No blog today.

The party went with a swing and everyone was at their most delightful and I was very, very pleased. The soda bread in particular was much admired. (Admire my soda bread and I am yours for life.)

I came down to earth with a bit of a bump this morning when the poor little Paint filly suddenly developed a severe case of choke. Choke can manifest itself in many different ways, and this one looked at first like impaction colic, which was pretty alarming. The poor body was wracked with terrible spasms, awful noises issued from deep within, and her eyes were black with pain. We walked her round, pretending outer calm, until the vet arrived, but by that time the tough girl had got rid of the worst herself. It’s her American blood, I expect. She has the frontier spirit.

She was checked over and pronounced on the mend and given a painkiller to ease her woes. All this time, the ruthless red mare was making hay in the set-aside, ignoring her poor friend. When the vet pulled up, the duchess trotted towards us with a questing look, then realised that it was nothing to do with her and buggered off again. Then, to add injury to insult, she very, very slowly and luxuriously ate her own breakfast whilst the poor filly was allowed none. There is a flinty streak in that sweet red head.

After all the drama, and exhausted from entertaining, I now have what Nina in Vile Bodies would call ‘such a pain’ (actually a mild stomach ache) so I’m going to have an old lady rest and be quite ruthless myself and not give you a blog. The main thing is that this lovely person is all right:

Goodness, she gave us a fright. It wrung my heart, seeing her in such distress. But she has gumption, and she rallied. Her sire is a great champion, and she has inherited his fighting spirit.

Dinner.

I am having the family to dinner. I hardly ever have people in the house and getting ready has taken me all day. I managed to fit in a quick ride and my HorseBack work and then that was it. The rest of the day was spent in cooking, polishing, plumping, decanting, primping, and the arranging of flowers. Because I’m self-employed, I can work on Sunday to make up for it, but really. How do those of you who do it, do it? I am in awe and wonder. And it’s only Irish stew and chocolate pots. It’s not as if I’m making Coquilles St Jacques and Boeuf en Croute. Absurd.

Today’s pictures:

Big ears:

That face is after the ride, watching me make breakfast in the shed. Slightly beady look is saying: now, make sure you mix it up right and don’t forget the Seabuckthorn and the rosehips. As if I would.

Ready house:

Happiness.

One of the things I try not to do is universalise the particular. There was a very famous and very wise feminist whose great weakness was to extrapolate wide truths from her own subjective experience. I get a bit crazy in the head whenever I hear the Universal We. The We can apply to almost anything – women, scientists, Ordinary Decent Britons, the entire human race. I once heard it used on an erudite programme on Radio Four, where the speaker was a doctor. Her use of the universal We was perplexing, since it seemed to veer between the medical profession, women in general, and the entire human race. At any one moment, it was impossible to infer which one she meant. I was very, very cross about that.

I also try not to take things for granted, or to make assumptions.

Sadly, the flesh is weak, and I often fall into the elephant traps I try so hard to avoid.

I lately read about a survey which said that 64% of people were not happy, and believed that happiness was harder to attain now than it has ever been. It was one of those maddening vague snippets – it did not say who these people were, where the survey was done and by whom, how big the study was. It could have been forty-seven people in Portsmouth questioned by a biscuit company, for all I know. I’ve looked on the Google and can’t find anything with that number on it. I also can’t remember where I read it. So the whole thing is entirely unscientific. But the shocking percentage stuck in my mind. Even if it is half true, it’s quite disturbing.

I think about happiness quite a lot. I think about the myriad of different ways it may be described, or felt. Is happiness a cumulative number of joyful moments, or that bone-deep feeling of contentment? Is it wild, flinging excitement, or the gentle sense of being at ease in one’s own skin? Is it, for people who live in free democracies with water coming out of the tap and no religious police knocking on the door, almost a duty? (I quite often feel that it is. How dare I be miserable, when the women of the Congo have to face daily horrors?) Is it something worth striving for, when almost every serious academic study on the subject says that the more you search for it, the more elusive it becomes. The idea of the academy is that it is generally a by-product, a notion that is closely related to the famous idea of flow.

The 64% made me realise that I may not be representative, and that I had slightly assumed I was. I think of myself as an ordinary person of a certain age, and two of my most precious words are ‘me too’. I get quite a lot of me too on this blog, when I write something I fear is a little goofy or absurd, and the Dear Readers rush in and tell me that I am not alone. I believe that there is much more that stitches human hearts together than cleaves them apart.

I am prey to occasional night terrors, moments of catastrophising, some extremely cross internal critics who drink too much gin and tell me I could do better, moments of unguarded perfectionism, and a fairly consistent struggle with mortality. I feel a bit of an idiot about the last one, because everyone is going to die and worrying about it really will not help the thing. I can get cranky and grumpy and disorganised. I wish I could write better and faster and I rue my lack of time management. I still miss my dad. In other words, I live with all the expected slings and arrows that a woman of my age might reasonably face.

But I am quite happy, quite a lot of the time. I do practise at this, like a musician practises scales in the morning. I remind myself to appreciate the present moment and not long for something else. I am acutely wary of the danger of high expectations. I notice the small things. Yesterday, I stood for ten minutes like a loon listening to birdsong. I have developed a good bit of muscle memory for talking myself off the ceiling. I have learned to accept that I can’t control what other people think of me. I don’t compare myself to impossible role models – I do not wish that I were a stick-thin film icon or a literary giant or a storied saver of the world. I accept my limitations, sometimes even with good grace. (Although when I bump up against them, I must admit I do sometimes do the Muttley muttering.) I have enthusiasms.

I think of this in the same way I think of working with my mare. I do a lot of slow steps with her, working on the very basic things until they are just right. Every day, we work quietly and steadily on the foundations. I have, at last, learnt not to run before I can walk, building up slowly, slowly, brick by brick, so that I may find myself in a wide Scottish field as I did this morning, trotting a half-ton thoroughbred with my arms in the air, hands flung into the light, keeping the beautiful, steady rhythm only with my seat. (The independent seat is the holy grail of riding, and the expression always makes me laugh. That seat will not be bamboozled or corralled or fooled into following the herd mind. No, no, it is independent.)

I used to think I could solve the meaning of life by grand gestures, by huge application of the intellect, by reading the highest philosophers, by trying really, really hard. Now I think finding a daily crock of gold lies in the smallest and most humdrum of things, which have nothing to do with book learning or great mental effort. I think they are things of the heart, not the head. I think they lie in steady practice, so that they too can trot on a loose rein.

Oh, dear, I am mixing my metaphors now, which means I should stop. I hope the 64% is wrong, and does not make me a freak. I wanted very much to be extraordinary when I was young and foolish and ambitious. Now, I rather long to be ordinary, at one with my cohort, marching in step. I like finding connections rather than searching for otherness. No man is an island, and no woman, either.

Although I do admit that, apart from my soigné friend in Paris, not everyone is quite as excited as I am about moss.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from the last two days, since I’ve been too busy to take out the lovely little camera:

Very often, the duchess is so dozy and relaxed that she does her donkey ears for the camera. Which is wonderful in its own way, since it proves to me that all the work is paying off and she is easy in herself. But sometimes I do yearn for the show pony face, and here it is. There are many things I love about this picture, but today the thing I love the most is that her nostrils and her ears are like little apostrophes:

Lost thoughts.

Quite often, I wake up in the morning and write the blog in my head as I brush my teeth. I cannot tell you the dazzling nature of my thoughts at this point in the day. I grow excited, thinking: ah, at last, I have something really quite wonderful for the Dear Readers. There will be existential musings, and the human condition, and darting arrows flying out of the left field. How happy everyone will be.

Then, life happens. I cook breakfast for The Mother and the lovely Stepfather. I walk the dog. I feed the horse, work the horse, ride the horse, settle the horse back in her field with everything she needs for the day. Quite often, when I think I am finished, I go back and have a quick chat with the horse, usually about how much I love her.

Then I canter off to HorseBack and take some pictures and talk about all the things I need to know about. Today, there were two enchanting visitors there, so I talked to them. I come back, edit the pictures, try to keep the archive in some kind of order, decide what posts I need to write, write them, select appropriate photographs to go with them, and put them up on the Facebook. As I am doing this, I try hard to avoid getting distracted by the latest story about Stephen Fry, or a collage of baby pandas.

I have a quick look at the racing, in case I want to have a bet in the 2.45 at Ayr. Luckily, today I did not want to.

Then I write a book. Because, you know.

By this stage, I remember that I have forgotten to have lunch. On tragic days, I make a quick ham sandwich. Today, I am being a proper person and throwing together a little chicken stew with leeks and celery and potatoes. (It was half done last night, and now I’m just finishing it off. I do feel really quite domestic godessy as the homespun smell wafts through the house.)

Then, I decide that all the stupid admin which is waiting reproachfully for me will have to wait another day.

Then I gallop down to the field to give the mare her tea, put out the hay, make a rugging decision, tell her once more about the deep, deep love, give her a good rub, check her legs, and generally make sure she is happy for the night to come. My friend who shares the paddock will be there, and we may discuss weather, water troughs, herd behaviour, or life. Mostly life, these days.

At this stage, I wish I had taken more iron tonic. The brain is beginning to fizzle and crack as if its circuits are starting to short. I review my work, make a resolution to do more cutting tomorrow, sometimes make a plan for another chapter, which is very naughty since at this stage I am supposed to be slaying darlings, not writing more of the damn things.

The morning seems a long, long way away. The dazzling thoughts are quite, quite lost. Did they really dazzle? Were they even thoughts? I decide, dolefully, that I’ll just give you some nice pictures instead, and hope you will not notice the thought deficit. I wonder if I should tell you about the moment, under the glancing Scottish sunshine, when the red mare not only came to a perfect halt off my seat, with no rein at all, but then, from a very slight movement of my legs, took four delicate steps backwards. Backing without reins. Should I tell you that I burst into shouting laughter of joy, and whooped into the bright air, and then fell to laughing again, and flung myself on her neck and told her that she was the best and dearest and most clever and brilliant?

No, I think, don’t tell them that. Poor Dear Readers, they have enough to put up with. They have to hear about that horse every absurd day of the week. This is supposed to be for them, after all, a tiny divertissement in a hard week. Give them a nice photograph of a hill or something, because not everyone has a hill.

Then I read myself a small lecture on the perils of perfectionism, press publish, and give Stanley the Dog a biscuit. Because it is the least he deserves.

 

Today’s pictures:

I went for a quick drive after HorseBack, a little loop to the north, and this is what I saw:

This one is called Queen’s View, because Queen Victoria loved it:

That is why I get a little hysterical about Scotland, and the blue hills, and the beauty. That is six miles from my front door. That is why I can never, ever get over my good fortune.

Posy Posington from yesterday morning:

And the amazing flying ear of Captain Handsome:

Love.

I was going to write you a really meaty blog today about abandonment issues. I was thinking of it as I put the mare to rights after our ride and listened to the birds sing. I was going to lay myself bare. Vulnerability, I thought, is a most excellent thing to learn in middle age. The defended state is no damn good. One must throw open the gates of the castle keep.

Then I got home and looked at the pictures I had taken of the dear red duchess, of the gatepost and the tree bark and the lichen and the sweet little Paint, of Stanley the Dog doing his Captain Handsome face.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I thought. Write about love instead.

Valentine’s Day exists on the very edge of my consciousness. I am dimly aware that the media has been creating about it for a few days now, and shall ramp up the pressure as we motor towards the 14^th. Luckily, it has nothing to do with me. My only thought about it was that I might send the Beloved Cousin some flowers, because that day in February should not just be about done-to-death old romantic love, but about all the enduring loves.

I’m not a huge fan of romantic love. I think that is because I was really, really bad at it, and then rather gave up, with a gusty sigh of relief. I know that people love it and some people are really good at it. I think it’s a talent like any other. It turns out my talent bends towards the other kinds of love. I have love of place, love of beauty, love of food, love of words, love of books, love of friends, love of laughter, love of family, love of thinking thoughts, love of thoroughbreds, love of Stan the Man and Red the Mare. I love Scotland, and moss, and trees. I love big, abstract things like kindness and generosity of spirit, and prosaic, specific things, like good manners. I love writing.

If I had one of the Young People in front of me, asking for advice about life, and I were to put on my wise old aunt hat and tell them something true, I would say: find something you really, really love and do it. I would say: don’t confine yourself to one love. Open your heart to all the loves, especially the very small ones, which will bring you joy every single day. You do not need a string section. You do not have to wait for the grand sweep. Find the love in the unexpected places, the ordinary places. Dig for love like a pig digs for truffles.

There was an awful lot of love in the field this morning, as the regal Scottish light poured down on us like wine. It’s there in every single one of these pictures. It’s not a bad way to start the week.

 

Today’s pictures:

A bad workwoman blames her tools.

Or so I thought.

In fact, it turns out that the tools make all the difference.

I take a secret pride in putting up reasonably decent photographs, although I know nothing about the technical side of photography. I have tried reading those special magazines but my brain just goes phhhtt. It’s something about the acronyms and the clinical language and the thicketty prose. I get lost and then I get cross. I hurl the thing aside and think: sod it, I’m just going to point and shoot.

For many years, I’ve had a delightful Olympus PEN. It has seen me straight and seen me curly, and it has put up with an awful lot. It’s been dropped in the mud so many times and tumbled from the back of the horse so often that it is all cracked and scratched and little threads of Scottish earth are ingrained in it. I lost the lens cap some time before the Old Queen died, and so the lens is always a tiny bit smeary. Some of the functions frankly no longer work.

But I hate the notion of disposable things, and I’ve never been one of those crazed people who always has to upgrade to a new model. I have one bog-standard mobile telephone, nothing smart about it, which I hope will last for years, and I’m cherishing this dear old computer, so it, too, might stay the distance. I quite liked that my camera was a bit bashed and battered, as if it and I had been in combat together. After all, Cartier-Bresson did not need any bells and whistles. He shot pictures for the ages with his trusty old Leica. But then, he was Cartier-Bresson. I am no Henri, nor was meant to be.

In the end, the camera made up my mind for me. The crucial battery charger went mysteriously missing. It’s probably in a field somewhere. (I carry it around with me, in case I have a battery emergency, which I thought was a good plan until I could not find the thing.) Ah well, I thought; it’s time.

Because I love taking photographs, and because I am in charge of the HorseBack Facebook page, where I must make an effort to produce something reasonably professional, I had thought I might grade up to a proper SLR. The Olympus is one of those three-quarter cameras, not quite as posh.

But I’d tried out my stepfather’s Nikon, and had not got on with it at all. I looked about on the internet, and all the high-end cameras were so expensive and so foreign to me. I decided to stick with the one I knew and loved, even though it felt a little unadventurous. I would effectively be getting a replacement, not something new.

I had not taken in the fact that the good people at Olympus have been very, very busy in the six years since I last bought a camera. The new PEN is a completely different beast to the clunky old thing I had before. It is ravishingly beautiful, small, tight, light, pleasingly retro, and neat as a pin. The shutter makes the loveliest sound I have heard any piece of equipment ever make. I found myself snapping away just to hear the delightful old-fashioned clunky click.

And, oh, oh, the pictures. Suddenly, everything is sharp again. There is depth of field and all sorts. I can do everything on automatic, which is good for a dolt like me. I really can point and shoot. The camera does it all for me, in the most charming and helpful way. It almost feels like cheating but I don’t care, because the results are so lovely. I feel like I’m back in the hunt.

I do love recording this beautiful place, and my beautiful animals, and my beautiful hills. Now, instead of struggling with old and creaking equipment, I can see every gleaming detail of the moss and the lichen, so that I look at them anew, and remember why I love them so. I suddenly realise that I had lost some of my joy in photographing things, because I was always having to edit and delete to produce a half-decent result. Now, I have my mojo again, thanks to my little Bobby Dazzler. I almost want to send a thank you letter to the brilliant boffins at Olympus, and the kind people at Curry’s, who put the marvellous article in their sale so that I got a raging bargain, and sent it out to me post haste. I am rejuvenated. Snap, snap, snap, eh Mr Gibbon. I am so happy I feel like doing a little dance. I may, in fact, do a little dance. Perhaps for the red duchess, as entertainment while she eats her tea. She’ll like that.

 

Today’s pictures:

Never were those two words typed with so much joy. Just look:

And, as if all that joy were not enough, THE FIRST SNOWDROPS ARRIVED. Too, too much:

The only thing about the dear PEN is that it can’t quite deal with very dense colours. I noticed that with my old one, and this is the same. I imagine that is where the SLR might beat it. You can see that the intense whiteness of the snowdrops is almost too much for it. But it’s such a tiny drop in the sea of loveliness that it seems almost churlish to mention it.

Down at the field, the duchess was sweetly and gently and politely waiting for her tea, and graciously posed without complaint whilst I faffed about with my new toy instead of mixing up her Thunderbrook’s:

That’s her sweetest, softest face, the one she wears when she is utterly at peace and all is well in her world.

And this is her I’VE GOT MY HAY face. There’s no special filter or effect on this picture. That really was the colour of the Scottish light at 4pm:

And one more of Captain Handsome, because one can’t have enough handsomeness:

And one last one before I really must stop -

Is there tea yet?:

Oh, and as if that was not enough happiness for one day, Teaforthree, one of the horses I love the most, won the Hunter Chase at Bangor with a glorious combination of composure, enthusiasm, strength and diamond-sharp jumping. He was given a beautiful ride by Jamie Codd, as quiet as a tranquil sky, trusting the clever old fellow to see his own stride at each fence, seeing him to the line with hands and heels. It was a shining sight, man and equine in perfect harmony, and it made me smile and smile and smile.