What do you do about Gerald?

Come with me, Dear Readers, on a little thought experiment.

Imagine you know a person. Let us call him Gerald. Gerald does not know you very well, nor do you know Gerald very well, but he is in your life in the way that people sometimes are.

Gerald, blithe and bonny and with the very best of intentions, does something fairly regularly which you find catastrophically annoying.

Actually, annoying is not a very good word for it. You do end up feeling grumpy and resentful and annoyed, but at first the thing itself is not so much annoying as smothering, and battering, and even sometimes slightly alarming. There are moments, before you talk yourself down off the ceiling, when it feels as if it denies your very sense of self, your sense of agency, your sense of discernment. This, you know, is absurd, since the thing itself is so small as to be insignificant. So you end up not in an existential vortex, but just quite annoyed.

The problem is that Gerald has absolutely no idea of all this. Gerald thinks he is being kind and helpful. Gerald is kind and helpful. This makes you even more annoyed, because how can you be annoyed with nice Gerald and all his good intentions? You start to fear that you are not the decent human you pretend to be.

Well, any sane person is almost certainly saying, could you not simply ask kind Gerald to desist?

You could. That would be the Occam’s Razor solution. But the problem is that you don’t really know Gerald well enough. You fear that however politely you phrased it, the request would sound churlish and uncharitable. It would be a rejection, of sorts. It could come out all wrong, and cause pain.

Then you start to wonder: perhaps it is your very own problem. You reckon that if you put it to a straw poll, there might be quite a lot of people who think that what Gerald is doing is perfectly acceptable. Those people might look at you as if you are a bit nuts in the head. So maybe the solution lies not in confronting Gerald, but in confronting yourself.

You wonder whether this is the essence of being a grown-up. People are always going to do things that you do not like. They are going to tell you things that upset you, and neglect to do things that would make you happy, and carelessly trample all over your finer feelings without knowing what it is they do. Why is it their responsibility to put themselves in your rather eccentric shoes? Perhaps it is your job to butch up and deal with it. The world, after all, does not revolve around you.

Essentially, you have two choices. A: You ask Gerald not to do the thing, and you risk hurting Gerald’s feelings for no particularly good reason. Or, B: you work sternly on yourself and realise that you are not the star of your very own opera and that it is your responsibility to deal with your singed feelings and not other people’s job to step around your tender sensibilities when they have plenty of sensibilities of their own to be worrying about.

What would you do?

My feeling is: B.

Bugger. I’m pretty much convinced that B is the only answer. Which means that I have to be the grown-up. I like to think that I am a grown-up but the truth is that there are times when I find it very tiring. I quite want to be six years old and lie down in fury and drum my heels on the floor. But I am nearly fifty, and throwing all the toys out of the pram is not a good look, at this age. Bugger, bugger, bugger. 

Still, it's quite a relief to have worked all that out. Now I have to go and rummage for my sensible hat and put it on my sensible head and march out in my sensible boots to face the sensible day. 

Decide what it is you want.

The stupid back laid me flat and, apparently, drained me of typing skills. I think I thought it too dull to bore you with the details. Also: everyone has a bad back. Everyone knows about the swearing and the socks.

In the midst of the groaning, two lovely things did happen. I picked the winner of both the Oaks and the Derby. One was the favourite, but one I took at 12-1 so I felt both happy and clever. I was shouting so much that I lost my voice.

And then I got knocked back again, not by anything physical this time, by something which also happens to everyone, which happens all the time, which everyone knows about.

It’s that thing when someone does not ask you one single question. I mean: not one. Years ago, when I went out and about, I used sometimes to sit next to people at dinner who spoke only of themselves. They would get up at the end of the evening not knowing if I were a plumber or a politician. I used to find this vastly amusing. I would take bets in my head. I would pretend I was an anthropologist, studying a hitherto unperceived tribe. I now discover that when someone you love does it, and you are a little bit vulnerable, it can make you feel as if you do not exist.

The strict voice is very stern on this. The strict voice thinks I am being a weedy weed. Why should anyone ask about you? says that martinet. They have their own frets and troubles and worries. And what does it matter, anyway? Butch up, and think about the people who don’t have shoes.

All the same, it took two days for me to listen to that voice.  (The strict voice is hard core, but it is also right, quite a lot of the time.) And I did not want to bore you with that either.

I read something brilliant on the internet the other day. It said:

Decide what it is you want.

Write that shit down.

Make a fucking plan.

And work on it

Every

Single

Day.

I love this because it is so the opposite of all those cheesy welcome the abundance mantras. I love that it has swearing in it. I love that it is slightly impatient.

I thought, when I read it: what do I want?

The answer is slightly tragic. This is what came into my head, quite instinctively, without thought. I want to make people happy and I want a field full of thoroughbreds.

So, that is my plan. It is not exactly an Oscar-winning, Nobel-worthy plan. I feel slightly embarrassed about the making people happy part. The only way I know how to do this is to write the odd decent sentence and put up adorable pictures of my animals on Facebook. I suppose if I worked and worked and worked and frowned and squinted and thought I could one day write a really, really good book and that would make people happy. Then perhaps the happy people would tell their friends and it would sell lots of copies and then I could get the field full of thoroughbreds.

So, my plan, it turns out, is the same plan that I do every day, which is: write and write and write and write. It’s the only plan I know.

I was faintly interested that the things I want are so simple. I don’t, it turns out, want a prize or a castle in Spain or a Dior dress or fame or adoration. I just want to add something to the sum total of human happiness and be surrounded by thoroughbreds. I am even more of an old hippy than I thought. Quite soon, I shall discover that I want to teach the world to sing, and then I shall have to have a plan for that. I'll have to get my voice back first.

Ouch ouch ouch.

Author's note: I wrote this yesterday and did not publish it, because it was such a wail. But today the stupid back is still making me shout and swear so there is no way round it. If you are looking for bluebirds and butterflies, quickly pass on and come back next week, when I hope I shall be back to my better self. I do have a resolution though. I am never going to complain about anything again. I am going to treat every pain-free day as if it is a jubilee. 

This is what I sounded like today.

Ouch. Ouch, Ouch Ouch.

Can’t get out of bed. Don’t think I can get out of bed.

Of course I can get out of bed.

AH AH AH AH AH AH.

If I just stretch a bit like this, then it might feel better.

No, it does not feel better.

Not sure I can stand up straight.

Ouch.

Must get some magnesium. People say magnesium helps. Of course, I have some magnesium. I am going to take the magnesium.

Five minutes later: not sure the magnesium is working.

Maybe I’ll take some turmeric as well. Everyone says turmeric cures everything.

Now then. I can get up and get dressed.

No, I can’t get dressed.

CAN’T PUT MY SOCKS ON.

This is a bit of an emergency. I can’t go anywhere without my socks.

Right. I’ll work this out. It’s a question of angles and leverage.

OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH.

Got the bloody socks on. Now for the boots. Boots are a whole different hills of beans.

Fuck bugger bollocks arse. And you can shut up on the bloody radio, bloody Libby bloody Purves, sounding all smug and healthy.

If I can just get that zip. Just that one. Nearly there. No, missed it. Don’t panic. Start again.

THE BOOTS ARE ON!!!!!

Just quickly look up lower back pain on the internet, just in case.

Never, ever look up anything health-related on the internet. I have degenerative spine disease and am going to die.

Right. Downstairs. Ah, ah, ah, ah.

Have to put the washing on. If I crouch down like this....

But now I have crouched down, a triumph in itself, I am never going to be able to get up. There is nothing to hold on to, to haul me up. I imagine them finding me, days later, frozen in the crouching position, dehydrated and weak from hunger.

I’m going to have to shout through the pain. The getting up is possible, yes it is, it is just going to hurt quite a lot. I have the strength, I’m just going to have to shout.

Fuck bugger arse bollocks.

I’m up. I’m up. This is huge. I need new words for huge. I’m going to walk now. I have to take the dogs out and keep moving. Everyone says keep moving.

I’d quite like never to move again. Can I do that? Please?

How do the back people do it?

Without a word of warning, my back seizes up and goes into spasm. It is as if a furious giant has put his hand around my pelvis and is squeezing. Everything that was easy and free is now tight and crushed.

I had forgotten about this. I put my back out once every ten years and then I forget, like my mother always said one forgot about the pain of childbirth until it was too late. The last time I was with my sister and she made me drink vodka for three days which did, I must admit, work quite well. We had to do emergency measures because I was on the island of Colonsay and at one point I could not drive, so the journey home was starting to look perilous.

I think: yes, I remember now. This is what this country looks like. I think of all the Ordinary Decent Britons, with their backs. Back pain is practically the most common ailment in this country. Millions of people have it. How is the populace walking about the streets, taking the underground railway and complaining about the weather without shouting out loud? Because it is shouty pain. It lies like a tiger in its lair. If you are in a certain position, it is not actual agony, just a horrid, lurking tightness, waiting to pounce. You move an inch and then – it springs. And you go, if you are me: AH, AH, AH, AH. (I am not having a butch day.)

Everything takes hours. Everything is a strategy. I can get my sock on if I go on all fours like this, and then roll over like this, and then reach down like.....AH AH AH AH. It took me an hour to get dressed this morning. This is very humbling and good for character-building. I thought of all the people who live in constant pain. But it’s a fucking bore. I can’t drive, I can’t feed the horses, I can barely type this, because I have to keep levering myself up and walking round the house or I seize up and am frozen in place and may never move again. I can walk, thank goodness, and go at funereal pace to take the dogs out. How do the back people do it?

I feel very peculiar and entirely battered. All the things I take for granted, I think, ruefully. I pretend that I don’t take things for granted. I pretend that I do think about the people who can’t put on their socks. I sort of do, but not, I realise now, in any meaningful way. Not like this.

I thought I would be riding horses into my old age. What if this is a portent? My father had to stop riding in his sixties, when all the broken bones caught up with him. He was never quite the same again. He did not yelp and exclaim about his love for thoroughbreds like I do, but he loved them, all the same. They had been with him for so long. I saw him weep once, for a brave steeplechaser, as if that horse had been a child. I think those mornings riding out two lots set him right for the day just as my red mare sets me right. Once you’ve been on a thoroughbred, nothing else will do. They combine all the greatest elements of the equine pantheon: speed, power, kindness, athleticism, lightness, strength. They are brave, with fine, fighting hearts. Once you’ve sat on all that power and glory, walking on your own puny human feet is very dull work.

I squint and pull myself together. It’s just a thing. It will pass. I was stupidly hefting hay bales as if I were a teenager instead of a woman of fifty, and I must have wrenched something without knowing it. I’ll be more careful in future. My poor body will surely mend itself. Won’t it? But oh, oh, I do think of the back people. And I marvel at their stoicism and their ability to go on.

In praise of the lurcher.

I go down to the village to run an errand. As I am in the shop, talking to the ladies – our village shop is small, but there are usually three ladies at the counter at any one time – the blare of car alarm goes off and I look out to see Stanley sauntering across the asphalt. He looks like a boulevardier: quite at home, rather pleased with himself, and on the lookout for dash and fun.

‘Oh dear,’ I say to the ladies. ‘That is my dog.’

I leave all my things on the counter, run out, restore Stanley to the car, look him in the eye and say, sternly: ‘Wait.’ Darwin sits like a statue on the back seat, expressing clearly that none of this was his idea and would I please notice that he had not moved.

Back in the shop the ladies are laughing quietly and looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. ‘He can now officially escape out of a locked car,’ I say in extravagant despair. ‘He can open every door in the house and now this.’ I shake my head. They find this very amusing.

The most senior of the ladies, whom I love, nods her head. ‘Lurchers,’ she says, wisely. ‘Very, very clever.’ And they all nod with her, knowing their dogs.

A lot of people think that the lurcher is a breed. In fact, it has the loosest definition in the canine world. All you need is half sighthound, and you’ve got a lurcher. It could be anything from a whippet crossed with an Irish terrier to a wolf-hound crossed with a Labrador. Because most people traditionally used lurchers for poaching or hunting or coursing, the most common cross is with a working dog such as a collie and that is why there is a fairly recognisable lurcher type. The sighthound always shines through, giving the lurcher a distinctive look.

As I go home I think about why I love lurchers so much, and why I am so delighted to have two of them. (Darwin is officially a lurcher-Labrador cross, so he’s only quarter sighthound, but in my book this counts. He is a lurcher to his bones.) I think I like them because they are mutts, and yet they are not any old mutt; they have a long and fascinating history. They are found in the Book of Kells. I love them because they are proper country dogs. They are athletes, which I like in both dogs and horses. Some people used to look down their noses at lurchers, because at one time they were thought of as gypsy dogs in the days when gypsies were considered beyond the pale. They were considered sneaky, thieving dogs, who would have the chicken out of your pot when you were not looking. But even if they were not historically favoured by the nobs, they have something very aristocratic about them. There is a grace and a bearing about them which is entirely noble.

My boys are very different from each other. They have led very different lives. Stanley was a double rescue, and still bears the scars of his dual abandonment. Somewhere along the line, someone hurt him, and he can still have acid flashbacks to a darker time. Darwin came from a great human family and a grand canine litter. He has only ever known happiness. Nothing bad has ever happened to him, so he sees the world as the most tremendous place and regards people as endless sources of delight. He has an innocence to him which was stolen from Stanley.

But their lurcheriness gives them many things in common. They both love to run and wrestle. When they are out and about, they are constantly searching for amusement, sniffing the air for thrilling scents, scanning the horizon for alluring targets. They chase birds at top speed, never becoming down-hearted by the lowering fact that they can’t get anywhere near the canny avians. (The birds look down in mild disdain, as if to say: you should realise that we can fly.)They are both obsessed by really, really big sticks. They love children, and are incredibly gentle with them. I’ve never heard either of them growl, or seen them bare their teeth. They do not snap. They are very honest and straightforward, and they both have natural comedic skills.

Everybody, in the end, settles on their dog. Some people like tiny dogs, some people insist on pure breeds, some people prefer a working dog. I loved my two grand old ladies, the Lab-collie crosses who were so elegant and kind and good-hearted that they brought me to dog island in the first place, and left me stranded there without a ferry home. In some ways, they were my dogs of a lifetime, and I miss them still. But now I don’t think I’d have anything other than a lurcher. It turns out that they are my people, my tribe. Of mixed breeding, often misunderstood, good at heart, full of enthusiasm and happy to try for lost causes, hoping for the best, stoical in the face of the worst: yes, that is my kind of dog. 

A sunny Sunday.

I wake feeling rather Sunday-ish, tired from a long week. I was on firework duty with the livestock last night, dashing about to calm the horses, check on the sheep, rush up to the cows. The bad part of this was that I was fired with adrenaline and could not get to sleep. The good part was that I had a lovely midnight chat with the farmer. 

The farmer, who keeps his animals in the meadows around my house, has the rare, inborn talent of making me feel better about everything. I have no idea how he does this. We are hardly more than nodding acquaintances. We see each other out and about and occasionally stop to talk of the dogs and the horses and the ewes and the weather. I know nothing of his life and he knows nothing of mine, except in the liminal space where our existences intersect, the place where the four-legged creatures live. That is our mutual concern and passion. 

He is of the earth and he speaks like a philosopher. I never knew a human work as hard as he, and every day I read in the papers of the traumas and trials of the farming life, besieged by cheap imports, China flooding the market, export ships from New Zealand literally turning around mid-voyage to send their lamb here instead of to the east. Yet, my farmer is always smiling, even though that smile sometimes looks a little rueful and ragged round the edges.

The sun this morning shines down like gangbusters. It is almost too vulgar. I squint at it crossly with my tired eyes and fall to picking up the dung. (The shimmering glamour of my life.) The mares graze peacefully in the set-aside and the dogs gambol and wrestle and race each other to the burn. I start feeling less tired. I suddenly realise that the air is filled with birdsong. The music is so loud that it is as if someone has switched it into full stereo. For a moment, I am amazed. How can such tiny beings make such a grand noise?

I ride the mare, loping around the meadow cowgirl-style, and then we put on our dressage hats and work on our transitions. It may be Sunday, but we must still work on our transitions. The dogs come with us, doing a bit of dressage of their own. My shoulders come down and I forget about the people on the radio, shouting at each other about Europe, about the forty-seven things I have to do in the coming week, about my usual mid-life box-set of frets and frailties. The animals, like the farmer, make me feel better about everything.

I go up to the dear stepfather’s house and help him with something on his computer. Last time I did this there were glitches, and I edified him with a drunken sailor exhibition of full court swearing. This time, I only said bugger twice. The thing was done.

I sit in the garden for a few minutes, looking out on the ravishing space my mother made. Her garden, lovingly tended in her memory by the kind gentleman who helped her make it beautiful, is coming into its summer pomp. Even the old oaks at the southern end are finally putting out their leaves. The dear stepfather will go south in July, leaving Scotland for good. I think: I must sit in this garden every day and look at it with my eyes, because in two months I shall not be able to see it any more.

And then I go gently home to see if I can work out what will win the 4.15 at Naas. 

The spirit of William Morris.

‘Never,’ said my landlord, who is also my much-loved relation by marriage, ‘have anything in your house which is neither beautiful nor useful.’

            We were having dinner last night and he was quoting William Morris but he did not know he was quoting William Morris. The saying has survived, but the man himself is often forgotten.

            ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, agreeing so much that I practically fell off my chair. ‘William Morris. That is William Morris. He was so right.’

           

In the spirit of William Morris, I am going to tell you something useful. If you should ever wake up in one of those inexplicable bad moods which make you want to shout fuck at the radio and kick inoffensive bits of furniture, here is what you do. Pick up some dung, ride a good horse, and make someone laugh. I think you will agree that I have now fulfilled my remit. Here is easy, practical advice that absolutely anyone can follow.

Actually, I’m only half joking. Obviously not everyone has a horse, but there is the metaphorical riding of the horse – something you love, something you can do outside, something physical, something that stops you thinking of your own idiotic frets and strains.

The inexplicable mood which crashed on me this morning was an old friend. I don’t know when I shall learn. I had had far too good a time in the last two days. I did horseback archery on my mare, and I took her to a place where everyone admired her and she was queenly and immaculate and stellar. Then my family arrived from the south – my adored niece, her very dear husband and their enchanting little boy, who is ten months old and is funny and jolly and entirely at one with the world. I had, as a Texan I once knew used to say, too much fun.

I get so involved and excited when glorious things happen that there is always a crash afterwards. I need to develop an emotional thermostat, a steady barometer, a Goldilocks not too hot not too cold metronome. I think it is good to have passions, but I have to think that, or it would be all up with me. But I also think that there needs to be a sturdy fulcrum which stops one swinging too far in each direction.

The mood snarled at me and I thought everyone on the Today programme was an idiot. I went crossly down to the field, almost resentful that I had to feed the horses and groom the horses and generally look after the horses. Then I did the required physical work, still muttering like Muttley, and then I got on the red mare and we cantered about as if we were in the Wild West and the snapping, snarling voices in my head grew fainter, as if they were starting to get bored.

I went up to my dear Stepfather’s house and showed him how to cook an omelette with herbs from his garden. He had asked me to do this and in my initial grump I had thought I would put it off, do it tomorrow. But it was such a small thing that I just did it. The growling voices were deathly fed up by now, and I could hardly hear them. Then I made quite a lot of entirely random jokes, as if I were throwing little comedic darts at a dartboard, hoping one of them might hit. Something smashed into the bullseye, and he laughed so much that tears came into his eyes.

My remit at that house, still so empty without my mother in it, is to fill it every morning with light and laughter. The stepfather is old school, and does not speak of his emotions, but I know he misses my mother with a great and enduring ache. I can’t cheer him up, precisely, but I can do what I can do.

When I saw him laugh like that, the last of the stupid voices took themselves off, to torment someone else. The mood ran for the hills. I could come home, get on with writing, address my day in a reasonable manner.

In the end, I suddenly realise, as I tell you this little story, I got myself back to a state of respectable humanity by being useful. I have had a theory for a while that if you want to make yourself feel better, you should do something for someone else. If you give a little of yourself, then you get yourself back. It’s a beautiful, virtuous circle. This morning

it worked, and I was glad.

We are archers.

This morning, I took a bow, got onto my horse, rode down a track, and shot an arrow straight to its target.

This is not a sentence I thought I would ever write.

The mare was mighty, and I whooped so loudly that they must have heard me in Inverness.

As I got back to my desk, the first thing I wanted to do was to tell you about this remarkable story. I am so filled with amazement and delight that my fingers are going like the clappers over the keyboard. Then, I paused. I got to thinking. Even when I have done something entirely physical, I always, always get to that damn thinking.

I thought of fear.

For two days, I have been looking fear in the whites of its eyes. It really has not been much fun. I don’t know where it came from or why it is hanging around, but it is. I’m generally quite strict about not doing pointless worry. I remember that great Mark Twain quote: ‘I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.’ But this time, despite my best intentions, the bastard got the better of me. It was that kind of beastly existential fret, which catches me in its crocodile jaws and throws me about the room. It was the ‘what if?’ worry. What if I break my leg or never get my damn book published or end up destitute? You know, the stupid, mid-life, help help help I don’t know what is going to happen terror. The kind that swamps you and leaves you feeling battered and stupid.

This morning, I rode my thoroughbred mare down that track and shot the bow and arrow from her majestic back and shrieked with such triumph that I startled the humans who were with me. The mare herself, entirely used to my noisy whoops of joy, did not turn a hair. 

The odd thing was that on the Today programme this morning I heard a woman say: ‘I’m frightened of horses.’ I don’t know where horses came into it, as she was being interviewed about the Europe referendum. But it struck me, because horses are the one thing I am not frightened of. Logically, I probably should be frightened, just a little, of having a half-ton flight animal under me, one who was bred for speed and strength, with not so much as a finger on her rein and a twanging bow held in the air, just in her blind spot.

The champion archers who instructed me this morning are poetry to watch. I have seen them before, and I remember thinking: I could never do that. They make it look easy, but it’s not easy. I thought their skill and their ability and their ease went into the category of Things I Could Never Do. But they were so gentle and sure and encouraging and persuasive that I discovered the impossible was possible.

The thing that fascinated me was that I found the whole bow and arrow thing very hard on the ground. It went against all muscle memory. I could not work out where to put my thumb or how to move my shoulders in the correct way. My body was saying: what, what? I had a go, said thank you very much, and rather accepted defeat. The archery course was going on for a week, but I could only take enough time off work to do a single morning. A morning was not enough. I’ll just let everyone else get on with it, I thought, and go and play with my pony.

Later, the brilliant arching lady looked up at the red mare and said: ‘Why don’t we just desensitise her to the bow?’ It would have been rude to say no, even though I had written the whole thing off. Within fifteen minutes, I was arching. Because the moment I was on that horse’s back, the whole thing came easily. My body stopped saying what, what, and said yes, yes. I hit the target three times in a row. Admittedly this was in a walk, and the moment we got to cantering I could not control the arrow and it jiggled about and fell sadly to the ground, but still. It felt like victory to me.

The arching champion smiled, as I jabbered at her in amazed delight. ‘Well,’ she said, kindly, ‘on the ground, you were over-thinking it. Once you got on your horse, you just did it.’

I had feared that this was one of the things I would not be able to do. I did not feel humiliated precisely, but rueful and chastened. In the end, all it took was a little human encouragement, and the confidence that this mighty horse gives me, and the fears ran for the hills. I stopped thinking, and just did it. That felt like a profound life lesson.

I quite often say that this mare brings out my best self. She is a stern professor, and she really hates the second-rate. She expects the best and she requires the best and if she does not get the best she becomes insecure and cross. It was because of her vehement demands that I took myself back to school, sharpened myself up, and polished myself into the human she desired. When I am on her, I fear nothing. ‘You really trust that horse,’ someone said. I do trust her. I believe in her. She is my touchstone. When I feel my puny human body become one with her mighty thoroughbred body I cannot feel sadness, or regret, or terror, or angst. I feel whole. I feel as if I have come home. That is the gift she gives me, and it is worth more than rubies.

Now I just have to learn to take that feeling from the mare to the rest of my life. That is my mission and I choose to accept it. We are archers, after all. We laugh at fear. We are afraid of nothing. We cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

Today's photograph was taken by my kind friend Cathy, whom I thank. It was before the arching, when we were playing in the round pen. You will be very glad to see that I am wearing a special new hat, bought for four pounds in the village shop. It has the red mare's official stamp of approval.

A little bit of bunting.

The rather amazing thing is that all that wild yelling yesterday did the trick. The wounding blow has now shrunk to a humming bruise. It is still there; it still exists; but I have perspective now. I am back on my feet.

I have a growing suspicion that this is what happens in middle age. Life gets very whackish at this time. It’s always biffing you and bashing you and smashing you to the ground. The biffs and bashes may be so small that they are hardly visible to the naked eye. They may be profound and oceanic, so that you feel as if you must drown. They are sometimes nothing to do with you. They are not personal, but out in the world. You turn on the news and there are stories of such sorrow and pity that your heart aches in your chest, in a sort of furious, regretful impotence. I sometimes think that all I am doing is falling down and getting up again. I sometimes wonder how I get any work done at all.

Yet, amazingly, in all this tumbling over and getting up, I have managed to finish my Secret Project. There are 98,000 words where there are none. I cannot yet tell whether they are good words, but they exist. I have to put them aside for three days and then do a paper edit, where I print out the manuscript and read it on actual paper. (The brain responds differently to words on paper and words on the screen, which is why this printing out is vital. You suddenly see glaring errors which were not visible before.)

Even if the words are not much good, I still feel quite proud of myself. I am a huge believer in buggering on, in not giving up, in putting one weary, stompy foot in front of the other. There were days in this secret project when I missed my mother so much that I felt my heart would crack into a hundred pieces, when the weight of grief was so heavy I did not think I could carry it any more. I felt stupid and lost and overwhelmed. But somehow I trudged to my desk and made my fingers tap tap tap over the keyboard. There must be words, and there were words.

There was nothing, and now there is something. I can’t quite believe it. I’m not exactly putting out more flags, but I’m damn well going to allow myself a little bit of bunting. 

The kindness of strangers and a bit of a blow.

Oh, the dear Dear Readers. You are mighty battalions of loveliness.

Whenever I write a particularly revelatory post, especially one that carries a humming freight of absurdity, I am caught by the snapping crocodile jaws of angst. Am I about to be arrested by the Too Much police? Have I been a crashing bore? Did you really need to know all that?

One of the things that drives me nuts is the Shiny School. There is a lot of this on the internet. Look at me and my fabulous life. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. So I get this nutty idea that if I share the imperfections then that is somehow a good thing in itself.

My instinct is often to put on a fine front. Be amusing, be ironic, don’t frighten the horses. When I rip that front off, I feel a bit frightened, even though I have an incurable conviction that the more ripping there is, the better everything shall be.

But you came up trumps. Nobody said: oh butch up and put on your big girl’s pants. Everyone said a version of two of my favourite words in the English language: me too. Thank you.

The odd thing was that after all these layers of slightly pointless angst, something really sad happened last night. I got a fresh blow on an old bruise, and fell reeling backwards. I was like George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle: against the ropes, baffled and bewildered. I had to go down to the field this morning and do a lot of mad singing and wild weeping to get the sorrow out. (I find really loud and heedless singing is amazingly helpful in this kind of situation.)

The sweet mare kindly watched, unruffled, and fell back to grazing. She does not mind me excavating emotion as long as I do it at a safe distance. Once I got all the shit out, in a very noisy and messy way, I was calm again for a moment and I got on her dear back and cantered around without caring a straw for what I looked like. I needed to be at one with her and I was. Her great, beautiful, thoroughbred body is my safe place. It is the only place in the world where I am constitutionally incapable of feeling miserable. I don’t know how she does this, but she does.

This new sorrow has ripped the scars off the old sorrow and I shall have to put on my grown-up hat and be sensible and stoical and look the damn thing in the whites of its eyes. I sometimes wish I did not have to be the grown-up, but if wishes were horses we would all be Lady bloody Godiva. The wailing six-year-old in me has to come out and have her wail. The sweary, furious, wounded self has to have her own shout. Fuck, bugger, bollocks, shit and arse goes the cry. This is when I feel very, very lucky to have a hidden field, so that the bawling and hollering can fly harmlessly into the bright air.

And then I go back into the world, where life is earnest, life is real, and actual tragedies are being reported on the nightly news, and you really can’t go around cursing like a longshoreman just because your heart got a bit cracked. I am wearing a literal hat, which is not in fact very grown up, but does keep off the drizzle. (The hat has been sat on by the dogs, got lost under twenty bales of hay, and been trodden into the mud, so it is entirely squashed and misshapen and mapped with Scottish earth. Yet it still does its job. Which feels almost like a parable to me.) The metaphorical grown-up hat will be firmly put into place as the hours go by. I’ll get the measure of the blow, let reality bite, hunt about for the silver linings like a pig hunting for truffles. I’ll ring up the Beloved Cousin, who always knows what to do, because she is so good and wise. In the meantime, I’m sitting quietly in my room and recruiting my strength. There will be green soup and iron tonic and then I’ll get myself back up off the ropes and live to fight another day.

PS. Today's picture is of the red mare having her feet trimmed. This is a sight guaranteed to lift my spirits, so I am squinting at it very hard. 

A cautionary tale about illusion and reality. Or, twelve hours on the ceiling.

Warning: this is a very silly story. Occasionally, I am driven to share silly stories with you. Nobody really knows why.

Yesterday was a really good day. The farrier came, which is always a delight. The horses love Wendy the Farrier and so do the humans. Everyone ends up happier, and with very smart feet. I rode the mare and she was funny and dancing and fine and the dear Stepfather came and took some photographs of us. The dogs were in a good mood and I wrote 2455 words. This was especially gratifying because it was supposed to be an editing day, so the words were a flying bonus.

At about four-thirty, I discovered, to my intense shock, that I was in a perfectly filthy mood. I could not understand how I could have had a good day and be so cross. I was far too furious to excavate the muddled moody feelings and see what they were really about so I ruthlessly ignored them and then dreamt all night of death and disaster. I even had a finals anxiety dream, which I have not done for twenty years.

This morning I faced the dirty truth. I can hardly write this, it is so shaming. I was cross because of those damn photographs.

I have been reading a lot lately about very brilliant horsemen and women, and I’ve been watching very brilliant horsemen and women. I've been inspired recently by Ingrid Klimke and Michael Jung. I've been very proud of the red mare and getting more ambitious for her and I watched the dazzling horses and riders and dreamed dizzy dreams. I think I thought, in the very bonkers recesses of my brain, that we were Michael Jung and Roxie.

That was why I wanted the pictures.

I got home, looked at them, and felt my heart sink.

This was entirely irrational. They were charming pictures. There were some lovely bits, but I was blinded by the thing I know most surely is fatal to peace of mind, which is: false expectation. I felt like a world-beater, but I looked like what I am, which is a middle-aged amateur. The truth is, the mare and I have both taken ourselves back to school and learnt a completely new form of horsemanship from what we grew up with. We are both ladies of a certain age and going back to the beginning was always going to take time. We don't look like Michael Jung and Roxie, whatever I have in my head. We look like what we are: a slightly goofy pair of beginners.

The second heart-sinker was much, much more embarrassing. I had a picture of myself in my head not just as a Badminton-level rider, but as a slender, fit person. I pretend that I have no vanity and that I don't care about body shape. (I almost believe this.) I refuse to go on diets on principle and don't weigh myself. All the same, I believed that I thought I was going into the thickets of middle age in pretty good shape. I’m always doing stuff, after all, humping about hay bales and walking dogs and riding horses. I must have a muscle or two.

There, in the pictures, on the elegant red mare, was a rather dumpy person. DUMPY. I stared in amazement. I thought: who is that woman? I had an athlete in my head, all sinew and muscle. This person looked as if she spent quite a lot of time eating cake.

But what about all my cherished feminist, humanist, and every other bloody -ist principles about it not mattering what you look like? What about the fact that it is your good heart and your questing mind that matter, and not your damn hips? Turns out my principles aren't so cast iron as I had thought. For half a day, I felt like a wailing child. I really wanted to look sharp, and instead I looked blurry around the edges. I was that superficial.

This morning, finally understanding what the shit storm had been about, with all the stupidities dissolved after a night's sleep, I stood in front of the glass and looked down the barrel at my body. Sure enough, it is not the body of an athlete. There is a little curving about the middle. But you know, it's not bad for that of an old girl. I looked at my body and saw it as it is and I was not ashamed.

It makes me want to cry that so many women are taught to hate their bodies. I don't know what it is like for men. I suspect not quite so extreme. The women are bombarded, every day, with images of the perfect. I had thought I knew better than to fall for the con; I thought I was immune. I thought I was above all that. Serve me right for being so damn smug. Those photographs from yesterday and the lunatic reaction I had to them showed me I was not as safe as I had thought. Those haunting visions of perfection had crept into the darker parts of my brain, for all that I think I avoid them and their cunning plan. I wanted to look like one thing and I looked like another. That was a more severe crash than I like to admit. It took me 12 hours to talk myself down off the ceiling and face reality and remember about the fatal tendency of false expectations. It took me 12 hours to feel again at home in my own skin.

The red mare is not a championship horse. I am not a championship rider. She is the horse of my heart, the one who drives me on, teaches me lessons, and gives me joy. I love her so much it hurts. I am the human who is good enough for her, who keeps her happy and makes her feel safe. We don't look like something out of a magazine. We are not poster material. We are what we are: two old girls, in a Scottish field, finding something a little bit beautiful in every day. It does not have to be perfect. It just has to be ours.

I’m slightly embarrassed that I had my wig-out and that it took me half a day to understand this. But I got there in the end.

A slightly surprising Monday.

 I had to do the kind of work today that was quite technical and boring and logistical and serious. I was not running away with the smoothing iron. I was not letting the words pour out. I was not telling myself to let rip. I had to put my stern hat on and turn the dial to Rigorous.

            I was rather dreading it. It’s a Monday, I thought, and this is real, trudging Monday work.

            In the end, I had a nice surprise. It turned out I quite enjoyed the stern hat. I am better at rigour than I thought. I was expecting that I would see acres of mistakes, feel a little chagrin, even bore myself, as this is my fourth edit and I know half of this stuff by heart. Instead, I found some sentences were better than I remembered. In places, the prose danced. I even occasionally found something quite wise, even though most of the good stuff was shamelessly borrowed from people much, much sager than I.

            It was really not at all bad.

            I like to think I know all about expectations. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately. I understand that the road to hell is paved with false expectations. Yet, I sat down to that work with a whole boatload of expectations. Luckily, this morning they worked for me rather than against me. I was expecting crap; I got daisies. This week, I thought, amazed, is kicking off on the right leg.

            In the field, before work, when I was thinking only of my sweet mares, the woodpecker was pecking, making his whirring, rumbling tap tap tap. The first swallow has arrived, and was making his initial exploratory swoops. He’s on his own, and I don’t know how that works, whether he’s left the wife behind to come after him with the heavy luggage or what. There is a sweet jenny wren who is a new visitor, and a dear old robin who stuck with us all the way through the winter.

            I looked at my little bit of wildlife and thought how lucky I was. I would not get all this, I thought, if I lived in the middle of Wolverhampton.

            There were dear birds; there was a glorious thoroughbred canter; there was sunshine; there was good conversation. And then there was proper work.

            Monday, which I thought was going to be a bore, turned out to be fine. 

The niceness of niceness.

I just heard something extraordinary.

I was in the kitchen making a lovely little brunch. The Food Programme was on Radio Four, and Sheila Dillon was talking about the Food and Farming Awards. This is a wonderful scheme where she and various judges go round the country and visit small producers and find hidden wonders. They discover everything from cider to chutney to cheese. In this programme, they were talking to British charcutiers.

This was glorious enough. There was so much knowledge and enthusiasm that I started to feel happy. But then a gentleman came on and was utterly, wholeheartedly nice for three minutes.

I fell into a sort of trance of pleasure. At first, I could not quite work out what was going on. Why was this three minutes of radio making me feel like singing? Was it that the speaker had a delightful voice? (I discovered afterwards that it was Yotam Ottolenghi. I don’t think I’d ever heard him interviewed before, and he does indeed have a shining radio voice.) Then I realised what it was. It was the pure niceness.

He had been to meet many people who were passionate about what they do, but he was not passionate as he talked. It was not that. He was not transfigured with enthusiasm or doing the vocal equivalent of cartwheels. He was quite calm. He was not flinging himself about the studio, or gushing, or, as the Americans so vividly say, blowing smoke up anybody’s arse. He had found food and people he admired, which gave him pleasure, and he was communicating that pleasure. There were no buts or maybes; no comparisons or doubts. It was all good. He expressed this with humming, fluent niceness.

I stopped. I thought. (I spend a lot of time stopping and thinking.) I realised that this is rare, in radio. I listen to Radio Four all the time, and a vast amount of what I hear is not very nice at all. People are always accusing people of something: iniquity, stupidity, acting in bad faith, hiding the truth. There are often those sly digs that the British love so much, the ones that are picked up by the advanced irony radar that every citizen of these rocky islands are given at birth. It’s funnier and more diverting to be a little naughty, a tiny bit bitchy, to get out the rapier and insert it cleverly under the third rib. Niceness is considered a little sad and bland.

This was not bland. It was glorious. It was like a spring rain after a dry spell. I listened; I stopped; I thought. I felt happy. It was dear old radio gold.