Whoops. Lost a day. It is possible that it fell down the back of the sofa.
Here are some lambs and daffodils instead.
Sometimes it is a relief just to embrace cliché, and what could be more obvious in springtime than small sheep and daffs?:
Not even so much as a hill.
Ha ha ha. I laugh in the face of crappy time management. It’s all I can do, now.
And now I’m going to sit very still in a darkened room until I get my temporal bearings back.
The sun shines like a crazy thing. I go out for the first time this year without a coat. In truly inappropriate, not-giving-a-damn fashion, I pitch up at HorseBack in a bright scarlet silk shirt. I’ve no idea why. It seems to suit my mood.
As the weather gentles everything, I feel my shoulders come down. I can get my work done and organise my life without having to be gritted and hunched. This feels like a revelation. It makes me realise that there was an element of battle in getting through that long, bleak winter. Everyone in the village is smiling; everything seems lit with possibility.
I talk at length on the telephone to my very old godfather. I always slightly dread making the call because he is so long in years and so stricken in health and I hear myself making awful platitudinous remarks, which do not cheer or comfort. One must not do the pity voice, but on the other hand, one must be thoughtful and sympathetic. It’s a horrid line to walk and I’m not very good at it. But today, the doughty gentleman, despite being ninety and with three different kinds of hideous illness, is filled with stern stuff and tells me long and antic stories which make me laugh.
He will suddenly say the most extraordinary things. ‘After the war,’ he says, ‘I joined a secret army, Phantom, you know. I was blowing up railways and bridges and that sort of thing.’ Slight pause. ‘I very much enjoyed that.’
When he talks of being staunch in the face of the horrors of old age, he says: ‘Well, I was a Welsh Guardsman, you know.’ The implication being that the Brigade of Guards can face anything, which it probably can.
I am overwhelmed with affection and admiration. I can write this here because he is old school, and does not have a computer, and so will never see these sentences, but I am keenly aware that each conversation I have with him may be the last. I cherish every word.
The Horse Talker and the Remarkable Trainer and I take the filly and the mare out for a ride. (The Trainer walks on foot, dancing about in her athletic, balletic way, taking pictures.) The little filly is immaculate, and Red, in only her rope halter, defies every nasty stereotype about ex-racing thoroughbreds. Without a pause or a shiver, we go past billowing blue tarpaulins, farmyard equipment, a working building yard with all its manifold trucks and diggers, and I have one hand on the rope and a song in my heart. This is a mare who used to shy at shadows on the ground. AND NOW LOOK.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ I yell, in delirium. She wibbles her lower lip and blinks gently at me.
I watched Badminton at the weekend, for the first time in years. It’s an extraordinary level of horsemanship, and those huge cross-country fences are a mighty challenge. But at the same time, there is a lot of stress there, as there is in all competitions, and a lot of kit: martingales and double bridles and all sorts. I feel as proud that my lovely girl will walk out on a loose rope as I would if she were performing those feats of acrobatic daring that I saw on the television. It’s a different kind of achievement, but it is a blue riband nonetheless, even if it exists only in my secret heart.
The lambs are jumping, the sun is shining, Stanley the Dog is laughing. It was A Good Day.
Today’s pictures:
HorseBack morning:
The wonderful sheep:
We haven’t had the beech avenue for a while. It amazes me that we are into May, and there is not yet a single green leaf on any of these venerable trees:
Nor on the limes:
But my young apple tree has suddenly sprung to life:
And the honeysuckle has come into leaf, almost overnight:
The Horse Talker with Autumn the Filly:
MR STANLEY HAS A STICK:
I think this face says - don’t you dare try and take it away. Look at the reproachfulness:
My beautiful brilliant girl:
This is what she looks like when she sees me and Minne-the-Mooches over for love. She is amazingly love-orientated. Not that many horses are. Some can take it or leave it; some really prefer to be left alone, like cats. It’s a mere freak of chance that I ended up with a mare who wishes for nothing more than to stand in a field being adored. Since adoring her is all I really want to do:
Two years ago, on the day of the Guineas, I was outside with my family, looking at my favourite mountain shimmering and lucid in the spring light, and feeling quite disconnected from the outside world.
I remember well the vivid feeling of unreality. The children were laughing and playing; the grown-ups were laughing too, but in a different way. It was ten days after my father died and I did not know what day of the week it was.
So it was that I completely missed Frankel’s demolition job in the great race.
The next day, I drove south for my dad’s funeral. Still in the same humming limbo of unreality, I arrived at Tebay, my traditional half-way stop, and called my mother to say I was not dead in a ditch.
‘Did you see that?’ she said.
‘See what?’ I said.
‘Frankel,’ she said.
I did not know what she was talking about. I had turned away from flat racing, deciding the soul had gone out of it, that it was all about money now, with the rolling billionaires throwing their cash about and buying winners. I had decided that I hated that there was no longer any room for the small owner, the little yard. It was all about the clash of the big boys, and I felt there was something sad in that.
‘I’m not going to tell you if you did not see it,’ said my mother. But I could tell from her voice that it was something out of the ordinary. Her voice was vibrating with delighted disbelief.
I turned on the television for the 1000 Guineas, and, at that very moment, they showed a replay of the 2000 from the day before. The sun was blazing down on the Rowley Mile, so bright and dazzling that it made the very racecourse itself look not quite real, which chimed with my mood.
The stalls clapped open, and a horse in the familiar Khalid Abdullah colours surged out of them. I remembered those colours from the days when I was in love with Dancing Brave, when my heart thrilled to his every mighty hoof-beat.
The horse blasted away from the field, in the impossible light. The sun was so insistent that it threw motes and beams into the camera lens, so that at times you could hardly see the runners. They were cast in silhouette, their shadows chasing along the green turf behind them.
Frankel picked up speed, his stride lengthening and deepening.
‘At half-way,’ shouted the commentator in disbelief, ‘Frankel is almost ten lengths clear.’
I watched Frankel in urgent fascination. No horse does this in the Guineas and survives. The best of his generation were scrubbing and scrabbling in his wake. You could almost catch the sense of disbelief in the chasing pack. Afterwards, several of the jockeys said that they truly thought he was the pacemaker.
The mighty horse, oblivious to everything but the exhilaration of his own speed, floated over the dips and deviations of the Rowley Mile as if they were not there.
‘FRANKEL CONTINUES TO BE IN A MASSIVE LEAD,’ bawled the commentator.
Tom Queally sat motionless, letting the horse flow under him.
‘At the bushes, Frankel is fifteen lengths clear.’
At this point, Queally began to move a little in the saddle. The horse seemed to do something extraordinary. He almost started to dance.
A usual horse, even a very good one, would begin to tie up at this point. To have gone at sprinting speed over the first half of that searching mile would surely take its toll. To be out in front for so long would cause even a brilliant beast to wander about a bit, to think too much, to shorten stride.
Not Frankel. Straight as a die, with his tail lifted in triumph, he kept on galloping to the line. It was a display of pure speed and talent and exuberance such as I’m not sure I ever saw on a racecourse before.
And there, in a quiet hotel room, heavy and tired with grief, I fell in love with racing again.
Today there are two more mighty fellas, stepping up to the mark. There is the lovely Dawn Approach, whom I followed all last season with increasing joy. And there is the big, bonny, bold Toronado, who was good at two, but has developed into something altogether other at three.
I love them both, but my beating heart belongs to Toronado. I think he might be something very special indeed.
Even as I write this, I feel my heart banging away in my chest, in anticipation, in eager delight. It’s a privilege to watch animals as beautiful and brave and bold as this run over the storied turf of the Rowley Mile, where Charles II invented the Sport of Kings.
Whoever wins this afternoon, I shall take off my hat and make a salute. I shall feel lucky to have seen it.
I have a feeling that it will be a race to remember.
No pictures today; I have to study the form and read the Racing Post and make my bets. There is just this, which still, two years on, makes me doubt the veracity of my own eyes:
An amazing thing happened today. A group of three schoolgirls, who had chosen HorseBack UK for their charity in the Youth Philanthropy Initiative, gave their presentation and WON.
Three thousand whole pounds.
The incredible Young People. All my hats are in the air.
Regular readers will know how livid I get when charmless newspaper columnists and Eeyore-ish pundits grouse about The Young People. (Demonstrating, I always think, nothing more than their own intellectual laziness.) So this news acted as a double tonic for me. I was so delighted and moved that I felt quite overcome and teary all morning.
Then I saw the faces of the two course participants after they finished joining up with their horses in the round pen. One, in particular, a hardened veteran of over fifteen years, looked like a small child on Christmas morning.
So there was an awful lot of goodness.
As the week closes, I run into a wall of exhaustion. My new regime needs a little revising and a lot more iron tonic and spinach soup. But I’ll go on bashing away at it, because everything in it is worth more than rubies.
Only four pictures today, because I’ve run out of tether:
Mikey and his new compadre in the round pen:
The three Amazing Girls, when they came to visit HorseBack in the snows of February:
The wonderful Mikey, who has been a real star all week, and who is one of my absolute favourites among the HorseBack horses:
And the wise eye of my own darling girl:
PS:
There is no longer any time to reply to all your lovely Dear Reader comments, but sometimes someone asks a direct question and I do feel it would be bad manners not to answer.
One of the DRs asked if I were now doing the HorseBack Facebook page. The answer is yes. I have been oddly shy about talking to it, merely referring to a new project or a new bit of work. I’m not quite sure why this is. It is not a closely-guarded secret. There are no Moscow Rules.
I think it is because it is the first piece of truly ego-free work I’ve ever done. It is not about my name or my reputation or the regard of my peers or any of the things which come into my professional writing. It is not about me at all. This is an entirely new sensation, and one I find oddly delightful.
Of course, it is not quite ego-free. I get kind remarks and strokes; I get a giddy sense of satisfaction if a post works, or if one of their Dear Readers says something complimentary. I am not a mystic or a hermit or a lama; I need praise just as much as the next flawed human. But the fact that it is done anonymously, in the name of the organisation for which I have so much admiration, does take a lot of the self out of it, and I don’t think that is a bad thing.
There are so many matters to report and so little time. I wanted to do a whole thing on grammar, since there was a discussion on it as I listened to the Today programme this morning. They were trying to get up a little controversy – the old argument of Does Any of it Really Matter? The language is a living thing, la di dah; it was all different in the time of Shakespeare. Etc, etc, etc.
I love grammar. I mind about it. I love to play with language, but I need to know the rules are the rules, before I can throw them up in the air and make free with them.
In fact, I don’t need to write a dissertation. I think grammar matters because of two things: clarity and elegance. And that is all there is to that.
I went up to HorseBack for my work there. The two men who arrived on Monday, rather hunched and uncertain, are now standing tall, doing all manner of things with their horses, making jokes, even teasing. I don’t still quite know how this transformation happens, but it does, and it is a quite breath-taking thing to watch in action.
The real good professional photographer who sometimes does work for them was there. I felt very shuffly and humble. I take their daily pictures now, and my amateurish efforts are so shabby compared to her diamond brilliance. I muttered some of this to her. She was amazingly kind and generous. I think that people who are really good at what they do can be like that. They don’t need to be judgemental or proprietorial or mean-spirited, because they are comfortable in their own talent.
I rode the mare out, into novel territory, with nothing more than a rope halter and my native wits. The remarkable trainer was up on the lovely American Paint filly, and together we broke new ground and felt the wild sense of achievement that brings. It was only a tiny ride, but I have gone back to basics with my dear girl, almost as if I were backing her for the first time, to build ease and confidence for us both. So even though we never moved out of an amble, it felt like flying. Soon, we will be cantering over the mountains, but because we’ve gone back to baby steps, there will be no trepidation.
I walked down to see her in the evening sun last night, with Mr Stanley the Dog, and stood in the amber quiet before the dusk fell, and felt her head on my shoulder and told her stories.
She listens always, very politely, to my stories, blowing gently through her sweet nose. She is one of the nicest people I ever met. She is the love of my life and that’s all there is to it. That feeling never diminishes or fails to astound or gladden me. It’s not what I expected would happen to me now. None of this is. But it feels like some random existential force just woke up one morning, stretched itself, and decided to send me a bloody great present.
Today’s pictures:
The happy HorseBack herd:
The wonderful Mikey, one of my fast favourites:
The real photographer – the great Fay Vincent (available for weddings, parties and any brilliance you want) – with Archie, ready for his close-up:
Someone else who is very good at what she does:
That’s the smiling face which tells the story:
Off for the first ride down to the river:
Stanley the Dog, who has been getting a lot of love and admiration from the Dear Readers lately, to my intense delight:
My lovely red girl:
Chilling out with her sweet American friend after their first ride together:
And on Tuesday, in the bright sun, which has buggered off again:
Myfanwy the Pony, who seems to get prettier by the day:
Very out of focus hill. But since this is a place for imperfection, I thought you would not mind:
Work. Other work. Other work. One more piece of vital work.
The last of these has the potential to translate into actual game-changing cash and is being sent to some very important people indeed. It is not for me, so I feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders as I type the words.
Sweet mare; funny dog. Stan has taken to burying his favourite sticks in little piles of leaves all about the woods. He tenderly covers the things by pushing the fallen leaves into place with his nose. It is all done with the utmost care and delicacy. I stand and watch, entranced.
I run around, chasing time.
At 3.35pm, I take five minutes to watch one of my favourite fillies, Estimate, run at Ascot. I was there when she won the Queen’s Vase last season, and it was one of the most touching moments I ever saw on a racecourse, as the Duke of Edinburgh presented the trophy to the Queen, who looked just as any octogenarian would after a beloved filly routed the big boys over two miles. (Estimate is one of those little tough ordinary-looking fillies of the kind I love the most. She has nothing physically flashy about her, but she contains heart of a lioness.)
She wins her first race back as a four-year-old, looking easily impressive, and I put her in my notebook, where she belongs.
More work.
Brain falters and crashes like an old computer.
And then, I write this, before I stop like a busted old clock.
Today’s pictures:
Are entirely random:
I had many favourite moments of the day, but this was perhaps the most favourite. The HorseBack herd was reunited, after spending the winter in two separate places, and everyone was moved into different fields for the spring. Here Archie and Mikey greet each other with all the decorum of storied ambassadors at a diplomatic reception:
Stan the Man, laughing:
Red the Mare, duchessing:
Hill:
You can see from the changing light in the pictures that we had four seasons in one day, as May blew in. Blinding sun, east winds, sudden squalls of rain, dramatic moments of sleetish hail, quiet grey cloud. Enough to blow all the cobwebs away.
