And yet more brevity

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I really did have something interesting to write today. I was rehearsing it in the car on the way back from the horse. It may have been about the weather (you see the fascination); or it might have been about the nature of certainty. Can’t remember now. Brain says: I have done 1966 words and some notes and some killing of darlings and what more do you want? Blood?

Dog says: when will this bloody book be finished so we can get in some proper ball action?

Horse says: don’t really care, as long as you scratch me in that particular spot just behind my left ear. No, not there, there.

It kills me when she does this. It’s another of the absolutely tiny things of no importance which fills my heart with joy and delight and makes it bloom in my chest. She presents her face, and then angles it about, this way and that, until she gets my scratchy fingers in the exact right position, and then she sort of blisses out. And I feel that, by finding the sweetest of the sweet spots, I have achieved something of profound significance.

The sun shone so hard everyone in the village was talking about it, with the sort of awe and wonder that lost tribes must have felt when they first saw a motor car. I had an excellent conversation with the chemist, the newsagent and the postmistress. (I adore the postmistress, she is so clever and calm and funny.) I like doing errands in the village; it gives me a potent sense of belonging.

I managed to get all my jobs done and only had to ask someone what day of the week it was once. But I wish I could remember the interesting thing that I was going to tell you.

 

Some quick pictures for you:

Red the Mare, basking:

Is there to be a ball?

YES THERE IS:

Hill, with the trees in their spanking new green:

Day in brief

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Sun. Horse. Love love love. Small sense of profound achievement. More love. Late and rather indulgent breakfast. Very black coffee. Caffeine hit. Work work work work. 1566 words. Notes. Research. (Always sounds posh; sometimes feels like hopeless noodling.) Minor moments of panic. Good news, in a rather surprising way.

Sweet children. Rather naughty pony. Horse; love reaching new heights. Pigeon sweetness also hits new heights, as if competing with horse love. Wish could explain love is not zero sum game to animals who do not speak English.

Evening sun. Children’s tea. Interesting conversation. Laughter. No bloody idea what is happening in the news. Discovery of precious object thought lost, most unusual for me. (Normally the other way round.) The mildly unexpected cooking of a stuffed pepper for supper. State of exhaustion renders blog only possible in telegraphese.

Quick pictures:

All about the love

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

So many things today. First: proper, warm sun. A huge amount of family sweetness. 1768 words of book. Sudden, dramatic spring beauty, after the days of blah. But now it is half past seven and I have only just got back from the horse and I am so tired I do not know what my name is.

But there is one story I must tell you. It is a horse story, but luckily I am so shattered that you shall only get the truncated version. Still, it is too important not to be told; I must write it down.

There is a thing called join-up some of you will know. It’s the great Monty Roberts technique. In very basic terms, you send the horse away, and then, when it gives you the signal, you let it come back in, and it does this thing called joining up, where it will then follow you at the shoulder. It is much more subtle and complicated than this, and it has a lot of good equine psychology behind it, but there is no time to go into that now.

Enough to say: you are supposed to do it in a small, enclosed arena. I have a three acre field. But today, for some reason, sun or new week or spring fever, I thought what the hell, let’s see what the old girl makes of extemporised version.

Woo, woo, crazy new game is what she made of it. She galloped flat out, circled, bucked, jumped for joy and a little bit of devilry. The pony looked quite surprised and slightly indignant, as if such antics were way beneath her dignity. I trudged after my circus act, keeping on, keeping on. (The thing is: you have to keep them moving; it’s a herd thing.)

I had resigned myself to failure, thought at least it’s bloody good exercise for us both, and Red has had the chance to have a huge joke. (I remain convinced that she has a fairly developed sense of humour.) And then, suddenly, and I don’t really know quite how it happened, she locked on. I could hardly believe it. There she was, at my shoulder, head down, like an ambly old dog. She had gone from bronco to Labrador. We walked for a bit, doing some turns, in perfect step. Then I stopped, to see what would happen. I had no hold on her; she had a huge field to run off into.

What happened was that she rested her head against my chest, and stayed there for fifteen minutes. We had a moment a little like that a couple of weeks ago, but that was the hors d’oeuvre. This was the main course, with bells and trumpets. I’m not sure I ever felt anything like it. It was that kind of profound communion which has no words.

Just now, I went up to check on her. I did a little re-run of this morning, to see if it had been some kind of fluke. It had not. That first session took about forty minutes of dogged determination, my cussed streak in full cry. This evening, in the glancing amber sun, she joined up in five minutes, and then rested with me as before, as still and calm as an ancient monument.

I stroked her face very gently, and murmured to her a bit, and we stood and looked at the view and I thought nameless thoughts, to do with love, and the extraordinary gifts that an essentially wild creature can give to a domestic old human. I thought: I don’t really have to worry about anything, because I have this. I have this.

 

The Pigeon and I went out into the glorious evening sun to inspect the garden. She did a lot of vital snuffling; I took some pictures. I felt very lucky to have her, too. I got the great good fortune to have the good companions, both quite by chance, really. If my sister had not decided to go and live abroad for a year, I should never have inherited the Pigeon. If the man who was going to buy Red and take her to China had not changed his mind and never turned up, she would not have been sitting in my cousin’s field, waiting for me. I really do bless those random shifts of chance, and feel quite breathless at my luck. I do not know what I would do without my beautiful girls.

The garden:

Red, gazing out over her view:

And with her dozy face:

The Pigeon, doing her grave, noble face:

The hill:

Sunday pictures

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Update

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Well, he did it. I really need not have worried. Frankel moved like a Rolls Royce, won on the bridle, made it look easy. Excelebration, a very good horse in his own right, could not lay a glove on him. It was a five length victory, and Tom Queally hardly had to move. It was grace, and power, and sheer brilliance.

My own little Frankel was on her toes this morning. It was as if she was saying: well, what are you made of? I think perhaps the spring grass is coming through and that is putting several springs in her step. We did a lot of fast canter out in the west meadow, and it was all zoom, zoom. She would have galloped her head off if I had let her, but I decided not to. It’s still early days, and steady as she goes. At one stage, I had to say, very sternly, ‘Excuse me, but I am in charge here.’ It is only a pity that horses do not speak English. But I think she got the message.

Here she is, the little naughty, looking as if butter would not melt in her mouth:

Her view:

The unadulterated beauty that is the Pigeon:

And the hill, almost obscured by the blooming horse chestnut:

I hate to end on a sad note, but some things must be marked. In the midst of all the Frankel joy came the very sad news of the death of Brindisi Breeze, a brilliant young hurdler trained in Scotland by Lucinda Russell. His future was bright with promise. I backed him when he won this year at Cheltenham, and roared him up the hill. He was a lovely, bold horse, honest as the day is long. Very kind too, in his stable, according to his trainer. In the middle of the night, he jumped over his paddock gate and was hit by a lorry. It is such a freakish occurrence and the kind of thing that all horse owners dread.

Horses are so strong and robust in so many ways, and so fragile and unpredictable at the same time. That yard will be inconsolable tonight; there will be the awful, gaping hole of an empty box, the thing that everyone who looks after horses dreads. My heart goes out to everyone who cared for him.

All hail the mighty Frankel; or, I doff my hat to a true champion

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It’s Frankel Day.

IT’S FRANKEL DAY.

I actually woke up at five to seven this morning thinking: it’s Frankel Day. It felt like Christmas day. The sun was shining through the window; the dog was smiling; it felt like a day of jubilee.

When I get excited about a horse like this, I always want to write the blog before he runs. If there is some terrible disappointment, as there may always be in racing, I want to record the hope and joy first. I want to say it is Frankel day, rather than it was Frankel day.

So, what is it about Frankel? For those of you for whom the name means nothing, he is a four-year-old colt who has won every single one of his races so far. When you look at his form, it goes: 11111-.

This is rare in itself, but there is more. It’s not just that he wins, it’s how he wins. Last year, when he ran in the first classic of the season, the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, he went out in front so fast and so far that people watching thought for a moment he was the pacemaker. There are a few front-runners in racing, happy types who like to bowl along in front and lead the pack, but mostly great champions like to be covered up. They lie back, with something to chase, and then are produced near the end. Even if a horse does like to go in front, you almost never see something blasting off fifteen lengths in front and never coming back to the field.

Frankel galloped out of the stalls so quickly and roared into a long lead so fast that he had good horses labouring behind him after the first furlong. Nothing could even get close, and these were the best horses of their generation. The farther they went, the faster Frankel ran, his stride lengthening and deepening, tearing up the turf as if he were in a five furlong sprint instead of a testing mile. It was the most imperious performance I’ve ever seen. There are jockeys riding today who say they have never witnessed anything like it.

He never did anything quite that spectacular again, but he did not need to. He beat all comers in the best races, by two lengths, four lengths, five lengths.

He does something else astounding: when he is asked for acceleration, he quickens so immediately that it looks as if he has gone from cruise to turbo in the blink of an eye. It is pure, fierce, elemental power. Sometimes horses, even very good ones, take a moment to pick up, when asked the question; not Frankel. His response is instant, startling, almost unbelievable.

He is not a gentle, dear sort of horse. He is a fierce, mighty champion. He puts his ears flat to his head when he races, sticks his wide face with its white star right out so it is parallel to the ground, stretches his neck, every atom in his great, powerful body straining to win, to get in front, to beat everything in sight. There are people who say that he breaks the hearts of other horses, his strength and speed are so relentless.

For all that he is trained by one of the most talented men in racing, Sir Henry Cecil, who will use all the most sophisticated techniques at his disposal, Frankel has something wild and untrammelled about him. With flat horses, especially colts, you do not want to domesticate them too much. I was always told, as a child, don’t pat the colts. I loved them, and wanted to pet and gentle them; quite apart from the fact some of them might have had my arm off, they were not there for gentling. You want to keep as much of their wild, pack instinct as possible; the glorious, free ancestral memory that they get from those three original sires from whom all thoroughbreds are descended. That is what drives them to the front and keeps them there.

Perhaps that is what so exciting: it is the very fine line between the modern domestic and the ancient wild. Humans are very confined; we must wear clothes and have manners and do jobs and be rational and suppress some of our more crazy instincts. So there is something very wonderful in seeing that wild spirit out there on the green track.

The final, most striking thing about Frankel is the way he moves. I’ve written of this before. He has a stride which is so long, so deep, so raking, that sometimes it seems as if he is galloping at one stride for every other horse’s two. It looks as if he is dancing. It is a most striking combination of the effortless and the purely powerful. It is almost impossible to describe in words. It makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end. He never deviates from a straight line, just goes right to the line, true as an arrow.

He has brilliance, bravery and an indomitable will to win. There’s no funny business, although he can get a bit het up before a race. Once he is out there, where he was bred to be, he runs as if it is the only thing he has ever wanted to do. It’s a high glory.

Today, he comes out for the first time at four years old. Some horses do not train on; often, when they are successful at three, they are sent straight to stud at four, so no defeat will mar their reputation and reduce their stud fee. Frankel’s owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah, has very sportingly allowed his star to come out for another season, so that we may have the profound pleasure of seeing him. The horse looks as if he has come on over the winter, grown up, developed in strength and depth. He is a big, bonny fellow, deep in the girth, muscular and compact.

Anything can happen in racing. One stumble can finish a career. Nothing is nailed on. So my nerves mount.
I love the great champions. I love them for their raging brilliance, their heart and guts, their shining desire to win. I hate to see them brought low. All I want today is for this champion, perhaps the greatest I have ever seen, to soar.

Even if you have no interest in horses, it will be worth tuning in to Channel Four at 3.40 this afternoon. You may witness something extraordinary.

At full stretch, photograph uncredited:



Amazingly well-developed, even as a two-year-old. Photograph by Edward Whitaker:

 


At three, in his pomp. Photograph by Edward Whitaker:



The first time we’ve seen him at four, doing a racecourse gallop two weeks ago, photograph by the Press Association:



His lovely face, by Alan Crowhurst:



 
No pictures from me just now; I might do a later blog with pictures this evening, if I have any strength left in me. Win or lose, I shall be wiped out after this, there is so much hope and emotion invested.

There’s a lovely little BBC film about him here, if you would like to see the beauty in action:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/horse-racing/13769548

A non-blog blog

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Too tired to blog. Really am very sorry. Today was just a bit crazy, in the end, and my brain has snapped off. Today went:

Dog.

Today programme.

Filthy filthy filthy weather. Bugger.

Horse, horse, pony, horse, LOVE.

Dog. LOVE.

Breakfast for me.

Breakfast for dog.

Work work work work work.

Speak to agent.

Reassure agent.

Agent pretends to be reassured.

More dog. LOVE.

Ooh, racing at York.

Betting at York.

Disaster at York.

Supposed to take hour off to watch racing and relax; instead felt like absolute idiot as horses got beat.

Errands with World Traveller and Great-Nieces.

Did I have lunch?

Shirty with woman in shop. Was slightly her fault (no bloody medium turnout rugs).

Felt guilty.

Overcompensated for ten minutes by listening to endless story about woman’s daughter’s pony.

Bored.

Horse, horse, horse, pony. New salt licks are a triumph like no triumph before. Great-niece the Older watches in awe and wonder, delight spread over her face like sunshine. ‘Now they will never do anything else.’

Back to DOG. LOVE.

Break boiler. Bugger bugger bugger.

But in absence, last two bets at York have come off, so William Hill account now fat and rosy instead of standing reproach. Wonder quite how much I should be channelling the spirit of my departed gambling father. Meditate on disadvantages of bad blood.

Brain turns itself off.

Supper. Good thing I am bullish about ignoring sell-by dates. Meditate on disadvantages of food poisoning.

Dog goes to sleep.

Bloody cold. Meditate on disadvantages of breaking bloody boiler. Only self to blame. Hopeless.

Swathe self in shawls in manner of crazed Victorian fortune teller.

Watch dozing dog; think of horse; smile.

 

Too tired for pictures. Just The Beloveds:

A small scare

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

One of the things that lives in the back of my mind like a shadow is the very great age of the Pigeon. She is fourteen years old and that is old. Ever since I lost her sister I am acutely aware of the fleeting nature of a dog’s life. Sometimes, the thought clutches at my heart so hard that I am almost afraid of how much I love her. I divert myself with the horse love, and work, and keeping busy, but the thought remains.

Yesterday, I found a lump on her stomach. Horrid imaginings chased themselves in so hard that I almost did not want to take her to the vet, because I could not bear to hear the sentence being pronounced. But she is well in herself, I thought; her nose is wet, she chases down that ball as if she were a three-year-old, she is eating well. But still, there it was, the terror, buffeting me as hard as the east wind.

I took her at three-forty. I tried to look normal. I am not sure that I succeeded. It was not my alpha vet, but his junior colleague, a very kind and smiling woman who has seen the Pidge before. She examined the growth, frowned, felt, thought. Don’t say it out loud, I thought; just bloody don’t.

‘It’s fine,’ she said.

The room stopped moving about. I had not realised that it was moving, but I was so dizzy with fret that it was like being on a ship at sea.

‘Oh,’ I said, trying not to smile like a crazy person.

She is fine. It’s a little fatty growth; sounds disgusting, but dogs get them and there is no worry. They are going to keep an eye on her, but it’s just perfectly, perfectly normal.

We got her weighed whilst I was there. OPTIMIMUM WEIGHT. I felt as proud as if I had bred a Derby winner. Her claws were trimmed.

‘She does look well,’ said the kindly vet. ‘She’s in great shape.’

Everyone in the vet’s waiting room admired her. She went about making friends and influencing people. She was, of course, easily the most beautiful dog there. I am not biased at all.

The nasty demons went back into their box. We live to fight another day. These are the twilight years now; each day is precious. Everybody knows, from my closest family to the farthest Dear Reader, that I shall be a wreck when she goes. But for now, I still have the great gift of her, dozing on the sofa, in all her sleek, black, brilliant glory.

 

There was snow this morning, and a paltry two degrees. A thin, mean rain persisted all day, and the world looked as if it were drowning. So, no photographs, just a few from the last week:

Red, looking out at her view:

Her view:

My gorgeous Pigeon, with her noble, thoughtful face on:

Yesterday’s hill. Today’s is lost in the cloud: