Of work and time and great, great mares.

As I go up to HorseBack to do my morning stint, I get put up on a horse. If someone says to me ‘Would you want to ride?’ the only answer is yes. The horses need a last go over the obstacle course in the arena before the first participants arrive next week, and it also means that the HorseBack team who are studying for their UK Coaching Certificate can put in some teaching practice. I get to have fun and feel useful and learn more about the Western riding, which is starting to feel less strange to me now.

As I leave, I get a lovely invitation to lunch. Feeling like an idiot, I have to say no, because I am running back to my desk. The three current projects I am juggling must be juggled, and my time management has not yet caught up, even though I swear I am going to improve it every day. Lunch just now is a thing of moments; fuel from the fridge to get through the rest of the day. This is quite odd, for a greedy person like me, but a great relief for Red the Mare since it means I shall make a nice light weight on her back.

I was reading yesterday about someone going on the notorious 5-2 diet. I thought: I have a diet. It’s the No Diet Diet, which is good for me since I refuse to go on any weight-loss regime for political reasons. I think it would make the Pankhursts sad. The suffragettes did not chain themselves to railings so that I could hate my body. On the other hand, if you are riding a kind thoroughbred mare, it’s only polite not to be too heavy on her.

The No-Diet Diet consists of: taking on absurd amounts of work and being useless at managing your time, which means that you have no space to cook great lunches loaded with olive oil as was my old tradition. Now it’s a ham sandwich and a cup of green soup, which makes the banting effortless. I’m far too busy even to notice I am eating less than usual.

I would like though, when kind people say come and have lunch, to be able to smile and say yes, instead of shaking my head with a wild look of panic in my eyes. I am going to work on order and lists. I am going to make timetables and stick to them. I’ll get there in the end.

All focus today is to finish work in time to settle down and watch the mighty Hurricane Fly in the 5.30 at Punchestown. Yesterday, the great mare Quevega made me cry actual tears of joy and admiration with her dancing brilliance. I hope today my lovely Fly will do the same.

A snatch of poetry suddenly comes into my head. It is from George Whyte Melville, a horseman to his boots, who fought with the Turkish cavalry in the Crimea.

‘I have lived my life -I am nearly done –
I have played the game all round;
But I freely admit that the best of my fun
I owe it to horse and hound.
With a hopeful heart and a conscience clear,
I can laugh in your face, Black Care;
Though you're hovering near, there's not room for you here,
On the back of my good grey mare.’

Ah, I think, a hardened old fellow brought almost to sentimentality by the very thought of his darling girl. Mares do that I think, whether you see them on the racecourse, or mooch with them in the field. At Punchestown, Quevega looked so tiny and plain compared to the great shining strapping geldings she was up against. She has no flashy looks; like the equally brave and brilliant Dawn Run, she is a most ordinary bay mare. Nothing to look at, said the commentators. I don’t mean to be rude, one of them added. Yet it is true; she would never catch the eye in the paddock.

But oh, when she was let loose by Ruby Walsh in the glimmering Irish sun, she was a thing of singing beauty. Poetry in motion is a platitude now, rubbed thin with use, but it could have been minted for her.

As I stood with Red later, in the evening light, feeling her dear head resting on my shoulder, scratching her cheek and telling her the story of the race, I thought: there really is something about the ladies. The mares stop my heart like nothing else.

 

Today’s pictures:

Talking of ladies, here are some splendid ones. The sheep and lambs have come for their annual visit to the south meadow. It is a real sign of spring and makes me smile every time I see them:

Daffs:

Winnie, one of my favourite HorseBack UK mares, who is doing good work this week:

Grinning madly, getting better at the Western, on the supremely relaxed Apollo:

Mr Stanley, with a look which says: don’t mention squirrels unless you really mean it:

My lovely girl:

The hill:

Time to settle.

I read an advertisement for a horse today on the internet. It said: ‘He will need time to settle before anyone can ride him.’

In the last six weeks or so, something remarkable has happened between my mare and me. There were many remarkable things before; I’ve banged on about them endlessly. There were marks of trust and moments of revelation. But it felt like 90%. There was the 10% still to go.

That is the part that has now clicked. I rode her today round a huge rough meadow. We ambled round as if we were out on a cowboy trail. You can feel the slightest tension in a horse, like the princess and the pea. I sometimes liken it to the feeling of a faint butterfly, beating its wings, somewhere low in the equine belly. It’s a tremor or a shiver. It’s hardly discernable, but it’s there. There can be a faint feeling of tightness too, the calling ancestral memory of the flight animal, getting ready to run.

Those are not there. There is just a feeling of depth and ease. It’s not just riding her. It’s in everything I do with her: leading, groundwork, guiding her through a gate, bringing her her hay, standing together in the field watching the sun go down.

It is time that did it. We took time to settle. Time gives you the lovely luxury of a routine that reassures and soothes. Time is where you can show your horse that you are consistent and reliable. Time is what gives them the confidence that you will never raise your voice or bring them your problems or punish them or take out your frustrations on them.

I think it is like this with humans too. When you meet a new person, with whom you think you might be friends, you can be charming and funny and show off your better angels. But it’s not like throwing a switch. There must be time, so they can see your faults and your quirks and your messy, muddly bits, and take you anyway. There must be time to settle.

 

Today’s pictures:

The herd:

Red the Good:

This morning at HorseBack, looking south:

Jura, the heavenly HorseBack puppy, with Western instructor Jess March:

He’s getting so grown-up:

Stanley the Dog, giving his enormous stick a good talking-to:

Rather dramatic hill today:

Digest of the day: sunshine, laughter, good horsing, work, family, dog, friendships, learning, gentle feeling of accomplishment. The last one is thanks to my good girl and her remarkable trainer, who just makes everything so much easier for us both.

Oh, and it’s QUEVEGA DAY. An hour to go before the big race at Punchestown and I am quivering with anticipation. It’s her biggest test for a long time, and I can see the brave darling getting beat. There are serious in-form horses up against her, and the ground is testing, and at Punchestown anything can happen. Up hill and down dale they go, bunched tightly through sharp turns and unforgiving undulations. But I stick with the great mare, from love and loyalty. She carries my money and my heart, and if she should taste defeat there will be no disgrace in it. She is so stamped with greatness that nobody can take that away.

A new life.

Quite without meaning to, I have created a completely new life for myself.

It all started with the whimsical purchase of a ravishingly beautiful red mare. This led to a snaking chain of new friendships which brought me to the door of HorseBack UK. I fell in love with it as I fell in love with my horse. After a while, I realised that I could not just visit once in a while, but that I had to contribute. I thought of various ways of volunteering and decided that the only thing I really had to offer were words. It turned out, thankfully for me, that words were exactly what they required.

At first, it was a once or twice a week thing. I could do grant proposals, explanatory literature, any writing they needed. There was talk of a weekly blog, which may yet happen. Then, again on a complete whim, I offered to take on another project for them, which now takes me there pretty much five days a week.

I could not be more glad if someone had brought me a lottery cheque. As I’ve said before, working with a charity is the most winning of win-win situations. It’s not just that you feel you are doing some tiny thing which actually matters in the world, which has nothing to do with the burnishing of your own ego; it’s also vast amounts of fun. From my point of view, it is a fine corrective for my vanity. None of the work I do for them is under my own name. It’s not about anyone saying: good gracious, that was a perfectly turned sentence. It’s all about subsuming oneself into something bigger and much more important. This, I think, is a bloody good tonic as one charges into middle age.

The remarkable thing about HorseBack is that it is like a family. Once people have been there on the courses, they are part of the family, and often they will return as volunteers. There is one veteran of this sort there at the moment. He has suffered such crashing PTSD that until he came to HorseBack he was unable to leave his house for six years. He told me yesterday, quite matter of fact, that he sometimes goes for ninety hours without a single wink of sleep. (Rat-tat-tat go the steel-capped boots of The Perspective Police.)

But it’s not just the servicemen and women and the veterans who are the family. Once you start working for the organisation, you are a relation too. I know the people and the horses now; I start to see all their idiosyncrasies and trace their stories. I realised this morning how fully accepted I am, because they have got to the stage of teasing me. I come in and out, with my camera and my notebook, with my hair all anyhow and, as today, my ratty old cardigan covered in hay and horse hair from doing morning stables, and I don’t care, because that’s what you can do with your family. No one bats an eyelid.

Suddenly, I don’t just have a book to write and a dog to walk. I have this entire new wide prairie of possibility. As the spring rolls on, the real work is hotting up at HorseBack. I will be snapping and scribbling at full stretch.

I tell you all this because it means two things for the blog. It means it is going to move more and more into being a very personal record. I used to try and talk about world events a bit, or politics; I would generate theories and try out ideas. This has been happening less and less, and I realise now will probably not happen at all. The thing is going to shrink, to the size of my day.

Someone on Twitter recently asked me how it was that I could be a self-professed politics geek and not have a word to say about Mrs Thatcher’s death. Quite apart from the fact that every woman and her dog were weighing in on the subject and I had nothing original to add, I replied honestly that there was no time. I still sneak off to catch up on the Rachel Maddow show and start each day with the Today Programme, but I have no space to form proper opinions on the events of moment. There are many other places you can go for those good thoughts and knotty arguments.

The second thing is that it will be shorter. Many of you will throw your hats in the air at the thought of that.

When I started this enterprise, I wanted huge numbers and worldly success. I was convinced I could go viral and everyone would buy my books. Now it has become a tiny, intense personal pleasure. I no longer look at my numbers. I don’t care about them. It’s just me and Red and the herd and Stanley the Dog and the hill and the shining shaft of sunlight that is HorseBack UK. And you, the Dear Readers.

 

Today’s pictures:

Gus the Foal, flaked out:

This is Winnie. I’ve only recently got to know her. I am besotted:

 

Mikey, another of my favourites, who is a famous escape artist, as you can see:

Cody, ambling in from the field:

This the gentleman I was telling you about. Not only does he have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but before he came to HorseBack he was terrified of horses. Now he gets a great sloppy kiss from Apollo:

At home, signs of spring:

And lovely girls:

Stanley the Dog on his favourite perch:

And the dear old hill:

Not really a blog.

Too much actual life to blog. Woke afflicted with an absurd melancholy which is too stupid to explicate. The solution to this is: people and work. And in my case, horses as well. Did my work work; did my daily HorseBack work; saw enchanting people; took the first spring ride on my beautiful mare, under the watchful eye of her remarkable new trainer. The wind was up and the sun was sparkling, and you might have thought a highly-bred thoroughbred might have twinkles in her toes or the wind up her tail. But she was as easy and docile and gentle as a dear old cob. She had her bridle on, with a halter over the top, and I did not use the reins but just guided her with the rope, and the feeling she gave me was so sublime that I threw my actual arms in the actual air.

And now the idiot sadness is vanquished, I am going to add a final shaft of sunshine to my day by watching the imperious Sprinter Sacre have his final romp of the season at Punchestown. Red the Mare and the big black aeroplane: that turns out to be all the therapy I need.

 

Sprinter may be one of the mightiest champions we have ever seen over a fence, but this girl is the champion of my heart, even when not out of a stately walk (as befits her duchessy status). Here she is, looking very pleased with herself after getting her five gold stars:

The small things, internet edition.

There was something very important and serious and to do with the world that I was going to tell you, and now I can’t remember what it is.

(Picture me now screwing up my face and squinting at the screen and trying to pummel my brain into action. Stanley the Dog looks slightly astonished.)

As it is, I do my morning’s work for HorseBack UK, and then settle to my desk to do my paid work, and once that is over, I start thinking about going down to the field for evening stables and that’s about all I’m capable of. I do wonder sometimes about those people who do three jobs and bring up a family and do good works and, oh I don’t know, make a garden or are brilliant at housekeeping. As always: awe and wonder.

Oh wait, I know what it was. It was about the lovely serendipitous things which happen on the internet. I bang this drum quite a lot, since the only publicity the internet gets is how wild and ghastly and untamed it is, filled with people who threw away the edit button. In this version of events, it is peopled with brutish trolls and shameless self-publicists, and everyone should just shut off those horrid social networks and read an improving book.

I’ve never believed that. It’s just that the trollish tendency are those who make the most hullabaloo. I like looking at the light side, and there is so much light. Not only is there kindness and generosity and support, but there are delightful stories, which make one smile. It might not be building the Hadron Collider, but bringing a shaft of sunlight into a stranger’s day is not nothing. (It goes back to my theory about the small things.)

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about the wonderful Rebecca Curtis. In it, I mentioned the brilliant Lucinda Rusell, who trains in Scotland and whose horses I follow closely. In reply, I got this, from one of the Dear Readers:

‘I am lucky enough to own a former Lucinda Russell racehorse. He's a total pipe and slippers chap - I can quite see why he didn't make it on the track - he'd be far too polite. I can actually imagine him saying “No, after you dear chap, you go ahead of me since you're in a hurry.”

‘He and I get along brilliantly together - not least because I was never meant to be a winner either and fortunately am not burdened by a competitive spirit. Indeed - if he and I do a 16 fault showjumping round, I will still come out of the ring rejoicing because “did you see the way he jumped the water tray? He was wonderful!”’

I love this for several reasons. One is that I keenly identify with the thing about jumping the water tray. Yesterday morning, I fell on my mare’s neck in delight when she took three steps backwards off a soft cue. (In the kind of training I’m doing, the crest and peak is when you can ask a horse to do something almost by just thinking it. The merest flick of the eyes, a tiny movement of the finger, a shift in the body, and they respond. The softer the cue, the better you are doing.)

Two is that I now have a new equine gent in my head, with his politeness and his after you and his pipe and slippers.

Three is that whenever I hear a success story involving an ex-racehorse, I want to hang out more flags. One of the hobby horses on which I gallop about is my loathing of the prejudice against thoroughbreds in general and racehorses in particular. Nuts in the head, people say, as if they know every single equine who ever touched a racecourse; can’t do a thing with them.

I’ve never understood this, since racing horses, from as young as the age of two, put up with astonishing things that the doziest old cob might spook at. They are clapped and roared by huge crowds; they travel routinely to strange places where jockeys they’ve never met sit on their backs; they are welcomed back into the winner’s enclosure with flapping flags and swelling crowds and even the fanfare of trumpets, in the big races. The flat ones are loaded into starting stalls which could have been designed to go against every single instinct of a flight animal. Every time I watch a race I marvel that such wildness and speed should be combined with such graceful fortitude.

And four is that my secret dream is to adopt one of Lucinda Russell’s ex-racing horses myself. Late at night, I wander over to her website and see what she has available for rehoming. Of course, I have my hands and field full with Red the Mare and her two girls, so it’s not practical just now. But in my dreams, I have four paddocks filled with spring-heeled thoroughbreds, all impeccably mannered after their start in the Russell yard, dreaming of their former glories at Ayr and Cheltenham and Perth. The fact that one of the Dear Readers has put this dream into reality gives me more pleasure than I can say.

Actually, after all that, it wasn’t that important and serious, what I had to tell you. It was just charming and pleasing; a small thing which cast a long shadow of delight. But it is those small things of which ordinary, good lives are made. Perhaps that is quite important, after all.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack UK morning:

This fella is quite new. He’s called Mikey, and he has ambled his way into my heart:

Back at home, there are THE FIRST DAFFS:

Stanley the Dog is still celebrating the coming of spring with a very large stick:

Myfanwy the Pony enjoying her breakfast:

The girlfriends:

Usually I like to put up pictures of Red looking incredibly beautiful. But I love this dozy old donkey face, and especially today, as it shows how relaxed and dear an ex-racing mare can be:

Little bit more demure in this one, despite half a bale of hay hanging out of her mouth:

Tired after a long day, and I am convinced this post shall be littered with spelling mistakes. Forgive.