An ordinary Monday.

 

A cool, still morning. I ride the mare. She is a little edgy and unsettled. The Horse Talker and I wonder if the foxes or deer have been doing unspeakable things in the woods at night and keeping her awake. (Seriously, this is the kind of thing you have to take into account with horses. Just like humans, they can become scratchy if sleep-deprived.) But even though she is a bit twitchy, she still gives me a flowing canter on a loose rein.

HorseBack. First time up there with Awesome back and her filly not. There is a palpable space in the field. I remember this from when little Myfanwy died. You can’t believe such a small person can leave such a big gap. The dear dam is rather shut down, as if someone has thrown a veil over her. For a moment, I think: is that really Awesome? She looks different: darker, diminished. I stand with her for a while and she rests her head against my shoulder.

Back at my desk, I write 1699 words, which is a lot. Inspired by my friend The Producer, I make a chicken soup. I forget the pearl barley and it scorches, rather. The soup has an interesting, nutty taste as a result. I sit with failure. Chicken soup is one of the things I am really, really good at and I buggered it up.

I think about failure quite a lot, big and small. I think learning to fail is a life skill which should be studied. Succeeding is easy. Failure is hard. Red had a little spook this morning, which she has not done for weeks. She spun round fast and I almost went flying out the side door. Even though you can’t completely bomb-proof a horse, I have been desensitising for months just to avoid this kind of event, and for a moment I felt the black bird of shame hovering. Then I thought, sod it, she’s a horse. I did not fall off. She did not gallop away. She just got a little fright. So we went into the scary woods. It was like a test, mostly of myself. There was a bit of snorting, but we trotted kindly up the sharp hill into the dark places, and then rode back on the buckle. All was not lost. Quite a lot, in fact, was found.

The Dear Readers have said some very nice things lately. I always find this both touching and slightly surprising. It never gets old. Sometimes I feel a bit bogus, because even though I admit to fears and frailties, life always sounds better when it is written in sentences. The reality scruffier and muddlier and more fraught than you see here. But there is a lot of love in it, and today I think: that’s all that damn well counts.

 

Rather dim and dreary today, so no pictures. Here are two from Friday, when the sun shone.

My favourite Minnie the Moocher. She comes to say hello, with head down, donkey ears, and delicate toe:

And later, eating her hay, with her questing face on:

My funny Valentine.

Everybody has their different talents. I am good at: horses, chicken soup, not dangling modifiers. I am bad at: tennis, filing, and beef stew. (I’ve never cracked the secret of beef stew. I’ve tried twenty different versions. It is never bad, but it is always very, very slightly disappointing.)

I am catastrophically bad at romantic love. I never got the hang of it. I always did it with completely unsuitable people, for a start. They were charming, funny, intelligent and fantastically unreliable. They always left. Then I would take to my room and listen to Leonard Cohen records and be unable to speak for quite a long time.

Even when it was going well, I wasn’t much good at it. I found the swinging from chandeliers stage exhausting. Even when I was very young, I longed for the violent emotion of the early stages of love to pass, and the nice steady part to arrive. Since my relationships were always dramatic, short and doomed, I never got to the nice steady part. I still imagine it must be quite soothing.

In the end, I gave it up as a bad job. Lucky for me, I never wanted to get married or have children. I think people thought this was a form of bolshiness, but it was merely something that did not call to me, just as some people do not wish to live in New York or play piano concertos.

I used to get perfectly furious about the horrid patronising view that single people were somehow less than. I would issue rolling rants about the miseries and compromises and lonelinesses that are hidden away in the dark corridors of a romantic relationship. I have seen the despair that can exist behind the facade of a publicly perfect marriage.

Now, I don’t care. I don’t rant. I grow old; I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Everyone has their thing. Not all relationships, it turns out, hide secret misery. Some are perfectly lovely. My friend the World Traveller is brilliant at marriage and family. It really is her special skill. She and her husband like each other and want the same things and laugh at each other’s jokes. The great-nephew and nieces are some of the nicest and happiest children I know. When I see them all together, I want to hang out flags. They are a family at ease with themselves; they are a roaring success. The World Traveller did that, and I’m always rather in awe of the women who are good at making a family. I also feel very, very grateful to them, for doing it, so I do not have to.

But one strand quietly remains, of my early firebrand objections. It is that I still protest at the privileging of romantic love over all others. I think the other loves are possibly more important. I live easily and delightfully without romantic love, but I would be undone without friend love, family love, place love. The love I feel for Scotland endures like the blue hills that make my heart beat. The feeling of being stitched into a various and extended family is one of the high joys of my existence. The old friends, who have seen me straight and seen me curly, and know all my weaknesses, and love me anyway, are perhaps my greatest gift.

There is the dog love. You all know about that. I still miss my Duchess and my Pigeon. Their sleekness and kindness and funniness and beauty are still stitched into my heart. Now there is Stan the Man, the eccentric lurcher. (Actually, that is a bit of a tautology. All lurchers are eccentric.) He is lying beside me as I write this, his amber eyes regarding me quizzically. I love him because he is characterful and handsome and gentle. I love that he can run like a racehorse. I like his great athleticism. I admire the fact that he is going to catch that damn mouse in the feed shed, or die in the attempt.

There are other smaller loves which are important too, some of them so small they may hardly be seen by the naked eye. I love trees and politics and racing and books. I love lichen. I love the poems of TS Eliot and the songs of David Bowie and the paintings of Stubbs. I love talking about the big questions, which don’t have any definitive answers. What constitutes the good life? How did the Big Bang bang? What’s it all about, Alfie? How is it that the human heart may take so many blows and still endure?

And above all this soars the red mare.

It turned out that I got a love of my life after all. I never thought I would. I was so crashingly hopeless at gentlemen that I had thought I would have all the many other loves, but not a single, over-arching one. And then, by the merest sliver of chance, a horse appeared, who was useless at racing and useless at polo and should have gone to China, only the man with the lorry never pitched up. In that most random way, she came into my life.

At the beginning, I thought it would be a nice thing, to get me away from my desk, to remind me of my darling dad, to return me to something I was once good at. I did not know that it would turn out to be my one true love.

But that is what she is. I can’t even begin to count the ways. I love her kindness, her cleverness, her comedy skills, her courage, her authenticity. I love that she is a bit of a duchess and that her pedigree is crammed with Derby winners. I love that she goes back to the Byerley Turk, three times, on the bottom line. I love her power and her grace. I love her smell. I love that she does not give a bugger about the superficial things. She knows what is important. I love that sometimes, when she hits a perfect stride, it feels as if we are flying. I love that she knows I am her human and that she may rely on me. It feels like a gift.

And that is why, on this Valentine’s Day, I have no yearning for hearts and flowers. I don’t secretly long for dinners by candlelight or grand romantic gestures. Valentine’s Day is thought to be an excruciating thing for singles. But you see, I have my love. I hope you have yours. I hope it is not the kind that fits neatly onto a Hallmark card.

 

Sorrow.

Too sad to blog today. The sweet little filly has died.

I was quite cheerful this morning, keeping my chin up in proper British fashion. The Horse Talker made me laugh; the horses themselves were at their funniest and sweetest. Then I had to write a farewell for HorseBack UK, and now my heart is too bashed for any more words.

This is what I wrote:

Today, we have only the saddest news. Our little Spirit has gone. For all her fighting heart, she could not beat off the brutal infection, and in the end, it mastered her.

Our own hearts are broken.

Nobody understands why these things happen. As anyone who keeps and loves animals knows, fate can sometimes be random and brutal. Awesome Spirit was so bonny, so bright, always a picture of health. She was such a vital and vivid presence, so actual in the world, that it seems almost impossible to believe that she is no longer in it.

It is an especially cruel blow because of the great man in whose memory she was named. Paul Burns was one of the most remarkable people who ever walked through the HorseBack gates, and every time we looked at Spirit, we thought of him. It was a lovely thing to have a living reminder of his own mighty battling heart. And now there is just a space left behind, where these two beloveds should be.

A shadow has fallen over us, but we shall rally. If the men and women who come here have taught us anything, it is the value of dauntlessness, doggedness, a refusal to give in. They show, over and over, the shining virtue of grace under pressure, which was Hemingway’s definition of courage. There is work to do. The HorseBack ship shall sail on.

But today is a day of sorrow. We say goodbye to a beautiful, fleet, dancing girl, who was taken too soon.

Farewell, Awesome Spirit. You brought us joy, and we loved you well.

Run free now.

 

A maddening frailty.

In some areas of my life, I am bold and flinty. I quite happily get on a thoroughbred ex-racehorse and canter about on a loose rein in a rope halter. I live a resolutely unconventional life. (Although, interestingly, it does not feel like that from the inside. It feels very normal and usual. I only remember the unconventionality from time to time because people are prone to raise eyebrows, and then I have to explain. Lot of ‘splaining to do, as the great Rachel Maddow says.)

I can introduce myself to strangers, and travel alone. I once drove all by myself from Los Angeles to Seattle and back again, taking the frankly terrifying coast road which winds its way along hundred foot cliffs with no safety barrier.

But there are areas of life where I am windy as hell. I know all about the complexity and contradictions of the human mind, but still, it always surprises me. One thing in which I am absolutely pathetic is being told off. I cringe and crumble; quite often I want to cry. I stutter and shuffle; I hang my head like a five-year-old outside the headmistress’s office.

I know that there are people who do not give a bugger. Someone scolds them, and they merely shrug it off. Either they are adept at diagnosing the source of the other person’s ire, or they have naturally thick skins, or they understand well that there are worse things happening in Chad. They are excellent at saving their emotional resources until they see the whites of anyone’s eyes.

I do not like the unexplained. If I have a reason for things, I am at once soothed. I have a fairly empirical, rationalist mind, and once I can see that tab A goes into slot B, I sigh a gutsy sigh of relief. I love fiction for this reason: it all comes back to Chekhov’s gun. Fiction makes glorious, lovely sense, where life does not.

A gentleman told me off this morning. He was within his rights. Stan the Man was barking, and the gentleman was afraid. I should, of course, have had the dog under control. I felt stupid and idiotic and caught in a catastrophic failure. The gentleman was cross, and dressed me down without let or hindrance. I knew that he had correctness on his side, which of course made it worse, and I issued a crawling apology. Inside, the livid child in me was yelling its head off. This is my place, it shouted, and that is my good dog, and how dare you point your stupid finger. It’s just a bit of barking; butch up. Then the upset infant slammed into its bedroom and shut the door and burst into stormy sobs.

The forty-seven-year-old adult, who could not indulge in such dramatics, and knew that rules is rules, and manners are manners, and that dogs should be trained better, went down to the field and looked at the sweet, expectant, equine faces with their pricked ears, whickering at the fence. The adult shouted, out loud, into the cold Scottish morning: FUCK. BUGGER. BALLS. And FUCK again.

Then I pulled myself together and rode the mare and felt the love and later I drove up to HorseBack and had some lovely jokes with one of the American Special Forces operatives, who is still there. ‘Thanks for the lovely write-up yesterday,’ he said, serious for once. He gave me back what the cross gent had taken away, which happened to be my sense of self.

The thing is that self should be internally generated. Just as I teach Red to go kindly within herself, to have a sense of confidence in the world, so that she does not need to rush or pull, I should be able to teach that to my human self. Most of the time, I am fairly stoical and robust. But oh, oh, the idiot power of the scold. It can undo me in an instant. I wish I knew why it had such power, and how I could armour myself against it.

 

Today’s pictures:

The hill, before the storm blew in:

It was the most glorious morning, with a clear blue sky rising out of the dawn. I hoped perhaps Scotland might get lucky and avoid the brutal storm blowing in off the Atlantic. But it has arrived now, with horrid sleet and snow and high winds. I bless, bless, bless the new rug technology, so that my darling girl is huddled up to her dear ears:

PS. As my finger hovers over the publish button, I have a moment’s pause. Do you really need to know all this? Should I not give you high days and shiny days and dancing days? But, as always, I think, in some mazy part of my mind, that the sharing of frailties is a good thing. It leaves me vulnerable, because anyone could say anything. I would like to show you my best side, and not have to fret. Then I think: vulnerability is important. One cannot live in a castle keep all one’s life.

Digest.

Snow.

An amazing number of words.

Good twenty-minute increments.

Another of the Dear Departeds departs.

Procrastination. I wish I could do something about it. I think: I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

HorseBack, with moody hills.

Some not very good news.

A faint feeling of unease.

The sweet, soothing presence of the red mare.

A smile at the thought of Frankel’s birthday.

A fret about things undone.

A contemplation of the power of the simple, declarative sentence.

Kindness on the internet.

A very bad hair day.

Quite a lot of laughing.

One lovely winning bet.

A ham sandwich.

Thoughts of grammar.

One excited dog; one bloody big stick.

And, in the end, after all that, there was sun. Thick, ancient, Scottish sun, the colour of amber.

 

Today’s pictures:

Morning:

Afternoon:

Today’s hill, back in all her glory:

Special Forces.

The sun shines. The Horse Talker and I take out our mares on the sweetest, happiest, most relaxed ride ever. I’m not sure I ever felt Red more gentle and at one with herself and the world. I don’t know who is more delighted that the weather has at last grown kind: equines or humans.

I run up to HorseBack. There is a crowd there. There sometimes is a crowd. I plunge in. I have no idea who anyone is. ‘Hello,’ I say, shaking hands, ‘how do you do? I’m Tania Kindersley. I do the Facebook page.’

Eventually, I sort some of them out. Two are from a venerable organisation which I cannot yet name (secret plans). One seems to be some kind of philanthropist, but I never get upsides him. Two are very smiley and jolly and funny and sharp. One is tall, and looks like Hugh Jackman. One is shorter, and is rather like a young Chevy Chase, and just as hilarious. Within minutes, my famous British reserve has fled. There is no more ‘how do you do?’ or firm handshakes. I am doubling up with laughter and actually slapping my thigh and shouting with merriment. I also quickly fall into teasing them, since they take the piss out of themselves, with ruthless irony.

It turns out that they are of the American Special Forces. When people from the services, on either side of the pond, talk of special forces, you can be sure that the special is very bloody special indeed. You can also be sure that the more special their service, the less they will talk about it. They occasionally get that thousand yard stare in their eyes, but they do not do bragging or war stories. They do self-deprecation as if their lives depend on it. (My favourite Para uses ‘when I was shot in the head’ as a gag line, like a stand-up, doing schtick.)

These two are heaven. I want to wrap them up and take them home. They were wounded in Afghan, and have been through the long months of rehabilitation. You would not know it to look at them; they are shining, healthy specimens. One has a barely visible scar at the base of his throat, the only outward sign of what he has been through.

One is back at work, no longer in the forces, but as a contractor. ‘Are you super- secret?’ I say, merrily. ‘Are you deep undercover? Can I take your picture?’

‘As long as you get my best side,’ he says, gravely.

‘I mostly hide under my desk now,’ he says. ‘And look at Facebook.’

‘Facebook is crazy,’ says the other one, in exaggerated alarm. ‘You just don’t know what people will say next.’

I know perfectly well there is no hiding under any desk, or much Facebook either. That is just how they talk.

They crack jokes for another ten minutes, and then HorseBack’s resident Royal Marine comes out to discuss where he should take them. They want to see a bit of Scotland.

‘We could go to Lochnagar,’ he says. ‘It’s not far from Balmoral. Near the Queen.’

‘If you see the Queen,’ says the Chevy Chase one. ‘Say ‘Chip, chip,’ from me.’

‘Chip, chip?’ I say.

‘That’s what you Brits say,’ says Chevy.

‘No Briton has ever said Chip, chip,’ I say. ‘What have you been doing? Watching Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins?’

‘Never?’ He looks bemused.

‘Never,’ I say.

There is a pause. Then a shout of laughter.

‘You British need to learn to speak British,’ he says.

I think how much I love Americans. Obviously, not all Americans. I don’t expect I would have much fun with one of those crazy evangelical GOP types, who thinks that gay people are mentally ill and that the fossil record was put there by Satan. But, oh, a good American is like a gale of fresh air. I never understand where the fantasy comes from that only the British can do irony. Has nobody ever seen The Daily Show? These two are so ironical that it is as if they took a course. There they stand, in the beaming Scottish sunshine, vivid and bright and endlessly funny, and I think of all the things they have done, and all the things they have seen, and the wounds they carry, quietly, with dignity, beneath their smart coats.

As I get older, I really, really understand the idea of one day at a time. It’s an old group therapy saw, its meaning worn thin with use. But I see now that the only way to deal with middle age, and the intimations of mortality, and the griefs which come, and the labyrinthine difficulties that go into trying to live the good life, is to ask the most simple questions. What shall I do today? What did I do today? Did I add one tiny increment to the sum total of human happiness? Did I try hard? Did I read something interesting or say something amusing or do something kind?

If someone were to ask what I did today, I could answer: well, I met a man from the Special Forces who looked like Hugh Jackman, and another who was as hysterical as Chevy Chase in his pomp.

It’s not a bad answer.

 

Today’s pictures:

The Special Forces, with HorseBack’s own Royal Marine on the right:

One of my happiest sights is the two girls out together, in the brightness, WITHOUT THEIR RUGS. The sweet Paint has had her breakfast and is waiting politely for the duchess to finish hers, so she may lick the bowl. It’s a little routine between them:

THE FIRST SNOWDROPS:

And the darling old hill, because as one of the Dear Readers reminded me, we have not had the hill for a while. It has been lost in the dreich:

One more very lovely thing did happen today, although I almost do not mention it, because the person concerned is a modest fellow who does not like compliments very much. Someone I like and respect very much gave me an unexpected present. It was a book, chosen with a great deal of thought and care, and it had an inscription written on the front page which was so touching and heartfelt, it actually made me cry.

I dream of Tidal Bay.

Over at Leopardstown today, a late chapter in a long and glorious story will be written. The veteran Tidal Bay is crossing the water to have a pitch at one of Ireland’s best chases.

Old horse runs in race is not the stuff of which headlines or fairy tales are made. But this is not any old horse, nor any old race.

Tidal Bay is one of the most intriguing and idiosyncratic horses in racing. He has a peculiar running style, with his head stuck in the air, star-gazing all the way round. It seems almost as if he defies the laws of physics, for a horse should not be able to travel at velocity whilst making that shape.

He also has very strong ideas about the world and what he wants to do in it. He quite often moseys round at the back, as if he really can’t be fagged, and whilst the rest of the field are getting on with it, he and his jockey (mostly Ruby Walsh, lately Sam Twiston-Davies) will be having what looks like a fairly comprehensive conversation. The chat generally goes on for about three-quarters of the race, and appears to run along the lines of: not sure I want to; yes you do; still not convinced; come on it’s mighty craic; oh, all right.

You cannot tell this horse to do anything. He is stronger and more determined and more cussed than any puny human. Riding him is mostly a matter of nuanced and intelligent persuasion.

Once the conversation is finished, Tidal Bay makes up his mind, starts galloping in earnest, and quite often moves from last to first. In the old days, because of all this head-in-air orneriness, Timeform put the dreaded squiggle next to his name. The squiggle is like the Black Spot. It means unreliable, ungenuine, not to be trusted. But the funny thing is that Tidal Bay, in a tight finish, is all heart and guts. His cussedness comes into its own, as he gets a bugger off look in his eye, and goes from mule to alpha horse in a matter of strides. Suddenly, he damn well is the herd leader, and he’s going to boss the lot of them.

In the Lexus last season, he gave the racing public a finish for the ages. Half a length covered the first four home, and it was Tidal Bay, with a never-say-die surge of speed and guts, pushing his way through an impossible gap between two gallant, fighting horses, who prevailed, to roars of disbelief and joy. I have watched that race ten times, and I still have no idea how he got up.

The squiggle was quietly removed.

This season he has been mighty in victory, and amazingly courageous in defeat. He humped top weight through the mud at Chepstow last time, and finished a running-on third. He still runs with his head in the air, and he still tends to stalk round at the back for the first circuit, but the clever people at the Nicholls stable have found the key to his battling heart.

Today, probably for the last time, he goes up against the best of his peers in a Grade One chase. He is thirteen, which is old, in professional terms. The diamond brilliance usually loses its lustre when racehorses pass eleven. He had a hard race only a month ago, which can take it out of any horse, let alone one of his venerable years. He is up against First Lieutenant, a lovely, talented nine-year-old. First Lieutenant is a favourite of mine; I love his rangy, athletic build and his honest Roman nose. But I shall be shouting for dear Tidal Bay today, although I think the odds are against him.

He will be reunited with his old pal, Ruby Walsh, and who knows what chats they shall have, as they wander along at the back? If anyone can do the improbable, Ruby can.

Tidal Bay is not a horse of ease and grace. He is a horse of character and grit. That is why I love him. I think that is why he is adored by the crowds who come to watch him run. He’s not quite like anything else. And he’s been around so long, and given a huge amount of joy. If the auld fella can pull it out of the bag, there will not be a dry eye in the house. Certainly not in this house.

 

I can’t put a picture of him here, because of copyright. There is the red mare instead, who never won a single thing in her short and undistinguished racing career, but is of course the Grade One champion of my heart. She gave me a canter today of such lightness and delicacy that it was as if we were floating.

Good and bad, light and dark, up and down, round the houses. Or: usual ramble.

1342 words today. I am still doing my twenty minute rule. Everything is broken down into increments of twenty minutes. I actually set a timer. When the thing beeps, I reset it, so that the work may spread into hours, but because all I am faced with is twenty minutes, I do not feel overwhelmed. I love this new experiment and think perhaps I shall do it forever.

Down at the paddock, the sun has come out and the winds have dropped and all is golden and calm. The red mare is so delighted that she falls into her softest and sweetest self, her lower lip curving itself into an equine smile. The floods which cover half the fields have frozen over, so that we have skating rinks everywhere. The Horse Talker and I wonder what the dear equines will do. They consider for a while, then strike out across the ice to reach us, not flinching as it cracks under their hooves. They break the ice to make their way through, as if they are pioneer women, going out to settle the west. They pick up their feet like dowager duchesses on their way to a ball, as they feel the slivering shards against their fetlocks. It is one of the most charming sights I ever saw. I think how good and brave they are.

I have a ride of such ease and joy that I don’t have words for it.

I work with the mare in many different ways. Some days I concentrate on collection, or straightness, or not dropping her shoulder. Some days I work on soft cues, or steering. Some days I simply want to get her to be her best, most relaxed self. Today, I go for the cowgirl and cowpony. I want to be able to ride her with one hand, on a loose rope (we are in the halter), and to get her to keep a steady pace, going kindly within herself without me having to niggle or nag. I want to ride with thought, almost more than cues. We’ve been stymied by the weather lately, and are out of practice, and I’m not sure if this programme is too ambitious. But suddenly, there she is, going right when I merely think right, loping into a steady trot when I think trot, gathering herself for a joyful canter when I think canter.

There have been a few two steps forward one step back lately. I had to go back to the beginning, and concentrate on the fundamentals. I was reminded keenly of the humility that horses teach, and how you cannot tick boxes, or take them for granted. Today, that going back to Square One was rewarded with such loveliness that I whooped out loud and fell on her neck and showered her with garlands of love. She is one of the most remarkable creatures I ever met. Today, she gave me the great gift of making me feel like a champion.

And then, just as I was finishing the section above, smiling, with happy memories of a gentle morning, the demands of work crashed in, and the twenty minute rule did not help, and my head became stretched and maddened, and suddenly I had forty-seven things to do and not enough time to do them all.

I think this is called: being human.

As I dashed back to the field, fraught and tense, desperate to get the evening stables done in the smallest time possible, so I could tear back to my desk and attempt to dig myself out of the avalanche, I suddenly saw the look on my mare’s face. It was very, very slightly disapproving. Are we such creatures to be done in a rush? she seemed to be saying.

She was right, of course. Bugger the work. I’ll get it done. I took a deep breath and looked at the sky and looked at the trees and looked at the floods which lay like mirrors on the winter land. I looked at the light, which we have not seen for so long. I stood, perfectly still, with the mares, one on either side.

Don’t miss your life, I told myself, just because you have things to do.

 

Today’s pictures:

Really are from today.

Horse Talker leading Autumn the Filly across another stretch of cracking ice:

The fields:

My lovely girl, posing after our ride:

And looking pretty pleased with herself, as well she should:

Stan the Manly Man, striking out:

The little HorseBack filly, in surgery as we speak, still fighting the filthy infection which has her in its grip:

No idea what I am talking about.

2291 words today. The sun shone in the morning. I rode my mare. Lovely Rock on Ruby put in an exhibition round at Donny, to book his ticket to Cheltenham. I thought, on and off, all day, of the little HorseBack foal, battling for her life. The clever surgeon and his team at Glasgow are giving it all they have. I do not know if it shall be enough. I wait for news.

There is a lot of kindness about, from people I know and people I do not. I think of how it bolsters one, and how one needs that daily bolstering. When I say one, of course I mean I. One is a Mitfordian distancing device. I sometimes do not wish to admit that I need strokes. I should like to be self-contained, independent of people’s good opinion, cantering away across the Mongolian plains without asking for anything. I have a faint horror of neediness, I have no idea why. It frightens me when I see it in other people, and I do not care for it in myself. But no woman is an island. I suspect that most people sometimes crave a pat on the back or a bit of a compliment or an encouraging word. Perhaps the secret is to learn to like them, but not absolutely need them. So that if there is a day when everyone else is too preoccupied or a bit scratchy or simply thinking of something else, then one may make do, just with oneself. A little bit of island living is not a bad thing.

This is a most terrible mazy wander. I think I did have something pointful and serious to say, but I just ended up vaguely theorising out loud. I suppose that is slightly the point of this blog, but I sometimes wish for a little more sharpness. The brain has gone to mush and I am now going to sit quietly in a room until my cerebral cortex regroups. Which is pretty much what I do every day.

 

Some pictures from the last week:

My red duchess may look pretty scruffy and woolly and damp, but she is amazingly sanguine, considering the weather she has had to put up with. As always, I am in awe of her goodness and stoicism:

And I bless the glorious Amigo rug which keeps her warm and dry, no matter what the elements throw at her.

A fighting spirit.

Some of you will know that I volunteer at a charity called HorseBack UK. It does the rather wonderful and novel thing of using horses to help wounded servicemen and women and veterans back on the path to recovery, and inspires them to a meaningful future. It is particularly effective for those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Through it, I have met remarkable humans, and heard stories of such terror and courage that they make me humble.

What I had to offer HorseBack was writing. It turned out they needed words. I write everything from grant applications to leaflets, and run their Facebook page. Quite often, when I say there is No Blog Today, it is because after I have done my own work and done the HorseBack work, I have no words left. Some days, it is quite easy, and I put up something antic and light. Some days there is something concrete to report and what must be said is obvious. On other days, I must wrangle and wrestle the words to the ground, and by the time it gets to tea, I have had it. It always astonishes me how physically draining writing is. I tell myself I am not heaving concrete blocks, or working down a mine. But there: the addled old brain apparently uses up idiot amounts of energy.

Today, I am all emptied out.  It is one of those times when there would usually be no blog, but I’m going to reproduce here what I wrote for them, so that you can see why I’m done for the day.

As well as the remarkable humans I have met at HorseBack, there are remarkable horses too. It’s quite a thing to work with complete novices, and these are not old riding school ponies, but proper Quarter Horses, some of them out of the Western competition circuit. A lot is asked of them, and they give it willingly and with open hearts. This summer, a dear little filly foal was born, and I have been watching her grow. She was bred to do this hard and important work, and she had all the fine qualities that would be needed, in spades. Last week, she fell ill. Today, I had to tell the HorseBack readers. This is what I wrote:

 

Last year, we lost a brave and well-beloved member of the HorseBack family. Paul Burns served in Northern Ireland, where he survived a bomb. Despite having no legs, he sailed boats, jumped out of aeroplanes, rode horses, and threw himself into fund-raising challenges which would have defeated lesser men, even those with all their limbs. He lived life with humour and courage and grace, and everyone who met him went away feeling a little better about the world. His sudden death came as a shocking blow. Only days before, he had been part of the HorseBack team which went with the inspiring pupils of Banchory Academy as they cycled and canoed and hiked across Scotland. Paul, on his specially designed bike, led, as always, from the front.

We wanted to do something to mark his memory. In the blinding heat of August, our mare, Awesome, gave birth to a filly foal. We named her Awesome Spirit, after Paul, whose own spirit shone so brightly.

From the start, the filly was special. She was bold and beautiful, curious and questing, funny and fleet. We watched her grow with pride, and thought with hope of the important job she would do in the future.

Last week, she went lame. The vets came and went and came again. They were baffled. Her hind leg swelled to terrifying proportions, and an infection was at last diagnosed. Pus was drained, the most powerful antibiotics administered. But whatever was ailing her would not go away. Two nights ago, we thought we had lost her. The pain and the mystery infection had mastered her; the light went out of her eyes. Animals have a way of shutting down, when their bodies fail. It seemed that our little Spirit was for the dark.

But it turns out that she was better named than we knew. She has the same battling heart that we loved in Paul Burns. Miraculously, she rallied. She was not going down without a fight. She damn well was not going gently into that good night.

As she will not give up on us, so we will not give up on her. This morning, she and Awesome were driven away on the long road to Glasgow. She will be operated on at the University Equine Hospital, under the care of one of the most innovative and talented surgeons in the business, Patrick Pollock. She could not be in better hands.

We have no prognosis. We cannot tell you her chances. If courage alone could win the day, then she would be in the clear. As it is, we can only wait for news.

At HorseBack, we have seen a lot of humans who have defied the odds. We have veterans here who have been shot, crashed, bashed, blown up and bloodied in ways that the frail body should not survive. But there they are, walking and talking, still in the world. We believe in long shots, because we witness them every day. We hope that our bonny filly will come in at 100-1. We hope her fighting heart will see her through.

Hold her in your own generous hearts today.

 

And this was the picture I posted to go with it:

As I write this, I hear that the sweet girl has arrived in Glasgow. They will be operating as we speak. She is too young to have to fight such a fight, and I hope more than anything that she wins it.

Oh, and here is a small PS. I loved the comment yesterday from the Dear Reader all the way away in California who really does worry that I am dead in a ditch. (Are you related to my mother, by any chance?) And I was rather touched by those of you who said you are disappointed when there is No Blog Today. Quite frankly, I would not blame you if you were secretly relieved, I do ramble on so. Kindness of strangers, as always.

Twenty minutes.

Today there was literally sunshine and shade. The sun suddenly appeared, then fled for the hills, and some sulky, chill rain took its place. Now there is a light outside the colour of honey, with an indigo sky behind the beeches.

The red mare was perfect. I know nothing is perfect, but today she was. We could not ride for logistical reasons (how I sometimes hate logistics) so we went back to groundwork school and did our ABCs. She adores this. It’s as if she can relax because she knows all the answers. So as I did the standard desensitising, which involves flicking ropes all over her body and cracking whips like a stockgirl, right next to her head, she went to sleep. She’s supposed to be a crazy thoroughbred. Nobody told her.

Wrote 1233 words of book.

Did a new experiment in time management. I put everything into twenty minute increments. It is astonishing what you can get done in twenty minutes.

I don’t know where this idea came from and I don’t expect it will last, but it was interesting, and I grew less panicked about time whizzing past my ear so that I can hear it whoosh.

Started to write this. It is getting late and I am tired and the cerebellum is packing up for the day.

‘Oh, stop it,’ says the practical voice, who is quite ruthless. ‘You don’t have to do a blog.’

‘But the Dear Readers,’ the impractical voice wails.

‘The Dear Readers have lives,’ says the practical voice. ‘They really don’t need to know all about yours, every single damn day.’

The impractical voice knows this is true. But the wail continues. There must be blog. Or, or – THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM WILL FAIL.

The impractical voice says, sullenly, scuffing its shoe on the floor: ‘They’ll think I am dead in the ditch.’

‘Let them,’ says the practical voice, who really can’t be arsed and wants to have its first gin of the evening. (The practical voice turns out in fact to be a flinty dipso.)

‘I’ll just do a quick one with no pictures,’ says the impractical voice, compromising, rationalising, pleading.

‘Yeah,’ says the practical voice, heading for the drinks cupboard. ‘Because you know if they don’t see ONE MORE PICTURE OF THE RED MARE they will survive.’

So that’s how this got written in under twenty minutes. See? It’s my new miracle.

The griefs. Or, a little light and shade.

I think quite a lot about ordinary griefs. I know that really one should not put things on a scale and that not everything is relative, but I do think that some losses are worse than others. So I think of griefs as coming in two kinds: the ordinary griefs, and the rip-up-your-life griefs.

The ones that rip up your life are the ones I can’t imagine. I think of those as the violent, sudden, or too soon ones: the children, the young brother, the just-married wife. Or the too many ones: when a whole family is lost, in a car crash or hurricane. Or, right at the other end of the scale, the ones where two people have been together for fifty years, and one of them goes. The other often does not survive for long. People really do die of broken hearts.

The ordinary ones are all the ones I know: the old men, the old dogs, the old pony. They are the ones who have had their time. The loss hurts, but the natural order of things has been preserved. There is, in the end, consolation in that. In that strange season of death three years ago, when I went to three funerals in three weeks, two of the departed were untimely ripped. Two of them were too young, but I was saved by just enough distance. They were people I loved and knew, but they were not in the immediate circle. They were people I fell on with delight and affection when I saw them, but I did not see them very often. The distance was geographical and circumstantial, and it was enough. The heart was sore, the awfulness and stupidness of fine spirits snuffed out too early was keenly felt, but the life was not ripped.

In the news, there is a rip-up death. I never know what to say about people I admire but do not know. Philip Seymour Hoffman was in many of my favourite films, and was a blazing talent. He had that sense of familiarity that great actors carry, because you’ve seen them in the darkened cinema and your front room, and the vivid sense that the great ones carry makes them very real and present. His death was so abrupt and unexpected and pointless that the lives around him must feel as if they have been torn to pieces. Out on the internet, there is a great outpouring of regret. Some of the messages are touching and elegant, but I find myself resisting adding to them. I put up no Facebook picture and tweeted no tweet. He was not my friend. I do not know how to say anything which would not sound mawkish or bandwagon-jumping.

Yet, the internet is rather wonderful in times like this. The loss of a brilliant man may be marked. Strangers may record their admiration for him. Perhaps the ones who did know and love him will find their broken hearts soothed, just a little, to see that he was held in such esteem. All the same, I feel an odd shyness about posting anything about it on my own internet pages. He was not mine; he did not belong to me.

This morning, someone wrote something beautiful and touching about the old gentleman who was mine. This is another of the ordinary griefs. A man of venerable age went gently into that good night. The sorrow is real, and lies heavy, but it may be managed. I know that time will do its thing.

I circle back to the start of this post – the thinking about these ordinary griefs, and how they are folded into a life. They must be folded in, because every human has them, and one of the most important existential talents is to learn how to carry them, so that they do not sink the ship.

This morning, I had a little lesson in that. I came away from reading the lovely tribute very doleful and tearful. The weight of loss pressed on me. But then the dog made me laugh, and the Horse Talker was down at the field and we made jokes about the equines, who show such daily comedy skills, and then I got on my red mare and rode out. I had thought that would be the time when sadness might return, but she was in her most racehorsey mood, and I had to concentrate hard to settle and relax her.

Then, on the way home, I bumped into some of the extended family who are visiting, and we had a happy chat and they admired my glorious girl, which lifted my spirits. Then there was HorseBack work, and many things to think about. Then there was the writing of the secret project. Then, it was time to go back to the field and feed the horses and put out the hay and check the rugs and give the love. And then it was back to the desk. I even did errands and very ordinary domestic duties.

The sorrow got put away, because there was life instead, and I can’t mope about like a wet weekend. I suppose the lesson in this small parable is that life goes on, and that is exactly what it must do. I think what I was reminded of, particularly in the unexpected laughter with the living people I saw today, was that sorrow does not need to blot out everything else. Moments of joy can exist alongside, cantering in tandem. There is room for both.

At the same time, for all my belief in bashing on, I think that one can be too stoical. There must be a marking, and a grieving, and room for regret. The thing must be felt, and expressed, in its correct place and time. Perhaps it is finding that right place that is the secret of it all. I hunt for it as Mr Stanley hunts for the mice in the feed shed, although perhaps with slightly less snuffling.

As I finish this, I think: I did not quite get all the good words in the good order. I wanted to say something profound, and I ended up with a bit of a muddle. I often do this. But then the whole shooting match is a bit of a muddle, so I don’t mind so much. You clever Dear Readers shall find your way through the tangle, because you always do.

 

Much too tired now to frame proper pictures for you. I scrolled through the archive and stopped at a random place. It was this, all glory and what-the-hell, from a time before the floods and the sleet and the applying of the new rug technology. It’s just a horse, having a damn good roll: