A little self-indulgence for a Friday night. Warning: dog-heavy

There are some advantages to running late. I have been running late all day. I went on a journey I calculated would take half a day; it took until tea-time. I have not answered the emails that needed answering, nor responded to the vital calls on the telephonic device. I missed a deadline, which is not usual for me. And I have not sat down to write this blog until way past everyone’s bed-time.

The advantage is that, by this stage, you will all be out, doing Friday night things. You will be eating dinner and drinking cocktails and talking of the state of the nation and making bad jokes and thinking of almost anything else except for a tiny space on the internet. I attempt, in a paltry way, to avoid the excesses of self-indulgence that blogging is heir to, but tonight I cave in, hopelessly. My secret joy is that hardly anyone will see, not at this time on a Friday night.

Today was a day of vivid light and shade. I drove over roads which were like rivers, past sodden fields, where the water sat, still as a looking glass, after the wild weather that roared in from the west. At Beanacre, one of those tiny villages that only the English could have named, the meadows ran out from the road like lakes, not a blade of grass visible under the deluge. The sun glittered and joked over the mirrored surface; on the radio, the weather forecasters were stern about the possibility of more floods.

In all the light, there was sadness too; memories of my departed girls, and another departure too, sudden, and melancholy. But against that was the great kindness of strangers, which you know I put great store by, and the faint, yearning possibility of something new. I don’t want to talk about this yet, because forms must be filled, hoops must be leapt through, all possibilities must be explored; but the hopeful gentleman was met, and instantly loved, and oh, oh, if I am good and proper, may be kept. Emphasis on the may. No chickens are counted, not in this house.

But in the meantime, here is the self-indulgence, which I am sneaking in under the wire. Here are my glorious ladies, in all their pomp. Here is what I miss. As the wonderful Miss Nancy Mitford, the voice of my formative years, would have said: do admit.

And the stern voice in my own head, which does not care for whimsical indulgence says: if you have no interest in canines, really do look away NOW:

 

Regular readers will remember the full glory of the SNOW DOGS:

There we are. Have a lovely weekend. I promise I shall rein in my excesses tomorrow.

Of lost time and lost dogs. Or, forgive me if I am not making much sense.

For those just joining:

Suddenly thought I ought to do a recap. One of the dullest things in the world, in life, is people talking about people you have never met, as if you have met them.

‘Oh, Archibald,’ they say; ‘ran off with a bongo player.’

Or: ‘Dinah’s never really been the same since the incident.’

There is a special sort of face I affect when this happens, and I have absolutely no idea who Archibald and Dinah are, or even if they are human (in certain company, likelihood is they could be dogs or horses). It is a bright, interested face, slightly stretched, faintly quizzical. What that covers, not always terribly well, is a what the buggery bollocks are you talking about face.

So, for the new Dear Readers – I have a most Beloved Cousin in the south. We are quite distant cousins, so we did not grow up together, but we have known each other well since we were eighteen. Her parents were like my second family, and over the years we spent happy holidays and Christmases and Easters together. Her husband is a professional polo player, who used to play high goal, but now mostly makes ponies for the top players.

Those who make their living from polo have to go where the work is, and in the winter months that is South America. So, once in November, and once in March, off the Old Fella goes to the pampas, and I pack up the car and come here for three weeks at a time, to help with the children, whom I have known since the day they were born, and be company for the cousin, and generally keep the home fires burning.

It is a very lovely and touching arrangement, and brings us all a lot of joy. In particular, for me, it is a revealing slice of family life. Since I decided not to have children of my own, the domestic life is a bit of mystery to me. I feel very lucky to have the liberty of a solitary existence, but I also love the fact that, twice a year, I plunge into the rhythms and jokes and business of the small people.

Anyway, for those just tuning in, that is what I am doing now. And every year, I slightly forget the all-consuming nature of it. That is why it is only now, at eight-thirty at night, with the little ones in bed, bath time over, supper made and eaten, that I can sit down at my computer and type the blog. (Or The Blob, as my middle cousin calls it.)

The thing that amazes me is the rushing of time, in a family house. All I did today was run a few errands, arrange some domestic arrangements, and effect the making of a special green soup, and the day was gone. That is why I say, every single time: I don’t know how you parents do it, and, every single time, all my hats must come off.

The girls in particular adore and demand the special green soup, which astonishes me (they are four and ten) and delights me in equal measure.

‘This is the BEST TEA EVER,’ shouts the four-year-old. She looks at me seriously. ‘We must have it every night.’

I know very few four year olds who would willingly choose a soup made from courgettes and spinach and leeks over, say, chicken and chips, but she would. She is a rare creature, but even so.

And it’s not as if she is a perfect, cookie cutter child. She’s not a cute, magazine baby. She is capable of wails and that sudden exhaustion that very small people are prone to and the streaming moment when nothing will do for her at all and she does not know what she wants. She can be furious and cussed and even, on occasion, stamp her foot. (She reminds me of myself at that age.)

But when it comes to eating, what she loves the most is the green stuff, and my green stuff in particular. It makes me feel as if I have won a prize or just published a number one bestseller. The compliments of children are the sweetest, because when humans are that small they do not flatter or flannel or dissemble. They tell you exactly what they think, without prevarication, at the very moment they think it.

The thing I love about these children is that they are very talkative and funny and interesting. Flights of fancy soar about all over the shop. Quite often, for no particular reason, they burst into song.

People are often surprised that I like children, when I don’t want to have my own. This is a small category error. (I don’t not want them because I dislike them; I don’t want them because it is not my talent, and I’m a great believer in playing to one’s strengths.) There is also the error of thinking that because one can get on with certain children, one is a children person. I regard small humans just the same as I regard grown ones; some are fascinating and delightful, and some are wearing and faintly dull. Just because someone is under three feet high, I do not automatically find them adorable.

It’s the same thing with dogs, I suddenly realise. Because I loved my two old ladies so much, because there was the joke of me being stranded on Dog Island without a ferry home, people sometimes think I am a categorical Dog Person. In fact, the utter singularity of my glorious, intelligent, sleek black girls has almost spoilt me for all other canines. I am a perfect bundle of awful dog prejudice. I do not like the small, yappy ones; I do not like over-bred, frankly peculiar-looking ones (I find Crufts absolute torture for this reason); I cannot favour needy, wiggly ones.

This shocking bigotry even goes into the tiny details: I prefer short hair to long, black to tan, cross-breeds to pure bred. What I really love is a mutt, something at which the Kennel Club would turn up its toffee nose. I like working dogs, who, even if they spend half the day dozing on the sofa, at least are designed for an honest day’s graft. The Pigeon and the Duchess, with their half Labrador, half collie heritage, were the crest and peak of this.

Sometimes, when I miss the Pigeon so much that I can hardly function, I think I shall never find her like again. And perhaps I shall not. But I am sneaking off tomorrow to meet a lonely gentleman who has had a hard start in life, and who, as the rescue sites put it, yearns for his Forever Home.

It might not take. I’m not even sure I am ready. But it seems absolutely idiotic to have read all those books on dog psychology (they need a pack leader, etc etc), to live in a place which is the very definition of dog heaven, to have the luxury of time, which so few people really do have, and to close myself off, just because there is a crack in my heart.

Another mistake people make is to think that by getting a new dog, one may heal the crack. I don’t think that is it at all. The crack will remain; there is nothing to be done about that except allow it to exist. It’s not so much that getting another dog will fill the space left by the divine girls; it’s that there is room, around the cracked part of the heart, to give a poor lost mutt another chance. Rude not to, really. The break will heal in its own time, but while it does, there’s no excuse not to give the love to a creature that may really need it.

Does that make any sense at all? I’m at the stage when my eyes are crossing and my neurones are short-circuiting, and my fingers can barely type a decent word, let alone bang out a coherent thought. But you must have the blog, and so tap tap tap I go, in the hope that there may be something there, despite everything.

 

Too exhausted for proper photographs, so here are a very few not entirely brilliant ones for you:

Smallest Cousin, interpreting life through the medium of creative dance. Otherwise known as Waving Her Hands About:

Middle Cousin, practicing music:

Serious dog training, in very interesting outfit:

The lovely furry girls I left behind in Scotland:

Last time I was here, the Pigeon was with. Here she is, from the archive:

With her friends in the south, looking slightly grand and put-upon, as she always did when pulling rank with what she clearly regarded as younger, sillier dogs:

The astonishing beauty of the dear old Duchess, from the archive. You do see why there is a part of me that thinks there shall never be another:

PS. The hair comments have been making me laugh and laugh. You have to remember that when I say dotty, it is a relative term. My lovely hairdresser is real old school. His salon is mostly filled with those tremendous old dames who get their hair set once a week, with rollers and clouds of Elnett. Thus, the idea of having a barnet chopped short and striped with red and black is considered most eccentric. In fact, in the wider world, it is a perfectly ordinary cut. I have not gone punk. (I did once do peroxide spikes, but that was another lifetime.) There shall be pictures, never fear, once I get my act together. But I don’t want your expectations to be too high.

Return

Back from London. It was grey and windy and wet. I strode about in my sensible boots with a huge black umbrella and an absurd velvet coat. Old haunts, old friends (one all the way from California), old jokes, red wine, good food, good conversation. A lot of affection, which is the very thing, just now.

The dear old city looked a bit drowned and defeated in the weather. But just as I think oh dear, poor, soggy London, there is something hopeful – a whole gaggle of children, excited and bright-eyed, in the National Portrait Gallery, a kind taxi driver, pretty Christmas decorations, a man solemnly eating his breakfast in South Kensington whilst wearing a trilby hat.

I thought, oddly, of my father. He was not a London man, but when he had to go up for lunches or meetings or haircuts he used to go through Paddington Station, just as I did today. Whenever I am there, I get a flash of him in the smart blue suit he wore for going to the smoke. Sometimes I see an old fella who looks a bit like him, and I get a catch in my throat.

Our ghosts, I think; how we carry them with us. I think: we must keep them very close to our hearts.

 

Some old pictures of my dear departeds:

Those are the old loves. Here are the new ones, from a bit earlier in the year. I think of them and smile and wonder how they are getting on without me in blustery Scotland. The weather has been bad there too, but I see the forecast is for sun. My girls will like that:

Oh, and I have new hair. Short as a brush and striped in three different kinds of red. (My poor mother; she dreams of the day when I shall revert to my natural blonde, and be her little golden girl again.) My hairdresser, who has known me since I was twelve years old, turns to his new assistant: ‘This one,’ he says, gesturing at me. ‘You can do anything with this one. Dotty as you like.’ He means this as a tremendous compliment. I take it as one.

Old school

Away for 48 hours. Should I take the computer with? There must be blogging, betting, tweeting, looking at all those nice pictures of horses on the Facebook. 48 hours without a computer means no emails, no nostalgic photographs of my old dogs, no gazing on the loveliness of Red the Mare. I can’t know what my friends are doing every minute of every day. I shall be unmoored, cut off from the world. I almost panic at the thought.

Then I think: bollocks to that. There is real life. I’m not humping round a slab of machinery simply so I can look at nice horse pictures. You, bold Dear Readers, shall bravely survive without me. If I miss an email, I miss an email.

I’m going old school. I am literally going to get on a train with a paperback book and a furled umbrella (the kind of black, gentleman’s article that you most often see in Pall Mall or Whitehall). I am going to give my poor brain a rest from the rushing ether of the internet. It’s practically a sociological experiment.

Practically incapable of a single coherent sentence

Absolutely not one word in my head now. This is the thing I always forget about family life: there are not half the hours in the day necessary for all the things that must be done. I have no idea what is happening in the news, have a diary filled with half-made arrangements, and my To Do list looks like something written by a confused dipsomaniac.

So now, finally, as the small people troop up to bed, I sit and think: there must be a blog. What blog? says my addled mind. You must be joking, it adds.

It is just about now that I annually take my hat off to the mothers and fathers and wonder how it is that you actually do it. There should be prizes. I say that every year, when I visit my family in the south, and every year it is true.

The day is gloomy and wet. People say kind things about the departed dog. I attempt not to weep all over them. The Beloved Cousin and I have a cheering lunch, with The Godson. He is twelve now and quite grown up and talks to us of space travel and the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. He is much concerned with ontological and philosophical matters, and discusses the nature of different faiths and whether there is a guiding hand behind it all, and why it is that people believe what they believe.

He is an outdoors sort of fellow; he plays football and walks his dogs and rides beautifully. He has always had an interesting and interested mind, but this new intellectual exploration is a change. I plunge in. These are some of my favourite subjects too. He makes his points and holds his ground. If he gets onto shaky territory, he either makes a very good joke, or bombards me with facts. (He knows all about the moons of Pluto.) I almost burst with pride.

Emails come from home. The poor Stepfather is finally on the mend, with his bashed knee. The Horse Talker has antic stories of Myfanwy the Pony, who apparently has developed a princess complex since I have been away, and Red the Mare, who is being so good she sounds like a dream horse in a story book. I would have put money on it being the other way round. I laugh quite a lot.

I feel a bit shaky and fragile, but there is so much sweetness and happiness in this house that it acts like a balm on my singed skin. The missing will go on for a while, but I have a solid list of the good things, to balance it.

Just as I am wandering around the computer, completing half-finished emails and adding to the tottering To Do list, I find my William Hill account, still open. There was not much racing today, but I had had a little treble this morning, more in memory of my dad than anything else. It sounds most peculiar, but I sometimes really do feel I am placing my punts for him. The irrational is pretty strong in me, just now.

Anyway, Mr William Hill gives me three happy words: WON WON WON. +£76.59, he adds, kindly. It wasn’t a specially clever bet; two of the selections were odds on. But it gives me a disproportionate feeling of delight.

Count the blessings, I think. A gratitude list is a rather self-help, hippy-ish idea, but it’s not a bad one for all that. When I have dark days, I bless the fact that I have opposable thumbs, and fingers to type. I count the ways. The secret is, I think, not taking one single thing for granted.

 

So sorry, no time for pictures today, so just the three girls:

Princess Myfanwy, who is slightly in disgrace:

This was sent this morning from Scotland, showing the good Red the Mare, who has been awarded a gold star for excellent behaviour. I had feared she might act up a bit in my absence, but quite the reverse:

She’s even managed to keep her new rug clean, which is a sort of equine miracle.

My much-missed Pigeon, from the archive:

A line from High Society comes into my head. It was my favourite film for a long time in my twenties, and even now the Beloved Cousin and I still laugh about the moment Grace Kelly sweeps in with a hangover and says: ‘I’m fine. Is everybody fine?’

Looking at that photograph, I think of the line: ‘Boy, she was yar.’ Yar was a yachting expression from that time; I think it meant a boat that was sleek and elegant and not quite like anything else. That will do for my Pigeon. She damn well was yar.

Sunday pictures

Everything is very lovely in this house and it makes me keenly aware of my luck. Old friends come for lunch and the small relations run about being funny and antic and there is even perfect weather, the November sun so warm we sit outside as if we are on the Riviera. There are ancient jokes and worn teases and fond laughter; there are the invisible stitches of shared history and the pulling threads of mutual memory. Everything is as glorious as human wit and meteorological kindness can devise.

Later, I miss my dog so much it is as if someone has smacked me upside the head.

Oh, I say to myself. I see that is what happens now. I can comport myself perfectly well in public. I can smile and laugh out loud. I can hear the name spoken; I can nod when people say they are sorry. ‘Oh I remember that dog coming to stay,’ someone said today. ‘I loved her’.

All that can happen and I’m perfectly fine. Then, in a quiet room, with no trigger at all, the desolate missing hits and there’s nothing for it but to put my head down and barrel through it to the other side.

Then it’s fine again, and there is the evening ahead, and I shall smile and smile, and mean every inch of it. I shan’t be painting on a good face; the face shall be honestly good.

This is my theory. If you allow the grief to exist, then the other stuff is not drained of colour. There may be vivid shades of light; and then there is the moment of absolute dark. It’s when there is the fighting of sorrow that everything switches to grey, because holding on takes so much effort that there is no energy left for pleasure of any kind.

It’s a work in progress, that theory, and I’m not sure I’ve written it right. I think what I really mean is that it’s important to cry sometimes, or everything else goes to hell.

The five-year-old, my smallest cousin, arrives in my room.

‘Do you want to see a picture of the Pigeon?’ I say, showing her the good one below.

She nods and looks.

‘Do you remember that smiling face?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Do you have a picture of her dead?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘There is no picture of her dead. I just carry her in my head.’

She thinks for a bit.

‘Do you want her back?’ she says.

My voice wavers a bit.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’

 

Today’s pictures:

The furry equines, up in the Scottish sun:

And the lovely old Pigeon, from the archive:

Oh, I do want her back. I do, I do, I do, I do.

But, as I said to the Smallest Cousin, in my most reasonable, grown-up voice: Sometimes in life we can’t have every single thing we want.

Arrival

Since the completely nuts part of my brain has decided that the Dear Readers are exactly like my mother, and will assume I am dead in a ditch unless I report in, this is just a quick bulletin to say: I have ARRIVED.

Exhausted after 530 miles of hard driving, the last two hundred in sheeting rain. But very, very happy to be with the family in the south.

This was part of my welcoming committee:

That is the youngest cousin, with the dog who looks just like my Duchess.

And the Horse Talker sent this from home, to let me know the equines were happy:

Apparently, they are being wonderfully good.

Normal service shall resume on Monday.

Driving south

Set off at six in the morning, the sky still black as pitch. The weather forecasters all sounded very sad and gloomy, but the night cleared to leave translucent blue and lavender clouds and glimmering flashes of cornflower sky.

As I drove past Stirling Castle, the low amber sun suddenly broke through and turned the whole sky violet and rose and silver. It was like being in one of those films about how magical Scotland is, the ones for strangers and tourists. The castle itself, up on its fortified hill, was silhouetted black against the light, glowering with history.

It was so lovely, it was all fine. There was not a dozing old girl in the back seat, but that was fine. I could deal with that. There was a lot of interesting news on the Today Programme, and I had to concentrate on the alarming headlines from Gaza. Israel and Palestine is so insoluble and labyrinthine that it does require all one’s brain.

Then I got cross because a man came on to talk about school computers and would not answer the question. He was not a politician or elected to anything or even in the public eye. He was just a man who knew about learning and technology, and he would only talk in vague generalities, despite being begged for specifics. Poor Sarah Montague gave up in the end.

Why do intelligent people do this? Do they not know it makes them look like shifty fools? I shall never understand it until the day I die, when I shall almost certainly be lying on my black crepe bed, still yelling ANSWER THE QUESTION.

So I was all business, and a bit of pedantry, and some indignation. And then the most extraordinary woman called Blanche Marvin came on Desert Island discs and started talking about love, and Nimrod was one of her records, and over the dun mountains the clouds arranged themselves into long troughs, so that the sun poured down through the gaps in biblical stripes, and all that talk and music and beauty was too much.

So I cried at Birkwood, and I cried at Abington, and I cried at Moffat. They were good big tears, the kind when your face is quite dry one moment and soaking wet the next. I had been holding on a bit tight, lately, hoping if I sat very still it might not hurt. That does not work. You’ve got to get the hurt out, and a car driving through mountains with Elgar on the wireless is a good place to do it.

The moment I hit Cumbria, all the glittering weather disappeared and there was a folding grey fog. I felt safe and quiet in the fog; there was something soothing about it.

Then I got to Tebay and ate a cheese sandwich and drank some special tomato soup I had made for the journey and put in a flask, and felt like something from the 1970s.

I watched the racing and backed two big winners, the lovely promising prospects Dynaste and Dodging Bullets. I fondly followed one of my dear old darlings, Hello Bud, as he hunted round in the cross country race. He was too old, at fourteen, to win it, but he finished an honourable fifth, and must have given his jockey, Sam Twiston-Davies, a great thrill, and it was delightful to see him as keen and sure-footed and filled with enthusiasm as he ever was. Some horses just really love their racing and he is one. Retirement will be a colossal bore for such a hard-working old fella; he will be shaking his head thinking field, schmield.

It’s strange, being in this place without either of the old ladies. They loved it here, bounding to the door, wagging their tails, walking busily behind the reception desk to say hello to the smiling ladies who work there. They were so gracious and beautiful that they literally turned heads. People would stop talking and smile. Now it’s just me, with my muddy coat with the broken bits of horse treat in the pocket, and my gumboots, black from the Scottish earth, and my slightly distrait hair.

Now, it’s just me. But that’s all right, because on on on I bugger, and there is Hunt Ball tomorrow, and all the beloved cousins, and all kinds of things.

 

Too tired for pictures after 280 miles on the road, so here are three beauties from the archive:

The Dear Departed:

And the very much with us. Red the Mare, from the summer, doing her Minnie the Moocher walk:

I have goodly NOT rung up to see how she is, because I know I shall end up asking stupid questions like Is she missing me? And that is just soft and idiotic and something no proper horsewoman would ever do.

She’s a HORSE. She’s fine.

And now I must go and read myself a lecture on italics and capitals and the perils of their OVERUSE.