Meet Dudley.

A few weeks ago, I was accosted by two smiling gentlemen in the Co-op.

‘Would you like to sponsor a Guide Dog for the Blind?’ they asked, politely.

‘ARE YOU JOKING?’ I yelled.

They looked slightly startled.

‘TAKE ME TO THE PUPPIES,’ I bellowed.

Their smiles were, at this stage, a little stretched. I think they thought they must have found the most peculiar woman in the village. It did not help that this was the day that I had gone out with a small nest of hay caught in my scarf.

I calmed down. ‘Where do I sign?’ I said.

The surprise, it turned out, was not just because I was having a little trouble with my volume control. I often shout when happy or excited. It was apparently because most people say no, or at least have to be persuaded.

I understand this. First of all, we are still in recession. Second of all, everyone has their charities. You can’t do every single one. I constantly have to refuse those people in light-reflective tabards in the London streets.

But guide dogs are so up my street they could have been designed for me. I’ve always supported general charities for the blind, because I so value my own sight. I often think of all the things I do without even thinking, simply because I can see. The simple act of reading a book or driving a car or looking something up on the Google are all things I mostly take for granted, until I stop and wonder what it would be like not to take them for granted at all.

I did not know that you could sponsor trainee puppies. There is an incredible woman in our village who has a guide dog in training. I see them, out and about, the puppy in his special kit, easily recognisable. I always stop her and make her tell me how he is getting on and what they have been doing. I think she thinks I am a bit odd (we have never been formally introduced), but she very kindly humours me.

This encounter in the Co-op also happened not long after The Pigeon died, and I was feeling sad and raw and probably a bit sentimental about beautiful black dogs. One of the young canines available for sponsorship was a glorious black Labrador, so the kind gents really did not have to ask me twice.

Anyway, I rather forgot about it after that. There has been quite a lot going on. And then, this very morning, the postie delivered a fat envelope from Guide Dogs for the Blind, and there was a picture of my magnificent fellow. He is called Dudley. I had quite forgotten that too.

I exclaimed out loud, in delight. I was so antic with joy that I actually held the photograph up to Stanley, and said: ‘THIS IS DUDLEY. Yes, look, Dudley.’ Stan gave the picture the once over, sniffed it, nodded his head in approval, and then went back to searching for the small sticks which he stashes all over the house.

I have already brandished the picture at the Horse Talker, the Pony Whisperer, the Mother and the lovely Stepfather. Everyone has to see this very special canine, who will make a proper difference to someone’s life. I could not be more happy if I had trained him myself.

So today, meet Dudley, the newest addition to the family. It may be by proxy; he may live in Northampton; I may never see him in real life. All the same, he feels like family to me.

Here he is. He looks like quite a serious chap, probably because he knows he is getting ready to do a proper job:

At six weeks:

When he was just beginning his work:

Now:

DUDLEY. It’s too much.

And today’s regular pictures:

I actually managed to retrieve the photographs I took yesterday, after all that. Here are a few shots of HorseBack, where I went for a good meeting:

You can see the snow was coming back in over the hills.

Gus the Foal with his mum:

I love Gus the Foal. He is afraid of nothing. He comes right up to me and tries to eat the fur on my hood, the toggles on my coat, and the strap on my camera. He makes me laugh and laugh.

Garden, with very first signs of spring:

The little herd, from a couple of days ago, when the sun came out:

Sometimes Myfanwy looks like a unicorn princess. Sometimes she looks like a very, very muddy little pony:

Red the Mare, happy as a bug with her hay:

The extraordinary face of Stanley the Dog:

The hill, so white and bright it is lost in the sky:

I’ve been missing this person a lot lately. No special reason. Just have:

As I was going through the archive, looking for a Pigeon picture, I randomly landed in the summer. As we trudge through the ice and snow and sleet, over the muddy ground, or the rutted frigid earth, the Horse Talker and I speak wistfully of green grass and sunshine. Of course we are tough women of the North-East, so mostly we just get on with it. But sometimes, with our shoulders hunched against the weather, and our fingers numb with cold, we do dream a little dream. It’s quite hard to remember what gentle warmth even feels like. Then I found this picture, and it brought it back to me:

Look at the crazy polo muscles on her neck. I’m letting her down now, because I want her soft and relaxed. She’s not a working horse any more, not in that way. She’ll probably never look that fit again. I love her new easy incarnation, but she was rather remarkable, wasn’t she?

The Voices in my Head have a cocktail party. Or, I really have no idea what I am talking about.

There is a lovely line in Charade, when Audrey Hepburn looks at Cary Grant and smiles her blinding smile and says:

‘Do you know what is wrong with you?’

Cary Grant does his Cary Grant thing.

‘No,’ he says, all smooth and wry and suave.

The blinding smile goes into orbit.

‘Absolutely nothing.’

Sometimes I wish I could be my own Audrey Hepburn to my own Cary Grant.

It’s not that I think what is wrong with me is everything, but the chuntering voices in my head are grumbling and shouting at me. ‘Time management,’ they are saying, rather sourly. ‘You really could work on that.’ At this stage, if I let them, they would go into their familiar riff of ‘Call yourself a grown-up?’ But I’m not having that today; I’ve heard it all before. They can go and have their mean old cocktail party somewhere else.

I have been running about all day, constantly half an hour behind, watching ruefully as things slip through the cracks. Admittedly, I have done two really important pieces of work, the ones that are not for me, but for my friends at HorseBack. I always feel happier when I have achieved some prose for them. I even had a fruitful meeting. I have done the horses and walked the dog and made some tomato soup. But I completely forgot one quite crucial telephone call, had to tell the Younger Brother from Bali that I could not even speak to him for three minutes, and the To Do list still yawns in front of me. It is never, however hard I try, quite covered in the neat line of ticks of which I dream.

After such a frantic day, my head goes fuzzy and my fingers seize, and I think: oh, poor Dear Readers, I have nothing for them. I am running on fumes. There are at least seventeen important things on which I could be writing, and I can’t remember any of them.

I suppose this is a good thing, in a way. It’s all a bit messy and muddly and human, which is part of the point. I never wanted to do one of those shiny, envy-inducing, look at me being perfect blogs. (Ha, ha, ha, go the hollow laughs of the chuntering voices, looking up beadily from their Sazeracs.)

There is a part of me which wants to show you the shiny side, which wants to say Look, Ma, no hands. But it would never ring true, and there’s no point to it. I hate bogusness in all its forms, so it would be absurd if I started trying to pull that number. And the irony is that although I fear admitting to weakness, it is when I do that I get the best comments. It is when you all rally round and yell ME TOO, and I can sit back in my chair and sigh a sigh of relief and think, there, I’m not the only one. Which perhaps is the whole damn point.

 

Today’s pictures:

Actually do not exist. In amidst all the rushing about, I did manage to take rather a lot of photographs. I was stupidly proud of some of them. Then I sat down at my desk, opened the camera, and, true to the theme of the day, discovered I had forgotten to put the memory card in. How the cocktail party howled.

So here are a few from the last days:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Autumn the Filly:

Red the Mare:

Stanley the Dog, with the sky in his eyes:

The hill:

A big day. Or, in which I get serious about equal marriage.

Author’s note: warning for length. There is a lot to say about this matter, and I have only said half of it. This is as short as I could make it.

 

Today is a big day. The vote on equal marriage will be taken in the Commons. I am shouting and hoping and waving my hat in the air.

Those against it have been wheeling out the big guns, in the last few weeks. The arguments in opposition become more and more labyrinthine and tortuous, as if trying to cloak in intellectual respectability the suspicion that gay people are somehow other, somehow less than. They, say the dissidents, have civil partnership; surely that is enough? The clear implication is that full marriage is the gold standard, and must be kept for The Straights, who are better and proper and thus rewarded.

History, society and religion are cited, in support of the antis. All of these pillars are shaky ones, propping up arguments which are contradictory, threadbare and often riven with category errors.

Here are the big three:

1. Marriage is designed for the procreation and protection of children. The Gays cannot have children, so they cannot have marriage.

There are so many holes in this I do not know where to start. If this argument were to hold, the barren, the old and the bolshily child-free would be banned from marriage. Partnerships only for you, childless idiots.

It is also ahistorical. Over many different cultures and many different historical periods, marriage has been used in a bewildering variety of ways. The emphasis has varied from the political to the economic to the tribal.

Toddling infantas were betrothed to beardless princes, to seal mighty alliances or avert wars. The great families of Britain married each other to maintain their green acres and their social position. In the nineteenth century, with their fortunes depleted by intemperate card games and unwise investments, the aristos all rushed off to America and got the daughters of robber barons to keep up their tottering stately homes. Edith Wharton wrote The Buccaneers on the back of this trend; Blenheim Palace would not be standing today if it were not for bags of American cash.

The very existence of the dowry illuminates the economic aspects of marriage. Whether a lady came with a barouche and ten thousand a year, or two oxen and an ass, her economic value was carefully weighed.

As for the much-vaunted little ones, historically marriage was often not so much seen as an institution for the protection of children, but for the hard-nosed production of them, whether it was to carry on the family name, to till the fields and mind the crops, or to look after the parents in their old age.

In other words, it has always been a cultural construct, swaying with the prevailing winds of the zeitgeist. To present it as some universal fixed mark is disingenuous and empirically incorrect. You only have to read Jane Austen to see that.

2. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman. IT SAYS SO IN THE BIBLE.

The amount of people who have suddenly become biblical literalists is one of the most astonishing aspects of this whole argument. Is one to assume that they are going to recommend following the Bible’s instructions to stone adulterers to death, to kill anyone found working on the Sabbath, and to ban coats made of two different cloths? (If you are going to go the whole hog, you may also not breed together two different kinds of cattle, nor plant your fields with two different seeds. STOP IT NOW, you heathen cow-breeders.)

Religions redefine themselves the whole time. Our state religion was actually predicated on the redefinition of marriage, when Henry VIII broke with Rome because of an unstoppable yearning for Anne Boleyn. Divorced people, once cast into outer darkness by the Church of England, may have their second or even third marriages blessed in religious ceremonies. Slavery is now universally regarded as a Bad Thing. Yet it figures prominently in the Bible, with a set of detailed rules, such as this, from Exodus:

   ‘When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.’

Don’t even get me started on Leviticus.

3. Changing the nature of marriage will weaken this vital institution.

There is a rider to this, which is that it is not up to the government to rewrite the rules of marriage. Once again, I refer you to Henry VIII.

I genuinely do not understand this argument. The implication seems to be that the very moment the pesky gays are allowed to say I Do, the good straights will look again at their own unions and find them wanting. Their cherished ceremony will somehow seem shoddy and sullied, because homosexuals have been allowed into the club. This is not a very happy reflection on the state of marriage. It suggests that it is such a fragile flower that it is only worth something if it is confined to heterosexuals.

In reality, here is what will happen to heterosexual people. NOTHING. Their lives will go on exactly as before. If they have gay friends and family, they will have the keen pleasure of going to more joyful weddings. If they believe in equity, they will have the delight of knowing that their fellow humans are not being discriminated against. If they are in the curious position of having no non-heterosexual friends or relatives, their daily life will be completely unaffected. The paper their marriages are written on will not suddenly be torn up. Their commitment to each other and to the institution in which they believe will have no less validity.

 

That is all the negative stuff. Here is the positive. The sum total of human happiness will be added to, if the law is changed. No longer will a group of people be told that they are somehow lesser or other. It’s easy to get lost in the thickets of sexual preference. Take a step back, and you realise that people are people. They love, mourn, celebrate, hope, just the same.

The horrible idea of the ‘gay lifestyle’, so often cited by the antis, is a smokescreen which masks the universal heart. It’s not all show tunes and comfortable shoes and Heaven on a Saturday night, or whatever it is which the critics believe that they favour.

I talk about this a lot, when it comes to cultural divisions or national ones or gender ones, when it comes to putting different groups into tight little boxes. It is that there is much, much more that unites humanity than divides it. If you cut us, do we not bleed?

I really believe that most people, all over the world, want most of the same important things: to love well and be loved in return, to feel that their lives are of some usefulness, to do no harm, perhaps to add something to the increments of human happiness. Call me an old hippy if you like, but I think this is true.

To carve off a slice of the human family and say you are other, you may not have the thing we have, is, in my opinion, idiotic and wrong. It also has no utility: it does not make anyone more happy, it simply makes some people less happy. It does not live up to my William Morris rule: it is neither beautiful nor useful.

Some people ask me why I get so exercised about this. I was asked the other day. I replied, hotly, without even thinking: It is because I hate unfairness and I hate cruelty. Cruelty is a strong word. It came out of my mouth, unprompted. Perhaps it is too strong. But I would say, with my calmer head on, that to deny marriage to someone on the basis of sexuality is unfair and unkind, and I can see no good in that.

Love is love, is what I always come back to. What will change, if this new legislation is passed? There will be more fairness. There will be more celebrations of love and commitment. There will be more happy people. How can anyone be against that?

And now, obviously, I am going to go and put some flowers in my hair.

 

Today’s pictures:

The dreamy face of my lovely mare:

Mr Stanley with his big sticks:

The hill:

 

Here is someone making the argument with much more pith and grace than I:

By David Shankbone, under Wikimedia Commons.

And when I want to go straight to the heart of the matter, and it is all about the heart, I think these smiles say more than my words ever could:

By Bev Sykes, under Wikimedia Commons.

Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons.

Those last two tell different stories. The first is of a couple who have been waiting for over 30 years to marry. They live in Sacramento. At the moment, the right for same-sex couples to marry in California is up before the Supreme Court.

The second is of a couple in Canada, where equal marriage is legal. As far as I know, Canadian society has not fallen apart. I imagine they still have politeness, and hockey, and The Mounties. (You see there are absolutely NO cultural stereotypes on this blog, oh no.)

One more thing, and then I really will stop. When I first started writing about this, I called it gay marriage. I now call it equal marriage, not because I am some crazed politically-correct zealot, but because language matters, and that is what I believe it is.

The debate is starting now in the House. I cry, from the wilds of Scotland – come on, Honourable Members, do the right thing and vote Yes.

PS. So sorry, there really is one more thing. Since I stopped being tribal, I judge all politicians on individual issues rather than broad ideology or party. On this issue, I salute the Prime Minister. I suspect his stalwart support of equal marriage may be strategically astute in the long term, but it is causing him huge tactical headaches at the moment. It would have been easier for him if he had quietly dropped it, and avoided the howling fury of a lot of his party. I think he gets great credit for sticking to his guns.

Too tired to type

It is after six and I just got home from a day in Aberdeen. I went to Robert Gordon University to listen to one of the team leaders of HorseBack UK talk to a group of students. It was so interesting my head almost fell off. I would love to tell you all about it, but my stamina is shot, and even iron tonic cannot restore me to full typing capacity.

I feel slightly pathetic saying this, since the man I went with is a Royal Marine, who not only was used covering miles with heavy packs on his back in forty degree heat, but was actually blown up twice. (I feel there is some Oscar Wilde-ish quip in there, but I’m too tired to make it.) So my wailing about being shattered after a nice drive in a comfortable car and a fascinating talk to some engaged young people is really very mimsy indeed.

Still, there it is. It is clear that the Marines shall not be knocking on my door.

Proper reportage tomorrow.

In the meantime, you get just one dear face:

And for those of you who follow the continuing adventures of Stanley the Dog, and will be wondering (because I know you will): this was the first time I had left him. Quite nervous. The Mother and the lovely Stepfather took him for the day, and he had a tremendous time and was very, very well-behaved. ‘He really has had quite a lot of treats,’ said my mother, as I arrived to pick him up. He was gratifyingly pleased to see me, but not in a panicky way, so it seems the abandonment issues are receding. Hurrah.

A bit of a scratchy Sunday.

My post-angst fall-out works itself out in irritability and pointless crossness. I’m always banging on about the animal love, and putting the human nonsense to one side when dealing with them. Today, at least two of my menagerie got me all scratchy. I completely forgot my homilies about how they do not do things to one; they are just being their animal selves. The worst thing a human can do is take it personally. For about fifteen minutes this morning, I took it personally.

It took me a bit to work out what I was doing. For goodness’ sake, I told myself, sternly: it’s not all about you. I had to take enormous breaths, realise that it was not the creatures, but I who was in a shitty mood, and go right back to the beginning.

In the end, we worked it all out. We ended on the good note. This is practically the most important thing one can remember, with the non-humans. Probably with the humans too.

Red, who had been standing quiet and still as the Rock of Gibraltar through all the shenanigans, looked at me as if to say: you see, you eejit, it was always going to be fine in the end.

I don’t know what’s got into her at the moment, but she’s taken on some uber-Zen wise woman thing. The weird thing is that people always say your horse is a mirror of you. I am certainly nowhere near the state of Zen that my lovely girl is currently achieving. Perhaps she is in the business of showing me what my best self could be like, if only I concentrated hard enough.

I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I’ve taken on three new projects; I’m still battling to come back from a severe professional setback. Several things are up in the air. There is uncertainty and struggle. I suppose that is just what life is, and I need to butch up a bit and get my good, stoical, determined foot forward. I’m usually pretty good at bashing on, but sometimes I feel a little out of my depth.

None of this is disastrous. It’s all very small stuff, in the wide picture. It’s the kind of thing that can be dealt with with a bit more sleep and some iron tonic and a proper dose of perspective. Most of the time, I feel possible and optimistic. I have plans and dreams and daily happinesses. But there are sudden moments when the difficult things back up on me, and I can see the fall, and that’s when I tumble into scratchiness.

So I take a deep breath, and write it down, and share with the group (oh you Dear Readers, what you have to put up with), and square my shoulders and bugger on.

The lovely Overturn, one of my most beloved horses in training, is about to go out and strut his stuff at Musselburgh, and that shall be six minutes of pure, undilute pleasure. He’s one of the happiest horses I’ve ever seen on a racecourse. He’s really good at what he does, and he just loves doing it. He’s only a novice, and, with luck, he’ll be giving me joy for a few seasons to come.

In other words, back to the small things. As long as a bonny horse in a northern race can still lift my heart, then I know nothing is so very bad.
 
Today’s pictures:











The herd:



Myfanwy the Pony. This is actually from a few days ago. She is too muddy now for her close-up. It seems even with the equines I cannot quite banish vanity. So here she is, when she was clean:



The glorious oceanic calm that is currently Red the Mare:



Stanley the Dog:



Love this de haut en bas stare:



Hill:

An ordinary Saturday

So sorry about the lack of blog yesterday. Technical problems.

Today, the sun came out and the snow returned. A thin, cold, sparking white covered everything again.

It was a usual day. Did horses; walked dog; went to breakfast; discussed equality; went to shop. Went home, did work, read Racing Post, placed bets. Cooked food, ate food. (Beef, for strength.)

Won money. Shouted at the television. (Go on, my son.) Calmed dog, who is still slightly disconcerted by Saturday racing noise. Tweeted incontinently. Always do this on big racing days; oddly, it helps with the nerves.

Practically had seizure as Captain Conan, my huge, sure-fire bet of the day, only just managed to win by a neck. The gallant Captain had five lengths to make up after the last, and did it, step by dogged, gallant step. He’s always done it on class before; now he had to call on guts.

Felt exhausted but happy. Backed three seconds in a row. Lost money. Still well up on the day. Mr William Hill a bit green about the gills.

Walked dog in the chill afternoon air. Went back to horses.

Stood, in the gloaming, for about twenty minutes, just communing with my mare. I do that sometimes.

There’s all manner of work that we do, but sometimes, I like to stand. When she first arrived, she was nervy and uncertain. Everything was too strange for her. She did not want much human contact. I let her find her way. I don’t like crowding or smothering horses. Now, she will stand, at liberty in five acres of field, and choose to be by my side. It’s my finest compliment.

I put my cheek against hers and breath slowly. I murmur a bit of nonsense to her. I scratch her sweet spot. We gaze out at the trees and the sky. My heart turns over.

And that was my very ordinary, very good day.

 

Today’s pictures:

Herd, in the morning sun:

My glorious, dozy girl:

Stanley the Dog went for his first walk with the lovely Stepfather. He was really very good:

Serious sit and stay face:

Hill: