Writing and life.

I suddenly remember about editing. It is thinking.

One of the odder things about writing for a living is that so much of the good work goes on away from the desk. I like to be sitting and typing and staring at my screen. This makes me feel as if I am doing something real and proper.

But so much of writing is dreaming. I had forgotten, oddly, about that.

Yesterday, I was hunched forward over the computer, trying to dig the bones out of this messy book. I went back and forth and could not see what needed to be done. I even tried reading the hard copy, which brings a slightly different perspective, but there was nothing doing. I spun my wheels and felt useless.

This morning, I had to run errands. Halfway to Banchory, I suddenly got it. It was the mother.

Then I got on the mare and took her out for one of our old lady ambles. I’ve worked out that I think she has a pollen allergy, which is where her resistance and the sometime head-shake comes from. If I take her out in a slow walk she is fine. It’s the faster paces which bother her. So our summer schooling programme is gone, and we are just going to mooch around, as if we are home on the range. It’s rather lovely, actually. I sit happily in the saddle and listen to her soft hoofbeats and let her stretch out her aristocratic neck and watch the blue hills go by.

Because I don’t have to think about riding her in this slow state, I can let my mind go free. More serious editing decisions came tumbling into my mind. It will not be easy, but I can at last see a way through. The dawning Eureka moments both came when I was nowhere near my desk. This feels like some kind of good life lesson.

Then I went back to HorseBack, after two weeks away. Two of my favourite veterans were there, their smiles as dazzling as the Scottish sunshine. A brilliant cowgirl from Colorado was there. Two Royal Marines were there. All the good horses were in, getting ready for a course, dozing sweetly in the bright light. I thought then only of the stories of that place which I must tell, and went home and spent far too many hours writing them. It’s a different kind of writing, and a different kind of thinking. The hours are worth it, because the veterans and servicemen and women I see there are so remarkable that I must do them justice.

One of the things that struck me, as I drove home, is how easy it is to forget what they have been through. When I first went to HorseBack, I was afraid of physical injury. I was horribly British and embarrassed. I did not know where to look, when I met someone with bits missing. I kept hearing the old Fawlty Towers line in my head: don’t mention the war. I am now so used to being around people with lost legs or disappeared fingers or a nose that has gone that I don’t even notice it. I see the person, not the injury. The person is transfigured by war; the scars are there. But at the same time, that person is still whole and capable and funny and brilliant and goofy and complex. Yet, I think, I must not tumble into an error on the other side. Just because I no longer see the wounds, it does not mean they did not happen. These veterans make it all look easy, because they are so stoical and sunny and they keep up a constant stream of jokes. It is not easy. They still have hard battles to fight. They fight them with astonishing grace.

I silently take off my hat.

 

Today’s pictures:

After the sweet ride.

Goofy face:

Now I’m going to eat the shed face:

Pretty face:

Even prettier face:

The cowgirl from Colorado:

The nobility that is Stanley the Dog:

This new camera is interesting. The colours come out completely differently. Both Stanley and the mare are much redder in life than in these pictures. I quite like the muted effect, although I’m not certain why it should be so.

A hard edit.

Back into harness I go. The notes on the book are in and I must do the hard edit. I wrote a ridiculous number of words, and many of them must be slaughtered. Usually, I get around this horror by creating a dead darlings file, where all the slashed paragraphs may go. This eases the pain. But today I find that every damn line appears to be a darling and I cling onto them all with crabbed fingers. I see the thing is far too baggy and self-indulgent, but I can’t see where to put the knife in. I must summon my ruthless self. That muscle is flaccid, and I must stretch and bend until it is hard and taut again.

Oddly enough, my physical muscles are in pretty good shape. This is most unusual for me, since for years I eschewed any kind of exercise as the height of vulgarity. (That was my excuse and I was sticking to it.) The mare got me fit without even meaning to. It’s not just the riding, it’s the daily moving about, the carrying and the lifting, all the ordinary work that goes into caring for a horse in all weathers. At the age of forty-seven, I have a body that works again. I went for a delightful Sunday ride yesterday, and I was suddenly aware of the luxury of physical efficiency. It is the only area in my life where I am efficient. This leg knows where to go, that arm understands what it must do, this back instinctively goes the right way. When I am on a horse, I feel at home, as if my ligaments and sinews had been designed with an equine in mind. I am not a brilliant rider, but when I am in the saddle I am at ease, as if it is where I belong.

Now I need to cudgel my mind into the same state for editing. Writing a first draft is a wild gallop. The most important thing is to let yourself go. Throw the reins at the thing, and kick on. Editing is like dressage, a matter of fierce control and discipline. I feel like a brumby who has suddenly been sent to Carl Hester. I want to buck and bronc, but I must learn flying changes. I suspect it may take a day or two. And a great deal of iron tonic.

 

Some quick pictures from the last few days:

In which the kick has gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just life, I tell myself.

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

 

Today’s pictures:

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

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

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

My girl:

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.’

A good lesson. Or, yes, I do write about the bad days.

Author’s note:

I’m still not officially here. I’ve come back from my trip away and am scrambling to catch up with work and get organised. I was not really going to do the blog for a few more days, but this was a story I wanted to tell. Usual warning: it does involve horses.

 

I was standing in the field this morning, talking to The Brother-in-Law. We were gazing at the blue and green wooded hills. I was waxing, as I often do. (I sometimes think he secretly wishes I would wane.) I said that I felt so lucky, surrounded by so much beauty, that occasionally when I put pictures of it on the blog it almost felt vulgar, as if I were boasting. Look at me, with all my damn trees.

He looked thoughtful. He said: ‘You know, even here, even with all this, one can have bad days. I hope you tell them about those.’

I should coco, I thought. I said, out loud, ruefully: ‘Yes, I do.’

But not today, I thought. Today, I would be able to tell the Dear Readers a story of magnificence, because I was back with the red mare, and the swifts had arrived, and there was spring and life in the very air. I would get on, and be brilliant, because I’d been riding all those top polo ponies in the south, and I was in the zone. I was on fire.

I had a lot of catching up to do, a lot of work, many things to attend to, but before all that I would make time for one glorious ride on my beloved red girl. It would be one of those stories where it was all joy.

(It is at this point I must admit that I was verging on the smug. In fact, I was as smug as Smuggley Smuggerson from Smugton in the Vale. Telegraph address: Smugpot.)

It started off perfectly. A fine free-school, some gentle affection, the bond tight and profound. I got on. Lovely, lovely. Out into the dandelion meadow we went. Lovely long lines. Light as a feather. I walked back on a loose rein, watching the mare stretch out her dear neck, and then decided, for some reason, to do a bit of schooling. Today was going to be all about softness, but then I thought I’d do some more technical work.

And that was when it all fell apart. Transitions, said the mare. Bugger that for a game of soldiers.

I never know why these things happen. I can come up with about twenty reasons, most of them to do with my own inadequacy, but there is always the slight mystery of the equine mind. I wanted a good, even trot, and she was not going to give it to me.

Out there, in the set-aside, with the little Paint watching with interest, we had a drag-out, drop-down fight.

I had tried everything – changing the subject, yielding the hindquarters, lateral flexion. I remembered what one of the great old cowboys, I think it was Ray Hunt, said about always looking for that place deep inside a horse where there is only willingness. Willing place, I thought. I said it out loud. My willing place would meet her willing place and there would be harmony. All would be willingness. We would have willing place up the wazoo.

Or not.

No, no, no, said the mare.

I forgot all the good principles of great horsemanship. I forgot patience and softness and feel. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said, in a furious voice. ‘You bloody horse,’ I said. Buggery human, she said back.

We were very cross with each other indeed.

In the end, I went back to my old school, the riding of my childhood. I gritted my teeth, and rode through it, kicking on. I did not do any of my newly learnt techniques. I was beyond that now. Right, I said, all nuance fled, I am here all week. I’m going to ride you and ride you until we find that good stride, even if we are still here at tea-time.

No, no, no, said the mare, tossing her head about. The trot was awful, ragged and uneven. I bashed on.

‘Oh, get on then,’ I shouted, giving her the most amateurish riding school kick. ‘Just go.’

And suddenly we were cantering. And suddenly, there it was. There was the good stride.

It was as if we had been listening to ghastly radio static, screeching and scratching across the airways, and all at once, someone started playing a Bach cantata, clear and true.

‘Oh,’ I cried. ‘There it is. Go on, then, you beauty.’

Yes, yes, yes, she said.

A canter, out of nowhere, of such balance and ease that I could hardly believe it. Round and round we went - loose rein, one hand, steering entirely with the body – all her furious ragged energy transformed into wonderful, controlled power. She bounced off the ground, her body singing with joy.

‘There it is,’ I shouted, whooping into the bright air.

I still can’t tell you what happened. Maybe it’s the sugar in the spring grass, maybe the owls kept her up all night, maybe she picked up on some hidden tension in me that I did not even know was there. Maybe she wanted to shake me out of my smugness. Maybe the Brother-in-Law had had a word in her ear. Maybe it’s just the thing that horses do, every so often, of testing the boundaries. They like good boundaries. It makes them feel safe. Every so often they test their limits, check their human, just as they would with the shifting hierarchies in a herd. Maybe I was just being a bit crap.

I don’t really know how, in the end, we found our transformation, and went from scratchiness to communion.

So yes, I do have bad days, even here with all this beauty, even with this horse that I love with my whole heart. And yes, I do write about those bad days. But the thing I do know, with horses, with life, is that if you kick on through, you can find the good, shining note, on which to end.

 

After the ride, looking as if butter would not melt in her mouth, as if she never had a mulish thought in her clever head:

Not a blog.

I’m not really here. I’m supposed to be getting ready for my trip, and so this is not really a blog at all. But I had to tell you of my red duchess. So this one is really for the horse people. The rest of you, just carry on as you were.

Yesterday was one of our worst days. Everything was out of kilter. We were like a scratchy old married couple, sniping and misunderstanding and missing the point. I actually felt properly cross with her, which happens about once every six months, as well as livid with myself. All hopeless and feckless and pointless. Into the garden to eat worms.

I never quite know how these things happen, although they always occur when I am getting cocky. I wonder if the cockiness transmits itself to the mare, and she does not like it. She is a very sensitive person, and although she has grown mightily in confidence, she is not a swaggery, sanguine sort. She feels things keenly. Because of this, she craves steadiness and consistency and calm. I wonder if the cocksure alarms her in some profound way.

My rule is that I leave all the personal stuff at the gate, as if I am carting it about in a great suitcase. My frets and worries are not her business. My job is to make her feel safe. But sometimes one can be carrying a little attaché case that one is not even aware of. I thought I was pretty fine and getting on with it yesterday, but I see now that I had some fairly gnarly tensions and furies twisted up inside. It is perfectly possible that my clever girl felt those, and was responding to them.

Today, the sun shone, and my demons had gone back into their cave. I had stopped lashing myself about yesterday’s debacle and went out with the intention of doing some lovely, slow, basic groundwork. Everything would be the kindest and sweetest and smallest of steps. I would concentrate on softness and feel.

And there she was, my gentle, saintly girl, back again. The crosspatch of the day before had vanished. We did a lovely free-school of such elegance and grace that I tried to make snapshots of it with my mind, so I could remember it always. Her dear ear flicked towards me, waiting to see what I would ask of her next.

That was the plan: do the fundamentals on the ground, and re-establish the harmony between us, and finish. But my friend the Horse Talker was up on her sweet Paint, and I thought, well, perhaps just a little ride. Just a nice extended walk, nothing more. The most important thing after a bad day is not to ask too much.

Round the field the two companions went, their ears pricked in the balmy sunshine.

‘Shall we go round the block?’ said the Horse Talker.

Bugger it, I thought. Stupid to waste a glorious morning.

Off we went, into the wide open spaces. Everyone was happy. The mare was all ease and lightness.

Up at the road, the girls observed the traffic. The road is our traditional stopping point. We are incredibly lucky to have plenty of fields to play about in. There is no call to go out on the public highway, where crazy people in vans might drive up our arse. (I have no idea why I think they might do this. Despite my attempts to eschew irrational thinking, I sometimes have a tendency to catastrophise.)

‘Oh, come on,’ I said, on a wild whim. ‘Let’s go out.’

The ex-racehorse and the novice Paint, who was only backed last year, both in their rope halters, walked out as calmly and politely as if they had been riding the roads of Scotland since birth. Huge lorries did pass by, although the kind drivers slowed with great care and courtesy. No rogue vans appeared. The girls did not bat an eyelid. Into the back lanes of the village we went, past barking dogs, random humans, and excellent building men constructing a whole house. Not so much as a flinch or a twitch.

To get back into the woods, we had to slide through a narrow gap between an old iron gate and a stone wall. It was so narrow that I had to lift my legs out of the stirrups. The mare did not pause, but kept a true line.

At that point I was so delirious that I dropped the reins and steered her gently with my body, waving my arms in the air as I sketched for the Horse Talker the full magnificence of the red mare and the mysteries of the equine mind. Red stretched out her neck and lengthened her stride, her body athletic and rhythmic under me.

As we got back to the field, one final test awaited. A vast oil truck was delivering its load of heating fuel. To get to the gate, we had to pass right next to it, as it was virtually jammed up against a tree. The space was perhaps three feet wide. It was a huge article, humming and grinding and shuddering away as it pumped its oil out.

Again, neither horse looked twice.

You may imagine the festival of pride and congratulation. You may imagine the kisses and hugs and strokes. I thought my heart would burst.

How can it go from dislocation and despair to harmony and communion, in 24 short hours? A long field discussion ensued, as we tested out various theories, covering everything from the jagged human mind to a spring-fit horse to a bad sleep interrupted by screeching owls.

I quite favour the notion that the dressage squirrels came in the night, and that was what made the difference.

I said to someone today: ‘The red mare not only teaches me about horsing, she teaches me about life.’

Today she taught me never to give up, that things are never as bad as they seem, that tomorrow really is another day. She taught me to return always to fundamentals, to have faith, to be kind and patient.

She also offered me a great gift. She did not get my best self, yesterday. Mostly, she brings out my better angels, but yesterday I fear she saw a glimpse of my darker demons. What she did today was so generous and moving that I feel tearfully humble, even thinking of it. She forgave me. She did not hold it against me. She took all her trust, in her dear hooves, and presented it to me, believing that I would keep her safe from the great lorries and the construction men and the barking dogs and the honking oil truck. It was if she was saying: well, you may not be a perfect person, but you are still my person. I still believe in you.

It seems curious that a flight animal, who has no concept of abstract thought or philosophy or psychology, can give a flawed human back a sense of self. But that is what she did.

Well, her, and the dressage squirrels, of course.

 

The glorious pair, relaxing after their morning of triumph:

Monday

1416 words, and secret project sent off to the agent. It is still in its most inchoate form, but I rely on her gimlet eye. She will dig the bones out of it, if anyone can.

It might seem a bit bonkers, to be writing two books at once, but I had a catastrophic loss of professional time, for reasons too crazily dull to go into, and I am now head down and driving to the finish, like Ryan Moore on a Stoute hotpot.

It may also be insane to embark on two such speculative projects. They are equally eccentric in their own ways, and I have absolutely no idea whether they shall ever see the light of day. Good thing I am cussed as an old mule. I am very, very good at channelling S Beckett. Try again, fail again. Fail better.

The mare was all over the shop this morning. She always does this when I get cocky and think I’m all that and start boasting on Facebook. She is like my own little delegation of hubris police. I had to work and work, and that light harmony which we have been in for so many days eluded us. I got strict, and asked her for her most strenuous effort, and she was so hot in the gleaming Scottish sun that I threw a bucket of water over her afterwards as if she were a runner at the Royal Meeting, coming back into the unsaddling enclosure. She gave me a very slightly reproachful look, as if to say What happened to the cowgirl mooch? We’ll find it again. We always do.

And now I am about to go away for some days. I have a memorial service for one of the great old gentleman, and a happier thing too, the confirmation of my beloved godson. I have to dig out my posh frocks and find some shoes which do not have mud on them.

I am very slightly melancholy. Perhaps it is the exhaustion of writing and writing that damn secret project. I put on 55,000 words in four months, which is a stupid amount. No wonder my brain has been going phut. There is also that naked feeling, of sending something off, and waiting for the terrifying verdict. My poor little babe is tottering out into the real world. Perhaps too it is that at last I can stop, and think of the losses of the last few weeks. The latest of the Dear Departeds were put in a box, because I had work to do. Now they are close by me, and I miss them. Bloody, buggery old death.

I’ll be off the blog for a while. It’s not a holiday holiday, but it is a break, and I’m going to stop all the clocks. I shall be back, brighter and better, with my dander up and my joie de vivre restored, on the 13^th of May.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are of the sunshine:

I don’t know what she was up to this morning, but that picture pretty much sums it up.