly quizzical. It appeared she did not have that information.

I tore back home and took to the email. I sent a message to my friend the Political Operative. ‘I’m going to meet the Secretary of State for Scotland today and I suddenly have no idea what to call him. Old episodes of Yes Minister are playing in my head and I know I’m going to call him minister. Is this in fact correct? Or a massive Bateman cartoon? Should I just say Secretary of State? Oh, bugger. You’d think a politics geek like me would know.’

Then I realised that the Political Operative would have quite enough on his own plate, and would have no time to deal with a flake such as I. And anyway, I was late.

The point was: the Secretary of State for Scotland was coming to HorseBack UK.

And it was my job to record it. 

I arrived, in dancing, glancing Scottish sunshine, to find the whole place being polished. The yard was swept, the office organised, the muddy old trucks put away. All the western saddles were out, and Scott Meenagh, the Para with two prosthetic legs, was bringing in the horses.

I was in a state of dancing excitement. HorseBack is one of my high loves. What they do there is so remarkable that I want the whole world to know about it. I want to hang out more flags.

For them, this kind of thing is in a day’s work. But still, someone from the highest reaches of government coming to see the work is no small deal. As I understand it, the most important thing for them is putting all the pieces together. HorseBack has a lovely, simple idea at its heart: to help those wounded in the service of their country help themselves. But its effects and operations are very complex, and cover an astonishing range.

If the Secretary chose to involve himself, he could gather together the disparate ministries, from the Department of Defence to all the health and social services, and make a difference. This is politics at its most useful and best.

My plan was to stay in the background. I would be the silent scribbler, the velvet-footed snapper. I had my stout boots on; my notebook and camera were at the ready. But I was determined at least to sound proper when I was introduced. I would look the important gentleman in the eye and say, in the loud clear voice my mother taught me: ‘Secretary of State, how do you do?’

Of course, when he arrived, I completely lost my nerve.

‘Oh hello,’ I said, faltering, looking at my feet. ‘Sir, Secretary, Secretary of State.’ My voice tailed off into pathetic obscurity. Finer people than I bore him off, to see the show.

There was a most excellent, polished presentation, given by Jock Hutchison, who, with his wife Emma, came up with this whole miraculous idea. Jock is very, very good at this kind of thing. He manages to cram in a vast amount of information, go at a galloping speed, and even make a few jokes, to leaven the whole. What he is talking about is profoundly serious, but too much seriousness can make Ordinary Decent Britons uncomfortable, and he knows when to crack the atmosphere. Besides, he was a Royal Marine, and if there is one thing that people who serve know, it is dark humour.

Then Scott spoke. He is in the Paras, and he was blown up by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, and lost both his legs. He has had 22 operations in the last couple of years, something he states in a most matter-of-fact voice. He can tell the story from the inside.

He spoke of what happens when you serve, when you are blown sky-high, when you come back down to earth and want to know what it is you still can do, when there are parts of you missing. He talked of how HorseBack helped to give him back his mission. He described how it felt when he got on a horse. ‘Mobility with dignity,’ he said.

I watched the Secretary, as he listened to all this. He is a still, serious man. He did not exclaim or raise his eyebrows or do the pity face. He watched intently, with respect, and appeared to suck in the information. I got the impression that he was filing away all the relevant pieces in his good brain.

What was interesting, as we all filed out into the sunshine, is that at once he started asking the instrumental questions. Which departments should he speak to? What would be of the most help?

What fascinated me is that he got it straight away. He did not have to be told twice. Sure as an arrow, he homed in on the thing that makes HorseBack unique. It is that many of the people who work here have been in the theatre of war, and have the kind of life-changing injuries that the participants in the courses have suffered. Part of what makes it so effective is the camaraderie, the shared language, the sense of mutual experience. No one needs to explain themselves, here.

As Scott said, vividly, without rancour: someone in a suit with a PhD in psychology is all very well, but when they say ‘I know what you have been through’, they really don’t. The people at HorseBack know of what they speak, because they have lived it.

After that, there was a horse demonstration. The Rt Hon Michael Moore MP was very honest about knowing little about equines, but even he could not resist the gentle face of one of the dear American Quarter Horses. Scott’s fellow Rodney went straight up to the important government operative and stuck his nose out for love.

There was a lot of action. Our local MP, Sir Robert Smith, was also there, and I definitely had my Bateman moment with him, in spades. I saw a tall man get out of a car, and Jock was in a rush and said, ‘Tania, would you show him round?’

I said, with enquiring courtesy: ‘I don’t quite think I caught your name.’ When the honourable gentleman said it was Sir Robert Smith, I felt like sinking into the ground. To overcompensate, I started talking, at eighty miles an hour, about the glories of HorseBack, about their thrilling new ideas for the future, about how their work astonished me each time I saw it. I was so embarrassed about not recognising him that I went into clattering overdrive.

After the polite gentleman managed to extricate himself, I ran into the house, where I found Emma Hutchison. ‘I think I may have frightened Sir Robert Smith,’ I shouted. (I had certainly frightened myself.) Luckily, Emma was in the police and is unflappable. She went quietly out to give the Secretary of State’s special advisor a riding lesson.

Special advisors, or SPADS, are cannon fodder for the press, often portrayed as princes of darkness, working behind the scenes with Machiavellian fervour. This one was a smiling, charming fellow, so delighted by what he saw that all he wanted was to get on one of those Quarter Horses. So Emma made his wish come true, even though it was not on the itinerary.

I decided to stop alarming the politicians and fell into conversation with the Secretary’s press officer. He was lovely and easy and witty, and reminded me of the boys with whom I had been at university. He explained that he was in the civil service, and so not a political appointment. With my reactions on knee-jerk, I made three Sir Humphrey jokes in a row, but I think I got away with it. I admit that I may have made a mistake when I gave him a dissertation on the art of dry-stone-walling, but his polite smile did not falter.

Even though he, like me, was in the background, I wanted to know what he made of the whole thing. I wanted to know if anything surprised him about the place, or whether there was one element that struck him most.

‘It’s that it’s just here,’ he said. ‘You turn off the road, down the little muddy track, and it’s like finding a seam of gold. You come down a path and there it is, a life-saving operation.’

He paused. It was such a good and clever thing to say that I wanted to skip and wave my arms in the air, but I restrained myself.

He said: ‘The extraordinary thing to witness is the arc of change.’

I smiled. I’m always looking for the one short paragraph that goes to the heart of HorseBack. I’m always asking for the one sentence.

‘Arc of change,’ I said. ‘Seam of gold. I’ll take that.’

The Secretary of State was making his final swing. He spoke, very well and clearly, to the people from STV. He cleverly gave them a soundbite without it sounding like a soundbite.

I reflected on how politicians are so much better in life than on camera. In the world, watching Michael Moore give his piece, I was incredibly impressed. He switched from conversational to professional mode on a dime, and gave the journos what they wanted, Later, as I saw it on the news, his reality and humanity were flattened, a little. It was still good, but the forty-second clip had bleached the dimensions out of it.

It’s fashionable to lump all politicos into the same box. The careless meme goes that they are dull, they are hopeless, they are idiotically on-message; they are in it for themselves, they have no human heart. I’ve never believed this, but I understand why people think it. It is not just because I am a geek that I saw the goodness in this particular politician. It’s not just because I have given up tribalism, or that I am getting soft in my old age.

I have always thought that most people go into politics because they actually want to make a difference in the world; I think it’s too cheap and intellectually lazy to write off the entire political class. I’ve always fervently held the idea that one should disagree with a policy, a political ideology, a view of the role of the state, without resorting to wholesale ad hominem, or idiot generalisation.

I can only tell you what I saw. I saw a serious man, observing a serious operation, with a serious mind.

He did it with grace, efficiency, intelligence, and openness. His staff clearly liked and admired him. He was not tortured with jargon, or twisted with tactics. He raced to the heart of the matter. He wanted to know what he could do.

This is the good side of politics. It is not all good, or useful. There are disastrous policies, and rotten calculation, and a daily dose of the self-serving. There is not answering the damn question. But there is a good side, whatever the cynics say.

Today, in a rather extraordinary place, with a group of remarkable people, as the dear old Scottish sun glimmered and slid and beamed, I was lucky enough to see that.

 

Pictures of the day:

There is a little photo essay here, and I wish I still had the energy to do clever, discrete captions, but I’ve come to the end of my stamina now. Still, I think you can see that this was the very definition of a Good Day -

My idiocy reaches new heights.

Oh, my darlings, what a blog I had for you today. Despite having insomnia last night, and still feeling extremely ropey from my low level viral load, I had a very lovely day. The Beloved Cousin rang (always a moment of sheer joy and antic pleasure); the sun shone like gangbusters; the Younger Niece was about the place; The Sister was being funny; there were charming visitors to see the horses; the mare did something astonishing.

I was tired and a little weak still, but I was going to write it all for you and you would have something delightful over which to ponder as you took your first Gin and It of the evening.

Then, I realised I was missing my wallet. That was two hours ago. For two hours, all else fell by the wayside, as I went round every room in the house, feeling under sofa cushions, peering under chairs, sticking my fingers down the back of radiators.

Of course I did the sensible thing of retracing my steps. ‘Where did you have it last?’ is always the question. But I am vague with virus and could not quite remember. I thought I had seen it on the seat of the car. Then again, I wondered if I had stuffed it in my jacket pocket this morning.

So all possible steps had to be retraced. Round the compound I roared; up to the Mother’s house, into the Sister’s drive, down to the paddock, into the feed shed. The mares looked astonished to see me in the gloaming, although Red gave a very touching whinny of surprised pleasure.

Then I had to search the car from top to bottom. I did this three times, because I have a fatal habit of looking for things in a place, not seeing them, then going back and finding they were there after all. This did no good for my peace of mind, because I had to rummage through the muddy boots, old dandy brushes, bags of horse food, and random bundles of binder twine that my motor has now become home to. It is also filled with earth and random sticks and chewed balls, thanks to the glorious Mr Stanley. It is not a very fine reflection of my current self.

I then drove to the Co-op, just in case I had left it there. The young gentleman, seeing my wild eyes and rabid stare, gave me a kind but pitying look, consulted his special folder and shook his head.

Then I started thinking that perhaps someone had taken it. I feel so safe here and love my community so much that I leave the car about the place unlocked. (If any police operatives are reading, you can stop sucking your teeth and shaking your head in horror; I have learnt my lesson now.) The vision of it on the car seat was growing more and more vivid; what if someone passing had just opened the door and pinched the wallet, fat with readies? I had a faint sense of violation, to go along with the arrant folly of the thing.

Finally, in desperation, I checked the fridge. The last time this happened, this was where the item was run to earth. But there was only some nice tuna for my supper and the remains of last night’s silverside and three bottles of iron tonic, mocking me.

I stared hopelessly at the telephone. I was going to have to ring the bank. I was going to have to have The Conversation, the one where I talk very fast and use all my most pleading charm and make jokes, to try and cover up the stark fact of what an absolute eejit I am.

I could not face the call. I’ll just have one more look in the car, I thought. Stanley and I went out into the falling dusk. I suddenly remembered that I had taken some pictures of him this morning, in the wild bit of the garden. Retrace your steps, shouted the stern voices in my head.

Back past the tiny box plants and the flowering viburnum I went, past the Japanese cherry I planted for my dad, and the little apple tree under which the Duchess lies.

And there, in the last of the light, it lay, like a joke or a promise. There it was, still filled with cash, very slightly damp from the falling dew, sitting quietly under the shadows of the Scots Pines.

And that, my dear Dear Readers, is why I cannot tell you about my day.

 

Just enough energy to give some pictures of the Best Beloveds, because there must always be those, no matter the circumstances:

When I rang The Mother, to tell her I had retrieved the item, because I knew she would be worrying, I explained to her about the Stanley pictures and how the memory of them was what guided my steps.

There was a pause. A note of gleaming pride slid into her voice.

‘So,’ she said. ‘In fact, Stanley found it.’

‘YES HE DID,’ I shouted.

That dog is an absolute marvel.