All about the love. Or, the good mares make my heart dance.

Author’s note: Warning – this is a bit of a racing report. General readers are assured there shall be other subjects tomorrow.

 

Today was all about love.

The mare, who was grumpy last night, greets the sunny morning with an air of benign enchantment. Everything is right in her world. When she is like this, the goodness and sweetness are so acute that I feel my heart expanding like a great bellows, to fit all the love in. We have a fine ride, a bit circussy, but mostly foot perfect. She settles more and more, as I find out what she enjoys the most, and how to ride her so that she is engaged and happy.

Then I walk the two equines round the field on foot; my little white Welsh person, and my big red person, with me in the middle. We amble along in perfect harmony, no ropes or hands needed, a happy little herd of three. I am so delighted by this that I call the great-nieces out to witness it. So then there is the family love. The two beaming small people say hello to the horses; the younger of the two, my own little Lester Piggott, does some grooming and leading with Myfanwy and the sight of the two of them is absurdly touching.

Then it is a thrilling day at the races. Some of my favourite horses are running. I have a small disappointment, because dear Ortensia, the Australian wonder mare, finds the big race at Haydock a run too far after her long English season, and fades away. I love her still, and have won wads of cash on her and shouted her home in joy in her last two races, and I feel very grateful that her owners and trainer sent her across the world so we could have the pleasure of watching her.

To make up for it, Society Rock, trained by the lovely James Fanshawe, suddenly decides to have his moment of glory, after a bit of a disappointing season, and flashes home at 10-1. It’s always a thrill seeing a good horse come back to his best, especially for such a good and modest trainer.

Fanshawe also saddled Dandino, another of my beloveds. He’s been a bridesmaid all summer, running honourable seconds and thirds. Today was his day, and he lengthened his stride and stuck his head out and had his moment in the literal and metaphorical sun. I shouted my head off.

There were other delights, most notably the tough, genuine Mark Johnston horses running out of their skins. There is something about the way he trains them that brings out every last drop of determination and guts. They can have trouble in running, get boxed in, have half the field come at them, and they never, ever give up. I don’t know what he does up there in Yorkshire, but he produces the most honest, gutsy horses I’ve ever seen. The motto on his website is Always Trying, and it could not be more appropriate.

Then, as if the day were not crammed enough with delights, the remarkable filly Snow Fairy was running in the big race at Leopardstown. She’s won all over the world, from France to Ireland to Hong Kong, and came back from a career-threatening injury to win at Deauville after months off the course. Even though she was up against another of my favourites, Nathaniel, I really wanted the brave classy filly to have her day. And so she did, under a smooth, patient ride from Frankie Dettori, dancing past her rivals in the gleaming Irish sunshine, and making me shout and clap with childlike glee.

I can’t tell you how happy it made me. There was so much good about it. She’s a really game filly, her trainer has worked wonders to bring her back after a long time off the track, and she gave the veteran Dettori a fine moment of vindication. People have been muttering unkindly about how he is past his best, on the decline, even losing his nerve. He showed them all, and his smile lit up the racecourse.

It’s funny. I was cranky and gloomy and beset with demons yesterday. Today, all was good and right and fine. It was all small, simple things; it was all about the Love. I often think I am a complete idiot, to be so head over heels with all the horses in my life, both the ones I know, and the ones I shall never meet, but watch out on the wide green grass, running their hearts out. There is something a bit absurd about it all. But on days like today, the goofy pleasure it brings is beyond counting.

 

Today’s pictures:

The light in the woods was quite magical:

Red’s view:

A very happy and dozy little pony with her small helper:

Red the Mare at her most blissed out – ears akimbo, eyes shut, lower lip wobbling with joy:

Talking of the latter:

And here she is looking a bit posher and prettier:

There was happy Pigeon love too, as there is every day:

Hill, rather blurry through the trees:

I could not find a picture of Snow Fairy winning today, but here she is from a past race. I wanted you to see her outrageous beauty:

And once more I must apologise for the tenses. I’m always doing terrible tense veers, and I’m always too tired to go back and correct. I suppose a blog should be a bit rough and ready, but I always have to apologise. It’s the curse of the pedant, I suppose.

I hope you too are having a lovely, sunny weekend.

A little Friday ramble. Or, horses, politics, mortality and the nicest window cleaners in Scotland

Too tired for proper blog, so here are a few brief, incoherent thoughts, because you must always have some thoughts, especially on a Friday.

Sunshine, suddenly. The smiling window cleaners come and talk hopefully of an Indian summer. My love for the window cleaners has now reached the idiot stage, where I can hardly speak, but just stand grinning at them like a loon. They are always cheerful.

At breakfast, there is serious talk of politics. I very much like talking politics at breakfast; I think it may be the best time to speak of political matters, because people are fresh, and not drunk. (Usually.)

The mare and I have another wild ride. She’s still putting up a bit of circus resistance under the saddle, so we had a mild tussle, and I said, out loud, at one point, quite loudly: ‘It does not matter what you try, I am going to win this battle.’ She seemed to understand this remarkably well, and immediately started behaving like a perfect show pony. I never quite know what these swerves of mood are: a test, still getting used to new rider and new regime, mild objection that her loafing days are over. The thing that makes me hoot with laughter is that the minute I get off, she bats her eyelids and wobbles her lip at me and buries her face in my arm as if to pretend that the previous high spirits had never even happened. I don’t care anyway; I love her and she makes me use all my muscles and all my head and that can’t be a bad thing, at my age.

I do work. The Man of Letters sends me stellar advice on my new project. He is amazingly generous like that and I send him stupidly gushing emails in return.

As a treat, I watch a bit of the racing from Haydock. One of my favourite horses is running, a lovely, game filly called Prussian, trained by the most excellent Mark Johnston. In a fit of madness, I have a HUGE bet on her, out of love and loyalty. She hunts round the inside, beautifully positioned, but then gets trapped on the rails, and Franny Norton has to yank her out and there’s another horse in the way, and some bumping and boring, which would put a lot of fillies off. Rhythm wins races, the old pros always say, but somehow, miraculously, Prussian will damn well not lose her stride. She finds her gap at last, surges through it, and dances off towards the winning post, laughing at everything struggling behind her. It is a very lovely thing and I shout so loudly that the Pigeon ostentatiously goes into the other room in protest.

For all this good horse stuff, I’m a bit grumpy today. I know one must be philosophical and stoical, but I think I’m really, really cross about the old men dying. I’m cross and sad about my own dad all over again. I know eternal life would be the biggest bore imaginable, but this whole dying thing strikes me as a bit of a design flaw. As I lay awake at night, wrangling with mortality, I wonder if everyone gets this in middle age. I wonder if I just have too much time to think. I wonder how people get it all straight in their heads. Is there some lovely, fatalistic solution? (I did try to read some Buddhism on this once, thinking it probably had the monopoly on the whole acceptance thing, but it was so paradoxically prescriptive that it made me crosser than ever.) I suppose one must just work hard and be kind and get on with it and not dwell. I am fatally addicted to dwelling. Perhaps I just need to take some more iron tonic. (Really, someone needs to invent a life tonic.)

Stopping now. As so often, I sat down to write thinking I had bugger all to say. I thought: must just give the poor Dear Readers something for a Friday. And even though my head was blank and my fingers were tired, there were rather a lot of words, after all.

 

Have been too hopeless to take the camera out today, so here are a few random shots from the last few days:

Oh, actually I do have a good Friday diversion for you. Last night, I was given the best back-handed compliment I ever had. A small, smiling girl of seven suddenly looked up at me and said: ‘I think you are pretty.’ I am ashamed to say I simpered rather. I was having a perfectly awful hair day and had not slept well and was feeling creased and crumpled; my vanity rose up in instant delight.

‘Thank you so much,’ I said.

She smiled at me for quite a long time, her face a perfect study in beatific beaming. Then she said:

‘You see, I think everyone is pretty.’

I started to laugh. Just in case I had not quite got the point, she added, kindly, as if I might be a bit slow-witted:

‘I even think my teacher is pretty.’

Nothing much one can do with that, except contemplate gravely one’s own absurdity.

Oh, and final PS. I do apologise for my tenses being all over the place. This happens when I am tired. I suspect there may be some shaming typos too. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive. There is no more energy for one more proof-read.

In which a nice Young Gentleman turns out to have a natural seat

The weather starts low and black and threatening and then changes its mind and the clouds rise and faint hints of lightness and sky appear.

I go up to get the mare ready, because today is a banner day. It is the day The Young Gentleman will have his ride.

For those new to the blog, there is a Young Gent who works around here, and when he first saw Red he was very alarmed indeed. He had never met a horse and found the thought of them quite frightening. He would often have to drive through Red’s field with various bits of machinery and she was always taking the opportunity to do her Steve McQueen act because the poor Young Gent had no idea how to stop a half ton equine making a break for freedom.

In order to rectify this state of affairs, I made a formal introduction. I also gave him serious technical tips on how to make a horse back away. (‘Wave arms in the air, shout bugger off.’) The upshot was that the Young Gentleman and Red the Mare fell quite in love with each other. Soon after this, a surprising request came: could he ride her?

I went at once into severe, sensible mode. She was a thoroughbred, she was ex-racing and ex-polo, she was new here, she and I still hardly knew each other. I suggested, in what I hoped was not a patronising way, that we could start him off on a nice Highland pony or similar. Crestfallen was not the word. He only wanted Red.

I could not bear such sorrow in such a nice person, so I rather rashly promised that I would school her all summer so she was quiet as a lamb and then he could get on her.

The summer schooling was shot to hell by various setbacks, including weather, southern dashes to see Frankel, tack problems, teeth worries, and any number of other glitches. Red and I had only got into a serious riding routine in the last week or so, and then the gales started and she went into her bronco mode, which I find very funny, but would not do at all for a first-time ride.

There is also an interesting dynamic between us, just now. I can do anything with her on the ground, after all the groundwork and training I have done with her. The weather was our friend, in that way. Nothing like a little back to basics. But I wonder if I have not spoilt her a bit, and whether she thought her new life, after the hardness of polo, was just one long, delightful holiday, at some peculiar spa, with head massages thrown in. I’m not sure that it is just the wind that has been putting wildness into her under the saddle; I think it might be that she is making a small, spirited objection to going back to work, just to see if she can get away with it.

My new technique has been to go with the grain of the wildness, rather than against it. Instead of trying to reschool her as a dressage horse, I’ve gone with the circus mood. I also wondered if the slow work we were doing was just boring the hell out of her. So the last few days have been a riot of gymkhana games. I threw prettiness and elegance out of the window, shortened my reins, adopted the forward seat, and let her rip, whirling round my invented obstacle course at top speed, making sixpence turns and lightning transitions. This does seem to be working and it makes me roar with laughter, but it was not exactly the slow, dopey mode that I needed her in for the Young Gent.

Luckily, he is a strong young man, and not remotely nervous or fazed. Bugger it, I thought. He’s about to go back to a long year of engineering degree; the least he deserves is his heart’s wish. ‘The very worst thing that can happen,’ I said, ‘is that you tumble gently to the ground. We are only going to be walking.’

I explained a few basics, trying not to sound like the strident, bossy pony women. HEELS DOWN, TOES UP, ELBOWS IN, BACK STRAIGHT. The stern instructions echoed back to me from my childhood. (They were actually rather brilliant, many of those women, and some of them taught me well, but my God they were bossy.) I told him instead to relax, shoulders back and down, and to go with the movement of the horse. I said to look up, and to imagine he had a string at the top of his head, pulling it upwards. Then I left the rest on trust.

Red stood like a rock as he got on, and we moved slowly off, with me leading her. I could tell at once he would be fine, because he had the natural seat that some people are lucky to be born with. He did not tense up or lean forward or clench everything. He sat easy and true, smiling all over his face. Red, who only fifteen minutes before had been throwing about all her gauntlets, put her head down like an old cow pony and ambled around in easy circles.

It was a triumph. The love between the two was sealed forever. There was not so much as a head toss or a suspicion of a spook. The air was filled with delight.

‘There,’ I said, as he got off. ‘Now you can tell everyone at university that you have ridden the granddaughter of a Derby winner.’ (I can’t help it; I’m such a bloodline snob sometimes.)

He looked interested. ‘What was he called?’ he said.

I explained about Nijinsky. ‘He used to dance past them all,’ I said, ‘true to his name.’

I wondered if the Young Gent would go and look him up on the Google, and get a glimpse of those glory days in the seventies. I wondered if I had created a monster, and now the YG would turn into a horse bore like me, and be found buttonholing people all over Edinburgh and telling them about the Darley Arabian. This fantastic thought is still making me smile, as I write this.

But the main thing is that it was a day of jubilee, because The Young Gentleman had his ride. And Red the Mare looked after him as if he were made of Dresden china.

Today’s pictures are mostly of the heroine of the day:

Wasn’t I GOOD?:

Having a well-deserved pick:

Doing her very best Minnie the Moocher:

Her view:

A hen, for the Dear Reader who loves the hens:

The glorious stillness that is The Pigeon:

No hill today; my view is blocked by a trailer, and I’m too tired now to run round to clear ground with my camera. Pathetic, I know.

(It is possible that I’m a bit old for all that gymkhana action. There really was a moment today when I felt as if I were eleven years old. My poor old body is now reminding me sternly that I am forty-five. Still, I’m going to grow some new muscles and take some iron tonic and then we’ll see what I’m made of. This is what the Beloved Cousin calls me getting my dander up. That is the effect this lovely horse has on me; not just an expansion of the heart, but dander all over the shop.)

Requiem for a good old man

I was going to write something very, very cross about the massacre of prose. Yesterday, I finished a book so badly written that it actually sent me into a mild depression. I could feel fury and sorrow pulling at my throat and clenching in my stomach. Today, I was going to wreak my revenges.

But then, something quite else happened.

One of the good old men died.

I think a lot about the good old men, and women too, that generation which is quietly, slowly, inexorably going, retreating like the slip and pull of an ebbing tide. They are the ones who remember the war, and do stoicism better than anyone.

Some of them were very naughty, and some of them startled a whole lot of horses, and some of them were bores and bigots, and some were not at all safe in taxis. One can’t sentimentalise an entire generation. But it seems to me as I grow older that an awful lot of them really were good. They got through battle and blitz, and rationing, the weary, faded years after the war when poor old Blighty was on her knees. They saw the three day week and the bodies unburied in the street and the piles of rubbish outside Whitehall. (I remember very vividly my father coming to play Monopoly with me by candlelight in the seventies, because of the weekly power cuts. He always won, and he always pretended he was sorry about it, but he was too much of a gambler to help himself.)

I love and admire them and think I can learn more from them than they know.

The good old man was my father’s oldest friend. They were schoolboys together, and went up to Oxford together, where they rode horses and drove to London in a dodgy car and generally were quite rackety and wild. John Lawrence, as he was then, actually did some work and got a degree, whilst my father, not an academic fellow, went down early by happy, mutual consent.

Later, my father and J Lawrence rode in races together. Dad had a really good sort of horse called Carrickbeg, a big, bold, bonny fella, who won a couple of races with my father on board, and then, under various different jockeys, won the Kim Muir at Cheltenham and even finished second to the great Mill House, the second best chaser in the country at the time, after the daddy of them all, Arkle.

His trainer, Don Butchers, thought he was a natural for the Grand National. I can’t remember why Dad did not ride him; I think it may have been after his first broken neck. Anyway, John Lawrence bought a half-share and took the ride.

Carrickbeg was only seven, absurdly young for a National horse, but he jumped round like a lion, and, at the Elbow, was ahead. He looked to have the race in the bag. It was my father’s enduring dream to win the National, and that must have been the fleeting moment he tasted the greatest victory of them all. Then, like a horror show, almost in slow motion, Pat Buckley on Ayala loomed up at Carrickbeg’s side, and, with only yards to go, flashed past to win by half a length. There was a terrible picture that I remember from my childhood, of Buckley and Ayala with their heads raised in triumph, whilst, just behind, Carrickbeg and John Lawrence had theirs down in dogged, desperate defeat.

Years later, Bob Butchers, the nephew of Don, wrote of that moment: ‘I must pay tribute to a wonderfully gallant horse who at seven was the youngest in a field of forty-seven and was in only his second season as a chaser. The sportsmanship displayed by Don, Gay and John was magnificent as they accepted defeat like the real men they were.’

Lawrence himself wrote, only days afterwards: ‘At that bitter moment when Ayala's head appeared at my knee, I wished them both at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Now, with admiration and only a little envy, I salute them for winning, deservedly, a truly wonderful race.’

Lawrence became John Oaksey, and went on to be known as The Noble Lord of Channel Four Racing. He was a brilliant and idiosyncratic commentator. I can still hear his voice in my head from Desert Orchid’s remarkable and unexpected first King George victory, when the grey horse blasted off in front and never came back to his field. Gasping, as Desert Orchid stood off outside the wings and sailed over one of Kempton’s great fences, Oaksey cried, with wild admiration in his voice: ‘Just look at that leap!’

Less well-known, outside racing, is that he founded the Injured Jockey’s Fund. Life without it is unimaginable now, but at the time, jockeys whose short and perilous careers were ended by injury had nowhere to turn. The charity, one of racing’s shining, true things, not only helps ex-jockeys in need but runs Oaksey House, where they do miracles of physical rehabilitation.

John Oaksey was a legend of my childhood, a smiling, kind, funny man, beloved by everyone who ever met him. He really was one of the good men, a true gentleman of the old school. He was an enthusiast, and I don’t think he ever had a common thought or mean.

Towards the very end of his life, when he was too frail to come to the races, the tough, gutsy horse he bred, Carruthers, won the Hennessy, and, such was the affection and esteem in which Oaksey was held, the whole of Newbury racecourse erupted in scenes of streaming joy.

****************************************************************************

I have not seen John Oaksey for years, but I remember him well, and he was my father’s good companion. I felt profoundly sad when I heard the news this morning, and moved and melancholy as I read all the touching tributes on Twitter, which has, rather unexpectedly, been adopted by the racing crowd. I don’t expect Oaksey would have known what Twitter was, but I hoped that perhaps someone might have told his family to have a look, so they could scroll down the pages of loving memorial. The love was expressed by famous trainers and fine jockeys and ordinary punters alike.

It made me grieve my own dad all over again, which I have not done for a while. I have been getting on with things, and time is healing, and I am filled with excitement about my glorious horse and my new secret project. (6,000 words so far this week.) But I mourned the two old men, and the end of an era which is marked by their passing, and I went up to my mare to get the sorrow out. I thought I would do a wild ride in honour of both horsemen, who had booted more thoroughbreds into more fences than they could count.

The wind has been up for two days, and Red had the devil in her. I hate to trade in stereotypes, but she is a chestnut mare, after all, and sometimes she does live up to her billing. Instead of the soft old donkey incarnation, into whose velvet neck I could cry, I had a bronco on my hands.

It was perfect. I could not indulge melancholy; I had to ride with every bit of hand and heel I had. She threw down the gauntlet, and for a moment I hesitated, and then I damn well picked it up. Fast trotting in tight circles and serpentines and figures of eight was, I decided, for no special reason, the key. (Get her mind on the job, show her who is boss. I may be a kind, soft boss, but I AM the boss.) As the wind whipped at us, I yelled encouragement at her, shouting and whooping into the weather. ‘Come on, come on. Trotting races,’ I bawled, at one point, as I twisted and turned her through tuffets and round saplings, inventing my own obstacle course as I went.

Then, suddenly, instead of fighting me, she was enjoying herself, and we raced faster and faster, and she turned on a sixpence, perfectly poised and balanced, and the adrenaline coursed in us, and I laughed aloud, thinking of how the two riding men would have known this exact feeling, half of their lives.

And then I let her down, and we walked round the field on a loose rein, slouching like cowboys. She had her head down and her neck stretched and her stride was long and loose, and there was no trace left of the tight, bolshie creature who had met me at the gate.

Horses are a mystery. I don’t know why that mood had taken her, or what it was about. But she chose the exact right day to give me a steely challenge, and at the end, as I got off, and she gave me her butter would not melt look, and poked her head into the crook of my arm so I could scratch her forehead, I thanked her. I said, out loud: ‘Oh, those old fellas would have taken a shine to you.’

 

Today’s pictures:

A rather blurry archive photograph of Mr J Lawrence and the tough young warrior Carrickbeg, jumping the last at Aintree, on that fateful day:

 

Lovely close-up from Getty Images:

His riding companion, my dear old dad, from my own archive:

Neither of them were the prettiest or most technically accomplished of riders. Dad had stupid amounts of courage and horses responded to that. Oaksey, wrote my mother this morning, in an email full of memories, ‘had good hands and horses ran for him’. That’s one of the great imponderables of racing. Some jockeys have that unknown extra thing, for which there is no written word; horses, with their finely tuned telepathy, sense it, and give that little bit more effort, forget to be mulish, remember their finest, ancestral selves, and it can make the difference between defeat and victory. John Oaksey had that extra thing.

Certainly I wished for an extra thing as I climbed onto my circus trick:

Then she gave me her most innocent and even slightly wistful look, as if I had imagined the whole thing:

Her view:

And happy Pigeon, because on days of melancholy, this face really can lift the most doleful heart:

No hill or garden today; too tired. Normal service tomorrow.

In which I do not wade into controversy

If you had been somewhere near a northern Scottish field today, where the swallows still fly in the shadow of an indigo blue mountain, you would have seen a slightly wild-eyed woman on a chestnut mare, riding one-handed, whilst leading a small, rather rotund grey pony. You would have seen trotting and turning and cantering; you would have heard the sound of whooping.

That nutty woman was me.

(Actually, it should really be that nutty woman was I. No one uses this rule any more. If Hamlet were alive today, he would have to say: ‘It is me, Hamlet the Dane,’ instead of ‘It is I, Hamlet the Dane.’ You see how much better the second one sounds, quite aside from being grammatically correct. But now, if you answer the telephone and say ‘It is I’ you just sound nuts in the head.)

Myfanwy the Pony is on a strict regime to get the fat off; I decided the best exercise was to lead her from Red. Leading  is not always straightforward. There was one moment when the pony planted herself and almost jerked me out of the saddle. But I persisted, and by the end, the two equines were running together like wild horses, in perfect harmony. Red very much liked her job as lead horse, and it had an oddly settling effect on her. I find more and more that she is happiest when she has a good task to do. (Actually, she is really happiest when I am doting on her and massaging citronella balm into her head, but I don’t mention that, because it sounds too dopey.) The whole thing made me so happy that I let out crazed rebel whoops of joy.

Then back to work, back to reality. I am all fired up for my back to school, start of term, new project. But my mind is not yet match-fit, and I get distracted and am on stop-start. I want to translate the easy rhythms I find in my riding to my daily word count, and it’s not quite there yet. I have taken on one or two outside projects and need to make a strict timetable and work out boxes of concentration. I know women are supposed to multi-task like breathing out and breathing in, but I find it difficult to think of more than one thing at once. I get mazy and confused and have to drink a lot of strong coffee to function at all.

In this vein, I had a whole serious, even philosophical post ready to go before breakfast. Someone made me cross on the Today programme, and I was all fired up to wade into controversy. (It was to do with rights, and homosexuality, and the Bible, and the peculiarities of religion.) I was going to go back to first principles and everything. But late in the day, by the time I got to sit down and type, my brain had been too stretched and pummelled by all those different kinds of thinking, and my body was physically exhausted from horse work, so I ended up just telling you about me and Red and the pony. It was incredibly sweet, the little trundling grey person sticking out her head and keeping up with her big red friend, who went in the most gentle, collected canter, even on a loose rein, as if conscious that her companion had much, much shorter legs.

Then I think: perhaps you do not need controversy and first principles. You all know what you think about the big affairs of the day. You understand morality and the thorny thickets of ethics and relativism. You are highly intelligent readers. You do not need me banging on. Perhaps a little, irrelevant snapshot of a day in a life is what this is all about, not rantings and putting down markers.

I shall, however, as soon as my brain is straight, be investigating the strangeness that is Mitt Romney. And if I get very excited, I might throw in a bit of Paul Ryan for afters.

 

Today’s pictures:

Red’s western view was impossible to photograph because of the evening sun:

This is what she sees looking east:

The farmer is finally able to get the harvest in. She watches this with fascination:

And then gets the wind in her tail and takes off:

You can see the gales blowing at her mane and tail. I had wondered what effect a full gale would have on her. The answer is quite a nutty one. It made me laugh:

But then she and her good companion settled:

Just as if butter would not melt in their mouths; as if they had not been charging about like circus tricks only moments before.

The Pigeon and I played with the ball, and she looked glorious in the evening light:

But someone has parked a bloody great DIGGER in front of my hill, so I could only capture it through the trees:

Return. Home and horses and politics and swallows.

The first thing, of course of course, after the second 250-mile leg of journey, was to dash up to the mare. She does such a funny thing when I return from trips. She pretends she is very, very grumpy indeed. She turns her back and swishes her tail and rolls her eyes, as if to say: what kind of time do you call this? I josh her out of it. You silly old donkey, I say. She throws her head about as if to indicate that this is not a proper form of address for a granddaughter of Nijinsky.

After about five minutes of this, she gives in, and admits that she is actually very pleased to see me indeed. She ducks her head at me, so I can scratch the sweet spots by her ears; her eyelids flicker, her lower lip wibbles, she breathes a long, loud, rattling sigh.

By the end, we are all in harmony again. I’m ashamed to say I actually sniff her. (I really am glad there is no one about. I’m not sure what the farmer would say if he saw me sniffing my horse.) The smell is one of the things I love most about her. It’s a scent of earth and air and healthy horse, and some sweet smell all her own. I’ve been with polo ponies all week, and they are all beautiful and enchanting and have great thoroughbred bloodlines, but none of them smells as good.

That was the weekend. Now I am back at work, into my stern autumn regime. Term has started. There was no time this morning for mooching about in the field, but a quick, serious ride. After the stop-start of the wet summer, I am banking on a good September, so the mare and I can both get match fit. We do neck-reining and transitions. She makes an initial protest after her ten days’ of loafing, and then settles to her work. I feel ridiculously, stupidly pleased.

It was interesting being with the Cousin and the Old Fella during the season. Usually, my trips to the south are in the winter, when all the horses are laid off, and the Old Fella goes to South America to work. Now, it is time of matches and practise.

There must be about forty polo ponies, almost all of them at their physical peak. They are worked twice a day; exercise in the very early morning, around seven, and then schooling and stick-and-balling in the afternoon. Some of them are old playing veterans; some are young stock, just learning their trade. They are all kept out, in their most natural state, in two big herds. I think not all polo yards do this, but the Old Fella believes that horses should be horses, and they are at their happiest when getting filthy out in the open air. They can roll and canter around and the young ones have play fights. The herd dynamic is evident, in all its ancient glory: the boss mare, the strict pecking order.

Back home, I think, as I give Red her special head massage, with citronella balm to keep off the flies, that she has got a whole new bargain. She used to run with a huge pack, with all the untrammelled horsiness that involves. Now she just has one small Welsh pony to boss about, but she gets the devoted and undivided attention of one human. She loses the wild herd; she gains the focused love.

In a big professional yard, like the one she lived in, she would have been very well treated. His horses all adore the Old Fella. But he has a job to do; he is on the go literally from dawn to dusk. (I always admire this kind of hard, physical, unrelenting work, and the people who do it.) There is no time for him to stand with one horse, for an hour at a time, as I do, just rubbing and scratching and chatting.

Red seems pretty happy with her bargain. When I am grooming her, she turns her head right round, and presents her forehead for affection. In the minutes after I returned, she rested on my shoulder, and went to sleep. I could feel her dropping and relaxing, as if to say: oh yes, my person is back.

I had a lovely time in the south. The extended family gives me joy like almost nothing else. I got to ride some prime equine athletes. (I even bought special new boots for the occasion. If the Old Fella was going to let me up on his polo stars, I had to be exceptionally well shod.) But as I look out over the grass and old stone walls and the beech trees, as I hear the lilting murmur of the birds and the slow doze of the Pigeon as she rests beside me, I think: there really is no place like home.

 

*****************************************************************************

I always like it, in newspaper or periodical articles, when they do a little postscript about things to look out for this week. Or some kind of Coming Soon.

Here are my things for the week:

The swallows, amazingly, are still here. I thought they would be gone by now. They are mustering like mad, and flying like gangbusters, getting their muscles up for the long flight to Africa. I rather dread the day when the air will no longer vibrate with the whirring of their brilliant wings, but at the same time it is one of the marking of the seasons that I love.

The political season swings back into action. I think: come on, government, plan for growth, plan for growth. I’d love to see Dear old Blighty back on her feet again. Because of my repudiation of tribalism, I don’t really care any more if a policy is Left or Right.  I mind if it is good or bad. I want the politicians of all stripes to do well, so the country can lift its head and shake off its malaise. We have been catching glimpses of glory again during these Olympics and Paralympics; it would be lovely to carry that sense that anything is possible into daily economic and political life.

My inner geek stretches itself and raises its head as the American election campaign gets into gear. I give you due warning: I shall have a very great deal to say about Mitt Romney. He is one of the most unfathomable and contradictory men I have ever observed in public life. It’s not just that the election fascinates me, it’s that I think he is one of the most complex individuals I have seen on the international stage. I’m going to work him out if it kills me.

 

Today’s pictures:

The road home. When I veer off the main highway for the last leg over the hills to my house, this is what I see:

Some pictures from the south:

Smallest cousin, with her faithful shadow, The Pigeon:

And Pigeon, on her own basking:

Godson, on his own lovely mare:

Old Fella, Godson, and middle cousin, also known as The Dancing Queen, at full tilt:

No time to take pictures here yet; have been too busy getting organised. Here is Red, from the day before I left: