A hell of a drive.

The drive this morning was one of the more dramatic I have had. I set off in slanting rain, which had been rattling at the windows all night. There were amber warnings out for most of Scotland but I blithely ignored them, thinking everyone was getting far too hysterical and it was just a bit of weather.

The hills looked as they usually did, only with black clouds rising from them like smoke. It was just another dreich day, until I got to Braemar and there was a vast loch where the fields should be. For a moment I thought that I had forgotten the landscape and become so used to a spreading body of water that I had stopped noticing it. But no, it should have been green fields. The whole of the wide valley floor was covered in a rising tide, and, on the far side, in the shadow of some doleful pines, a flock of sheep stood, desperately, on the last island of dry ground, as the water lapped at their feet.

For a moment, I panicked. They were too far away for me to stop. Did the farmers know? Were the mountain rescue out? Should I stop and call someone?

Then I saw a lone figure in black waders, arms akimbo, water up to his ribs, plunging across the water to his sheep.

I wondered how they would get them out. The water ran for hundreds of feet in each direction. No car or tractor could get near. Would there be a community effort, like the raising of the barn in Witness, with each of the strongest and tallest of the local men carrying a single sheep above his head to safety? Would there be an airlift? Would there be flying sheep against the lowering sky?

I did not have much time to think about this as I was getting into the remote part of the glen. I measured it once, on the speedometer. There is a stretch of road without a house or a human for thirteen miles. In a small island with almost seventy million people this is quite remarkable. Usually, I find the space and the solitude delightful and invigorating. Glenshee is an open, benign valley, not sinister and brooding as some of the more dramatic ones are, to the west. (I’ve been properly frightened in one or two glens, spooked out of my rational mind.) But this morning at seven-thirty it was angry and tormented.

The water was bursting its banks wherever you looked. Where the rocks and bridges meant it had to smash through narrow spaces, it was turbulent and raging. Normally it is silvered as a millpond. Today, it was a furious peaty brown, with great white waves coming off it in all directions, as if it were a wild sea, or one of those white-water rivers you only find in the wild spaces of America or Canada. From the walls of the glen, more water came crashing and tumbling. Usually, the tiny thin lines of water that fall there look like delicate traces of mercury against the blue and green and purple. Now, they were like flailing white scars, tearing down the rock, urgent with movement and menace.

It’s really hard to describe and I’m running out of adjectives, but it felt as if the water was going to win, as if this mighty valley, so many hundreds of thousands of years old, would be wrecked and overwhelmed by the urgency of the flood, as if even it could not withstand these elements. In the wider parts, where one could get a panorama of the scene, it looked like something you might see on the news, the aftermath of a typhoon in the Philippines or Bangladesh, everything trashed and broken.

There was one last drama at Bridge of Cally, where the entire stone bridge was under a foot and a half of water and I drove through praying the electrics would not cut out, which they did once near Pitlochry, so my friend the Political Operative stripped down to his Calvins and got out and pushed.

Then, Perthshire, the politest county in Scotland, asserted herself in all her elegance and calm. The crazy weather went back into its box, the floods existed only in the occasional genteel sheet across the road, even the cows looked rested and self-contained.

At Tebay, rather relieved to be in one piece, I ate mushroom soup out of a Thermos and watched the 1.10 from Fontwell. My horse won. Then I bought some cake and some Tudor pie and rang my mother to tell her I was not dead in a ditch.

What a journey.

Somewhere to the north, a red mare rests gently under her favourite tree. To the south, the smallest cousin tells her mother: ‘I can’t believe Tania is coming tomorrow. I am just SO excited.’ I’ve known these children since the day they were born and we love each other a very great deal. That is why the drive is always worth it. I just hope that someone got to those stranded sheep.

 

This is what Glenshee should look like.

Now imagine the sky black, the water all over the valley floor and rushing, all choppy and white and churning, and lapping menacingly at the road. And from the very tops of those hills, more tumbling water chasing down the crevices, as if they are coming to finish the job.

Really quite something. I would have stopped and taken a picture, but I was a bit too wigged out, and just kept my eye on the road and my foot on the accelerator.

Fairly random thoughts. Or, it’s quite often not as bad as you think.

I am having an actual coffee break. A real proper break with a latte and a huge piece of cake and everything. Being self-employed is a beautiful and lovely thing, mostly because of the flexible hours which mean I can ride my mare, but oddly, I do not allow myself things such as coffee breaks. On a normal day, coffee is a fuel, not a treat. The lashing voice shouts in my head: on, on, on. Quicker, quicker, quicker.

Today is a logistics day, as I must get ready to go south. I have been running errands in the village, so I went to the nice man with the Gaggia machine and that’s why I’ve got the coffee and the cake. Amazingly, the nice man and I ended up talking about the Danes and their excellent record on recycling. (Charging for plastic bags has just come in, so all the locals are discussing the ramifications.) From which we moved easily to my favourite subject – the Scandinavian social contract. I know this will make at least one Dear Reader laugh. (You know who you are and it was a top, top comment. I smiled and smiled.)

Actually, I’m not sure whether there even is such a thing as the Scandinavian social contract. I made it up in my head. It’s just that all those Nordic countries consistently score at the top of every league from maths to well-being, and they have a lot of state and a lot of taxation, so from this I extrapolated: social contract.

Anyway, the point of all this is that of course I was not going to be writing a blog, because of the running around and the logistics and stuff, and because look at me and how busy I am. (And, I must admit, there is an awful subliminal suggestion of: be impressed by my industry.) But since I decided on the real coffee break with the real coffee, I thought: why not? Why not stop for a moment and write a word or two? The sky will not fall. I get myself into these lashing frenzies, when in fact all it is is mucking out the car and making the house look reasonably respectable for the dog-sitter. There really is time.

All of which made me think: things are so often less bad than one thinks. The human capacity to catastrophise is astonishing. Of course some things are much worse than one thinks, like a refugee crisis or the fact that there still exist some highly-paid financial operatives who think it is a wizard wheeze to break the law, but what I mean are the small daily things of dread. That awful telephone call, the defrosting of the fridge, the attempts to organise the piles of paper. I was absolutely dreading today. I had twenty things to do and I hated the idea of all of them. On top of which, it was pouring with rain and the sky was the low, brown colour of lost hope.

In the end, though, it really was not that bad. The packing and the kitchen tidying and the errands took about half the time I had thought. Admittedly, I did get soaking wet, as the rain is the kind which somehow insinuates itself, no matter how many coats or hats one wears. And there was a fairly demoralising moment when I lost my wallet and had to spend half an hour retracing my steps, before finding it perched sadly on the incinerator where I had taken a load of rubbish. But even that had a bright side – at least I did find it and would be able to pay for petrol, and nobody had come and lit the incinerator and burned the thing to a crisp.

The mare is hunkered down in her good rug, braced against the weather, but not grumpy, just stoically getting on with it. Stan the Man has decided that finding sticks in the rain is actually quite good sport. (Lurchers are not water dogs, and there were moments in the early days when he would look at the weather and refuse to go out in it. He’s butched up marvellously.)

Yes, the car is full of random bits of hay and horse feed and spilt grass seed from where a bag broke open, and the house is filled with small bits of mud and leaf and also feathers from a burst cushion, but it’s not the end of the world. I even opened the cupboard of doom and decided it was not really that doomy after all. I use it as a regular stick to beat myself with, but really it’s just a place where some slightly muddling stuff goes to hide.

Things, I thought, oddly sunny despite the atmospheric conditions, really are often not as bad as I anticipate. Must tell the Dear Readers. (The mean inner critic, the one who drinks gin and has long nails the colour of ox-blood, at this point says, her hard voice dripping with sarcasm: oh, yes, because they don’t know that already.’)

So after all that, I wrote you a blog in my coffee break. It is almost certainly because I had said I was off, and so all pressure was removed. There really are mad days when I feel obliged. Must give them SOMETHING, shout the voices in my head. And then I go all blank and cussed and resent the job.

It’s actually the pictures that take the time. There is a lot of collating and editing and choosing. I want the thing to look pretty. If I have banged on about the mare, I think well, at least I can give them something diverting on which to rest their poor tired eyes. It becomes duty, and then I panic. If I am saddened by my poor excuse for prose, then the hunting down of the good pictures becomes a thing. Time shudders past, and I grow livid with myself and what should be a pleasure becomes a blot.

Today, because I was not supposed to write anything, because I did it because I felt like it, because what the hell, I let the thing spool out and then found some entirely irrelevant photographs and it was not a chore at all. None of this is my best. But I rather think that might be the whole point. I suspect you don’t come here for best. You can get that elsewhere. Perhaps a little bit muddly and a little bit unpolished and a little bit real is also of use.

Well, it’s just a theory.

 

Today’s pictures, from the archive:

Love.

Out into the bright Scottish autumn we go - the red mare, the little Paint, the Horse Talker and me. The leaves on the trees have turned such a radiant colour that it is as if they are being illuminated by some mysterious inner light. They glimmer and gleam against a dusty Wedgewood sky. The splendid cows, big and burly and imperious, convinced of their own superiority, stand silhouetted against the horizon, a slight mist blurring the hills behind them, which roll in indigo waves like a silent sea.

The horses are bright and relaxed. They love this still, clean weather. We take the now-traditional obstacle course – past men with buzz-saws clearing the fallen trees, the mandatory wigged-out dog with its tremulous owner, gentlemen with leaf-blowers, a mysterious rattling vehicle in angry burnt orange with a roaring grill effect and a quick, clanking way of moving. Yeah, yeah, say the good girls, hardly flicking an ear; nothing to see here. Up into the deep woods, where the mountain lions certainly live, and the forest floor is gloriously muffled by moss and old pine needles, the red mare gives half a snort, as if she is contemplating putting herself on alert. Then she thinks better of it and stretches out her neck, calm as an old hound. On the way home, we exit, pursued not by a bear but a running man in screaming day-glo.

‘Jogger!’ calls the Horse Talker, to warn me.

Afterwards, I laugh. ‘Do you think,’ I say, ‘that he’s run all the way home muttering I’m not a jogger, I’m a runner?’

It was the perfect ride, the perfect gift. Two kind horses, in harmony with their humans, on a loose rein, in rope halters.

We are very proud of how kindly they go in their halters. It’s not a whole anti-bit thing, it’s just that’s how we train them on the ground, and those are the cues they know. The mare’s old snaffle droops in the feed shed, slightly redundant. We have a little joke that the people in the village secretly feel sorry for us, thinking that we are so scruffy we cannot afford bridles and martingales and proper kit. ‘Perhaps they’ll have a whip-round,’ I say, slightly hilarious with joy.

All the things, I think, that thoroughbreds are not supposed to be able to do, because they are too wild, too hot, too untameable. All that nonsense. The mare sighs with content, at ease with herself. I’m going south for a while. I took the time this morning because this will be our last ride for almost two weeks. It will gleam in my memory as I drive to the Beloved Cousin, lifting my heart.

I want, for a moment, to write to the horseman I bought the red mare from, to tell him of her brilliance. I want to tell him of how beautifully she goes, across all terrains, with me riding her with one finger. I want to tell him of how she can do transitions now from voice only. I want to tell him that she will politely back up when I merely squeeze my fingers on the reins, that she can do self-carriage as elegantly as the most stately dowager, that she no longer drops her shoulder or leans against me, but goes straight and true and light, within herself. I want to describe for him the lovely, long muscles she has developed on her great, athletic body. But he is gone to Argentina, to make ponies for the ten-goal titans they have out there, and I suspect this is all very small potatoes to him. (It is huge potatoes to me.) He is a professional, after all, with horses in his bones. We are a pair of gentle amateurs, in the best sense of the word, with its root in the Latin for love.

Love, love, love, love. That is all it is, really. Glorious, earthy, daily, heart-stopping love. She really has no idea what it is she gives.

As I go on my travels, I shall almost certainly neglect the blog. I’m going on my traditional autumn visit to my family in the south so there shall be cooking and chatting and children and all sorts. A great deal of life, in other words, which shall get in the way of pondering and writing. Forgive me. Back with a bang on the 17th.

A small thought on beauty.

Apparently, the great Helen Mirren has just said something like: ‘I’m not gorgeous, I never was, but I was always OK-looking.’

In some ways she is absolutely right. She is not classically beautiful. Her nose is a long and interesting shape and she does not quite fit into the current size nothing diktat. Probably, on an objective measure, she is indeed ‘OK-looking’. What she has though is something that makes her more ravishing than correctly obvious beauties. She is comfortable in her skin. And that shines out and makes her radiant.

I have seen three women in life who are not classical beauties but who have that same beaming radiance. They are: Dawn French, Judi Dench, and the Queen. Admittedly, I was quite a long way away from the Queen, since there were sixty thousand other people there at the time, but you could see the amazing beam even then. She is much, much more beautiful in life than she is in pictures, on account of a sort of internal light which streams out of her.

I’ve always thought beauty in women has been mis-sold. It’s almost a category error. Instead of seeing beauty for what it is - aesthetically pleasing, rare, and a pleasure for the observer rather than the holder – people often see it as the key to something else. It is regarded as the secret to love, the route to happiness, the path to fame, even a consolation against the hard realities of the world. I think: when poor Gwyneth Paltrow split up from the father of her children, did she look at her perfect cheekbones and think well, that’s all right then? I doubt it.

I brushed up on Saturday night and went for a rare evening out. In the old days, I would try for a simulacrum of beauty. I would do the face packs and primp the hair and try three different kinds of lipstick. Even though it is accepted in my family that it always was my sister and my mother who were the beauties whilst I was the girly swot, I did try and chase some kind of magazine face. Sometimes, if the hair fates were kind and the light was coming from the right direction, I could almost get a glimpse of it, just for a second.

Now, I am old and realistic. I dress up just enough so that I don’t have to care what I look like. I reach a level of acceptable polish so that I don’t frighten the horses, but can concentrate on good conversation and laughter and meeting interesting new people. It is for this reason that I never wear high heels. I can’t be amusing if my feet are hurting.

The evening was a blast. I found at least two fellow politics geeks, and we had a fine time ranging over everything from the aftermath of the Scottish referendum to the origins of the European dream to Reagan and supply side economics. There was one gentleman I had not talked with before, and as we delved into the thickets of the terrifying Spanish unemployment figures, I could see him giving me a little look of surprise. I think the look said: I was not necessarily expecting this subject from a female in a frock and a jewel. (This may be unfair of me. I have been burned before by the expectation that somehow the serious subjects belong to the big old males, whilst we pink and fluffy ladies discuss domestic matters and shoes and the price of fish. But I must not be paranoid about it.)

I am absolutely buggery bollocks at small talk and polite conversation. I can only really do the meaty subjects. Give me the human condition or the Scandinavian social contract or mortality or tribalism, and I’m off to the races. I admit this makes me an entirely acquired taste, and I do sometimes catch a flashing look of terror on people’s faces as I clamber onto one of my hobby horses and gallop off in all directions. I can do this sort of conversation at social gatherings when I’ve made enough effort to look OK, and then I can forget about my lipstick and get on to the good stuff.

So I love Helen Mirren for saying what she said. There is such pressure on women to look a certain way, mostly young and thin, that it feels like a day in the country to hear a famous female talk about herself in such a way.

I think beauty is a gift, but it is a gift more for the beholder than the possessor. I adore looking at pictures of Audrey Hepburn or Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly, as I love looking at pictures of blue Scottish hills or a fine thoroughbred. It’s just that I don’t think their beauty necessarily brought them all that much joy. They generously gave it to the world, which could regard it with delight. It was not the solution to anything. It was what it was, a thing lovely in itself.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are some sweet shots from the archive. I keep trying to organise my own photographs, and I keep failing. What these ones make me realise is that there really are only three wild beauties in my life – the little Paint filly, the red mare, and Stanley the Dog. No matter how many face packs I put on, I shall never get close to their raging pulchritude. That realisation not only puts me in my very human place, but also, quite frankly, is rather a relief. I can stick to my muddy boots and the straw in my hair and leave the gorgeousness to the experts.

Here they are, the absolutely lovelies:

No blog today.

Too much to do.

Actually, I had written two blogs for you in my head, before my teeth were even brushed this morning, whilst John Humphreys was still laughing at an interview he especially enjoyed.

I have no memory of what they were. I do recall that they were both damn good.

Then: life happened and the mighty words were wiped away.

Always carry a notebook, I used to tell my writing students; that brilliant thought will dissipate as quickly as breath on glass.

One especially lovely thing happened yesterday. An old friend was staying with my sister. She has been very ill and had a particularly horrid operation, from which her poor body is still recovering. I brought the red mare to see her. The horse went very, very still, as still as I’ve ever seen her. She held out her head to my friend, and stayed motionless as the hand stayed there, like that of an old parish priest blessing the faithful.

I have a theory that thoroughbreds know vulnerability. They are very clever and very sensitive, and many of them are particularly sweet with the extremely old and the very young. Also, it seems, with the not well.

My friend smiled, radiantly. The mare stayed still and blew out gently through her nostrils.

She was in quite a confined space, with cars around and new people and strange dogs cavorting wildly and general coming and going. Yet, despite all that, she assumed that deep peace and stillness that touches my heart like nothing else.

Eventually, reluctantly, I led her away, the wide smile of my friend dancing before my eyes.

Small moments of joy are always my best.

‘You good, clever girl,’ I told the mare. ‘See what you did?’

She blinked and breathed. I don’t think she really saw. She was mostly wondering where her breakfast was. But all the same, perhaps she had sensed frailty, and responded with her kindest self.

Thoroughbreds have physically huge hearts, which pump in an almost miraculous way to produce mighty bursts of speed. It’s what they have been bred for. I think they have huge hearts in a more metaphorical way, too.

 

Here is an old archive photograph from last year of the two dear friend mooching about in their field, just being their most uncomplicated horsey selves:

Friday.

The work starts to shift. People sometimes wonder why it takes so long to write a book. I wonder why it takes so long, especially when I can bash out fifty words a minute when I’m really cooking. It’s not the word count. That’s not even a sliver of it. It needs a lot of gestation, after the initial words are down. You carry it with you and think and think and think and think. The 153,000 are there, far too many of them, but you can’t see which ones must die. So you walk and gaze and ponder. Then, one morning, you think: ah, the mother must go. So it’s hasta la vista, Mama.

There’s also a ruthlessness which takes time to arrive. At the beginning, the precious manuscript is like a baby bird, every passage coaxed out with tenderness and gentleness. It must be done in a safe private place, with no cruel editing eyes to see.

Then, you get a bit tougher in the second draft. You are coming out into the light.

Then, you have to get absolutely bloody. It’s because of the Dear Readers. You can’t write a book with a readership in mind, thinking I’ll crack that market. If you do that, all authenticity is lost. You have to write the book you want to read. But as the drafts go on, the actual Readers swim into view. They are busy. They do not have time for your self-indulgent flourishes. They want a good story and some good prose and perhaps a little bit of universal wisdom or human condition. They like a laugh. They are not there to watch you do acrobatics.

I’m reading a book at the moment by a very famous writer whose editor is clearly too afraid to wield the blue pencil. Page after page of showing off prose dance before me. A scene which could have taken ten pages rolls on for three chapters, with some very, very writerly writing. I shout in my head: what’s wrong with a good old declarative sentence? If it goes on like this, I’ll never have time to ride the mare.

That’s when the ruthlessness comes in, and why. It is the least the Readers deserve. Oddly, by this stage, it is really not all about you. But this mental shift too takes time. I’m just reaching it now. I feel my sinews harden and my resolve shine.

In ordinary life, I make breakfast for my mother, and go down to do the horse. My sister arrives and walks round the block with us. The red mare is delighted since this means that she does not have to do schooling or transitions or anything fancy, but can just mosey along without reins, my hands scratching her withers as she drops her dear heads and sighs with pleasure. We are going so slowly that she can stop and say hello to some children on the avenue. She adores children. She loves the sound of human voices too, so the low rhythms of the Sister and I chatting are her deep delight.

I have no interest in Halloween, but the great-nieces and nephew are coming round later and I make them a chocolate fridge cake. I know they would prefer commercial sweets, but I think of them getting loaded up with sugar and additives and decide that, for the sake of the grown-ups who will have to put them to bed afterwards, some nice black chocolate and nuts and honey and raisins, with no terrifying E numbers or artificial colouring, might be better. I swish about, doing my domestic goddess schtick, making some soup at the same time, something I have not had time for in ages.

The radio is on. A Day in the Life comes on. The first part of it was written about my uncle. He died in a car crash and my father got the call very late and had to drive up the M4, through a black, frigid December night, to identify the body. He left my mother, eight months pregnant with me, at home. He never spoke of that midnight drive. I can’t imagine it. Sixty bleak miles, with a dead brother at the end of it. And then the sight of the body on the slab, that beautiful golden boy whom everyone loved, all the life and promise smashed out of him. My grandmother never really recovered. I’m not sure my father did either. The beloved name was rarely spoken throughout my childhood, as if the very sound of it was too much to bear.

I think of what my dad survived. Not just near-fatal falls on horses, back and neck broken twice, shoulders dislocating like clockwork, an ear ripped half off, but a grief so dark that it could not be put into words. And yet, somehow, he managed to be the life and soul of every party, bringing light with him wherever he went, so that people’s faces lit up and they stood a little taller, basking in the glow of his funny, idiosyncratic charm. It was only at the very end that the demons got him, when he was too battered and tired and defeated to defend himself.

I think of the slow, gentle, private life I live, in these Scottish hills. It is what I can manage. I don’t want to ride in the Grand National or be a shining star. I just want to write some sentences and think some thoughts. I want to watch Stanley the Dog with his stick. I want to walk round the block with my sweet red mare. Lucky for me, that is what she wants too. She was bred to be a champion, but it turned out she did not have the character for it. She is a tender soul. She loves the slow quiet as much as I do. It’s a sort of miracle that we found each other.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are from the week. They are not the best in terms of photographic quality. But they show the sweetness and that is what I want today.

So muddy and scruffy and happy:

Why not choose the good?

I’ve suddenly had a spate of cold calls. Some bugger has obviously sold my telephone number for ready cash and now they are all piling in.

I do get these occasionally, but I have a patent method of dealing with them. They are usually about double-glazing or kitchens, and the moment the person starts the spiel I say, very politely: ‘May I stop you there? I’m a tenant.’

They can’t get off the telephone quick enough. One gentleman was really nice, roared with laughter, apologised, and said cheerfully: ‘You should not be on this list at all. I’ll make sure you are taken off it.’

‘How kind you are,’ I said, and we had a lovely chat.

Even if you don’t rent, say you do. The callers hate it.

But these new ones are different; they want to maintain my washing machine and do my electricity. They ask all kinds of questions. I fob them off with a variety of vagueness, elaborate courtesy, and apologies. It’s a horrid job, ringing up strangers, and not their fault they work for rotten people.

I think, as I go into the kitchen to make strong coffee: who sits down in a room and says ‘I know. Let’s start up a company where we ring up people who have not given us their number and try to flog them things they don’t need.’ What childhood trauma or lack of love leads to that kind of bleak thinking? It’s fine for me, a minor irritant in a busy day, but if you were someone vulnerable from age or bereavement or illness, living alone, I imagine you could feel beleaguered and besieged. I’ve heard rumours that some of the companies like to target the old, thinking they are a soft mark, and that if you are over seventy you can get as many as five of these calls a day.

There are so many huge horrors in the world: militias and fanatics and dictators. North Korea has been in the news lately and I can hardly read of the misery. But there are a lot of small bads too. This sort of heartless, grasping business model is a daily bad.

It’s no wonder the corporate class is not beloved. I suppose they don’t care, as they come on the radio and spout their empty jargon. Occasionally, you hear a good business person come on and speak like a human and even make a joke and it’s like a flower on a dung heap. What I find so odd is that if you are clever enough to set up a company that works, you are in a position to do good things in the world. You could use your power for good instead of evil.

John Lewis is the shining beacon of this, with happy employees who are invested in the business and go on special John Lewis holidays at their lovely houses in Wales or somewhere. They have the best customer service in the country and sell useful items that people want. (My latest John Lewis delivery was free, and arrived in the north-east of Scotland, an area that makes many carriers purse their lips and suck their teeth, in two days flat.) They are one of the few companies that rode out the recession and they are nearing iconic, national treasure status. If they can do it, why can’t everyone?

Then one reads of Tesco, whose leaders appear to have lied about profits, trashed the company, been famously awful to their suppliers (they make small farmers despair), had a devastating effect on local shops and high streets, and now are walking away from the wreckage with their fat bonuses intact. It’s enough to make screaming lefties of anyone. I’m pretty soft centre-left, but when I read stories like that I want to nationalise the means of production on the spot and start singing the Internationale and break out all my old Billy Bragg albums.

I think a lot about choices. Everyone has choices. I see them in action on the internet. You can be one of those angry people, spreading hate and bile under your assumed screen name, or you can write generous, encouraging comments and share pictures of baby pandas and add to the sum total of human happiness. The old-fashioned grandmothers of a lost generation used to say: it’s nicer to be nice. I know it sounds hopelessly hello sky, hello clouds, and irredeemably weedy wet, but why would you not choose the good?

 

Today’s pictures:

Amazingly, there actually are some from today.

Here is one of the HorseBack course participants, having her first sit on a horse ever. I’m always incredibly impressed by this. My parents put me on a pony before I can remember having conscious thought, which is another reason the red mare feels like home. I try to imagine how it must feel when every single thing is alien and odd. They were very brave and good, these women:

(Mikey was a sweetheart too. He is one of my favourites in the HorseBack herd, the most affectionate and dear fella, but with a strong character and defined ideas of what he does and does not like.)

The view in the gloaming:

The autumn leaves in my field:

And the autumn horse. She does not really like the summer. She gets too hot and the pollen bothers her. This is her dream time of year. She can get all muddy and furry and not give a damn about anything. It is this time of year that she becomes her most horsey self. She was so happy this morning that I did not ride her, but just worked her on the ground and then hung out with her at the feed shed, chatting to her and scratching her sweet spots and laughing like a drain when she managed to liberate the meadow-herb treats from their barrel, with a look of absolute triumph on her face. When she is in this mood, I like to be near her, to catch the waves of content as they spread from her glorious, powerful body, as if she is emanating joy. Here she is, this afternoon, as the light was starting to fade, coming up for her tea:

I’m not sure I ever loved anything in quite the way I love her. It’s not the biggest love, obviously, because she is not a human. It’s not like the family or the old friends. It is an amazingly simple love, profound and enduring as the earth. It has a lot of astonished gratitude in it. It’s a bright, clean, true love, and it makes me laugh and smile.

A different reality. Or, the perspective police pay me a call.

After my good news collapse, it was salutary to go back to my voluntary work today. Working at HorseBack reminds me of many important things, mostly my own luck, as well as the capacity of the human spirit to rise above almost unimaginable lacerations and set-backs and troubles and wounds.

Today, they were working in a new partnership with the Venture Trust. Usually at HorseBack, I see veterans and servicemen and women, as that is their main focus. But the effect of the horses is so great that they have started branching out – in the last season, they have worked with young teenagers who are having trouble at school, and women who, coming from a background of often terrible abuse, have ended up in trouble with the law. The Venture Trust, which is a dazzling organisation, is devoted to giving second chances to people who have got lost in the criminal justice system, who have been labelled and written off. This week, they have brought a group to HorseBack.

I am always in a rush at the moment, because I am insanely attempting to write two books at once. As the agent line-edits one so that she can send it back for a final polish, I turn back to the other, which is at the third draft stage. One is fiction and one is non-fiction, so I have to stay sharp, and keep my brain versatile, so it can turn on a sixpence like a London cab. My professional life was dealt a blow a while ago, so these are effectively comeback books, and the odds are high. This is why I get stretched and panicked, and am always cantering about like a befuddled brumby.

I was going to do my usual dash, snap, chat, and depart. But the women were so magnetic, and the people who work with Venture were so fascinating, and the morning session was so transformative, even in the short hour I watched, that I forgot to be in a hurry. This was time well spent.

The kind of abuse in the people that Venture helps is sustained, inescapable and profound. Its victims are in a prison cell before the actual jail door slams. For many of them, the only analgesic that works is a fatal combination of drink and drugs. They lose any sense of agency. Venture takes them and shows them that they do have choices and they do have selves, underneath the layers of cruelty and judgement that has been heaped upon them.

They were so nice and smiling and brave. They admitted that they did not know horses and were pretty terrified of them. But they followed the good steps of the HorseBack method, squared their shoulders and made themselves the kind, reliable leaders that the equines need, took heart at the response of the gentle animals, and triumphed. One woman, who said her stomach was in knots of fear, did a hooking on exercise in the round pen, and managed to get her half-ton flight animal going round nicely on her cue, changing direction, turning in to her, following her steps, all at liberty. It was a perfect display, and the look of elation and amazement on her face was beyond price. I whooped and hollered, unable to help myself. It was such an achievement. I felt like crying.

I’ve faced a bit of adversity in my life, but nothing above the average. I have the usual middle-aged scars of death, divorce, loss, rejection and heartbreak. I’ve had failures and humiliations. But, unlike these people I saw today at HorseBack, I’ve never had to deal with sustained cruelty or unending despair, or that kind of awful invisibility suffered by those who are not considered by society to be a conventional success. Unlike the men and women who have served, I have never had to face hand to hand combat, or lurking IEDs, or a hidden enemy filled with fanatical hatred. I have never had to watch my best friend die.

Volunteering for a charity sounds like the kind of nice, cosy, middle-class thing that women of my age do. You get to the stage where you are conscious of putting something back, of needing a bit more meaning, and so off you go. It’s very expected and very ordinary. I did not really anticipate, when I embarked on it, that I would see people and hear stories that are so out of the ordinary that they make my very brain feel as if it is reconfiguring itself, as if the neural pathways are mapping new, unknown routes. My eyes have been opened to experiences and pain and courage I did not know existed.

I bang on all the time about my sweet red mare, and how she has changed my life and given me hope and solace, and how, when I am with her, the sea of troubles is swept away, and there is only goodness and calm. She loped today, a real Western lope, on a loose rein, out in the open grassy spaces, so relaxed and collected within herself that I fell on her neck with love and gratitude. She’s always held a tension in her canter, and today it was gone, and we damn well were The Green Grass of Wyoming. I imagine that when I recount these red mare stories, some readers might think there is an aspect of hyperbole, that sometimes I am getting over-excited and imagining something that is not there, and perhaps I am. But three miles west, along the wide blue valley, under the gentle gaze of these eternal hills, there really are horses who really are changing lives. And I get to see that. That is a gift more precious than rubies.

 

Today’s pictures:

One of the brave women, after her triumphant turn in the round pen:

My own little life-changer, having an extra-special treat after her glorious performance this morning:

She really was very pleased with herself, and she’s got a bit of a look on her face as if to say: yes, I really do deserve this. And so she does.

Good news.

The agent calls, with words about the manuscript. The words are good. She is sharp and full of business; she does not do gushing or sentiment. The words that send my heart soaring are not lovely darling lovely adjectives, but unadorned bald ones, about selling and territories.

Writing is an oddly helpless business. You can put the words in the right order and get all your ducks in a row and polish your paragraphs until they glimmer and gleam, but there is still no guarantee that anyone will like the thing, or want to sell it.

As usual with good news, I collapse in a heap. I’m oddly good at bad news. I get cussed and grit my teeth and think of the bastards not getting me down. I have no defence against good news.

Back tomorrow, when I shall have recovered.

 

In the meantime, here is Handsome Stanley:

The red mare makes my heart sing.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good week.

I am back to my other project. Two hundred and thirty-five pages have been edited this week. I am still not being strict enough about killing the darlings, and need to go back again and be more bloody. I sharpen my mental knives.

In the world, the gales have dropped and the sun has come out and the horses are calm and settled, growing their teddy bear coats for winter. The vet comes to give the flu shots and smiles and says: ‘They look well. Very happy and relaxed.’ I beam, as if a teacher has given me 100% in a test. My stepsister and her family arrive from the south. I ride the red mare up to see them and they stroke her and give her apples. She takes the deliciousness with polite, delicate gestures. We don’t feed by hand usually, but still she knows how to be courteous when the rarity is offered.

The Stepsister and I stand on my mother’s steps and talk, about life and love and children and dogs. The mare drops her head and dozes, listening to the human voices, her ears occasionally flicking, still as a statue. I break off from the conversation, suddenly overcome with pride. ‘When she is like this,’ I say, ‘I think of her as my Zen meditation, the only thing that shuts off the monkey mind.’

The Stepsister observes the mare keenly. ‘But she is always like this,’ she says, her voice bright and admiring. Another 100%. I practically fall off, I am so delighted.

We ride back down the avenue with no irons and no reins. Must deepen my seat, I think, remembering how I was taught that as a child, going over the cavalettis with my arms crossed, although in this case the no irons and no reins is more of a jubilee – look at this amazing creature, who can carry herself kindly with no steering. The mare, as if she has set her inner radar, navigates a true line. I rub her withers and tell her how brilliant and clever and good she is. I think again, for the thousandth time, how lucky I am to have her, and how much a part of her I feel, and how transformative she is.

I plan the weekend. It is going to be a working weekend. That is fine. Work is good. It is hard at the moment, because I must be ruthless and ruthlessness is not one of my talents, but I also take pleasure in it. I look forward to getting to my desk and putting my flinty thinking cap on.

I think: I’m a bit scruffy and a bit muddly and a bit disorganised. All the logistics I was supposed to do this week have not been done. The To Do list remains fairly unticked. But the leaves are turning, and the baby beeches down by the horses’ paddock gleam as bright as lollipops, and Stan the Man is having a fine time finding tremendous sticks that fell from the trees in the big gale, and my family is gathered, and oh, that red mare is at her crest and peak of goodness and beauty. And she got five stars from the vet.

It’s a very small life. I like that it is small. It’s writing and thinking and riding and walking and making my mother eggs for breakfast. There are no headlines in it. But this week was a good week, I think, after all that. It’s not a bad thing to be able to write.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from today, for once.

Stan the Man had what I believe the very young people call a play date, as some of his friends arrived in the set-aside. In the background you can see two dozy girls, clearly thinking – what are the humans doing with those silly dogs when they could be gazing at lovely us?:

Stanley the Manly adores this very girly girl:

The whole pack:

The sweet, gentle face of Autumn the Filly:

Red, with her best background. I love that she matches the leaves:

About to go for our sweet ride. Oh, those crazy thoroughbreds, with their temperaments:

A morning story about thoroughbreds and too much love.

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

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

My mother nods.

‘You love her too much.’

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

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

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

My mother frowns.

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

‘Yes,’ I say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Today’s pictures:

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

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

This is one of my favourite cow shots ever:

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

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

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

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

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

Small pause.

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