A profound shift in perspective.

I write here a great deal about the Perspective Police. I invented the Perspective Police a few years ago, and was so proud of them that I even featured the entire brigade in Backwards. I love utility, and they are nothing if not utile. They are the ones who bash down the door when one is sliding into the slough of self-pity or melancholia, and remind one sternly of all the blessings and good fortunes. They are an excellent corrective and I am always glad when I hear them get their battering rams out.

Now that I volunteer at HorseBack UK, I get a visit from The Perspective Police pretty much every day. It’s as if they have moved from their headquarters in some distant place, and camped out in the garden.

But this morning, I heard something which went even beyond their remit. It was a story which ran so far past my imagination that I don’t have good words for it. I don’t really have any words for it, and words are my life and my love. All I thought, as I heard it, was that this should never, ever happen to a human being. It is too much for one heart and mind and body to bear.

And yet there was this gentleman, who, despite having been blown up three times, as he told me in a matter of fact voice, looked fit and strong and real. Part of the difficulty is the gap between his outward aspect and what has happened to him. I cannot tell you the details, but you may get some sense of it when I say that being blown up was the very least of it.

He tells his story with no mawkish self-regard, no grandstanding, no look at me. It just comes out, as we talk together in the shade of an ancient stand of oak trees, with the blue Scottish hills glimmering in the distance. His voice is quiet and even; he uses no long words, no cheap dramatics, no hyperbole. He is long past hyperbole.

One of the things I feel strongly, although I do not say this out loud, because I think it would sound stupid, is that I am overwhelmed by a keen sense of privilege that he would choose to tell it to me. It is the worst story I have ever heard, yet I am glad I know it.

I want to say something clever and wise, about all this. I want to slot it into some kind of good life lesson, weave it into a parable. I want to say something about collective psychology, and societal fears and guilts, about averting the eyes from the unimaginable, about the daily gift of being able to live a normal life, to sleep at night.

I want to say something about the unheralded gift of the things not seen. There are men and women out there who have witnessed things which no human eye should have to witness. And those pictures never go away, ever. They are seared into the brain, flashing and lurid and constant.

But my fingers stutter and stall over the keyboard, because it is here that language fails, and imagination fails, and even the human heart, in which I have such faith, fails. There is a ragged, humming disbelief that such people can go on putting one foot in front of the other, can get out of bed in the morning, can function at all in the world. And yet they do. They can stand, in a quiet corner of Scotland, and tell their story to an unknown woman, in words of such clarity and authenticity that it takes the breath away.

‘Sometimes it is easier to talk to a stranger,’ the gentleman says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I understand that.’

At least here is something I can understand.

‘Well, everyone has a story,’ he says, drily, wryly, looking out to those indigo mountains, which were here before he and I were ever dreamt of, and shall be here for thousands of years after we have gone.

Not everyone, I think, has a story like that.

My sense of perspective has undergone a profound shift. I feel it physically, in my body, as if the very atoms that make up my corporeal self are moving around, reconfiguring themselves.

I shall carry his story with me now. It is stitched into my heart.

I shall think of that quiet gentleman. I shall think of his dignity and fortitude.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, I shall remember.

 

Today’s pictures:

Afterwards, I went and stood with this person for a long time. She is very happy today, and she has taken on her calmest aspect, as if some deep stillness is at work in her. It is a profound, spreading authenticity, as if she is at one with her world, as if she is her most real, horsey self. It is another of those things which is hard to put into words, but it communicates itself like smoke across the species divide. It goes from one equine spirit to one human one, and brings back a sense of the simple fact of existence, of living and breathing and being alive in this precise moment. It anchors me back to the very earth on which I stand:

That is her daily gift, which she gives with simple generosity. When people ask -why the horse? – that is why.

And then I looked at these:

And I stared at the hill:

And I cannot tell you what I felt.

No saddle, no bridle, no stereotypes.

Yesterday, I was thinking about position. Position is very important. It’s easy for me to get complacent because I sat on a pony practically before I could stand; of course I know about damn position. But the riding really was thirty years ago, and my poor old body almost certainly has no muscle memory left in it. Let alone much muscle. So, just now, I’m all about re-learning position.

I made the fatal mistake of getting on the interweb and typing in ‘perfect position’. Ha, ha, ha, HA, went the internet gods. We laugh at your puny plan. There were all the Brilliant People, with their perfectly schooled horses, and a position that would make angels weep. It certainly made me weep. I contemplated taking up something to do with sheep.

Then, today, the Remarkable Trainer arrived. She is very young and entirely fearless and throws out challenges like confetti. (She was the one who decided rigging up a makeshift arch with a shower curtain hanging from it was a good desensitising tool, and laughed her head off when I rode my thoroughbred mare straight under it. The curtain, I should tell you, was flapping at the time.)

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Position.’

I thought she was going to get me in the saddle and talk about my seat bones and squint at my back and reposition my knees.

‘I think bareback,’ she said.

So we put a pad on Red the Mare, in order that I did not slip about on her shiny back, and tied the ends of the long line to her rope halter and I scrambled on, with a lot of oofing noises (Red did not move a hair) and suddenly I was riding bareback. A little turn, some figures of eight, a lovely low trot. Bareback, which I have not done since I was about ten years old, is buckets of fun. You can feel the horse under you and you don’t have to furrow your brow and think about that damn position, because your body falls naturally into place.

‘Do a canter,’ the Remarkable Trainer suddenly shouted, filled with merriment.

‘What the fuck?’ I yelled in my head.

Out loud, I said, in a slightly wavery voice, ‘Oh, you think?’

Problem is, my dander is very light-sensitive. All it takes is one joking suggestion, and the dander is up, and who cares if I am forty-six and have no muscle memory?

I took the mare down to the bottom of the field. I breathed deeply, into my diaphragm. ‘We’re going faster, we’re going faster,’ I told her, almost singing. ‘If I bloody fall off,’ I said, ‘everyone will howl with laughter.’ Red twitched her ears at me, as if to say: the old girl is rabbiting on again.

Long walk, nice trot. The wide, Scottish field spread open before us. Lots of tempting grass under those thoroughbred feet, to remind her of her racing days, of her polo days, when she was ridden at speed in a double bridle with a martingale complicated enough to please the most dedicated Miss Whiplash. I looked down at the rope halter. I felt her good, wide back under my legs. Bugger it, I thought.

‘Canter on,’ I said.

And there, in the old set-aside, under the dancing northern sun, my ex-flat thoroughbred mare, with her chestnut coat and her three white socks, with every stereotype in the world flung at her beautiful head, rocked into the most enchanting, rolling, collected canter.

I whooped as if I were a fourteen-year-old at a One Direction concert.

Then we did it again, because we could.

I sat down into her and forgot that there was no saddle and there was no bridle and that I am creaky as hell and that the Brilliant People with their Perfect Position would be roaring with derisive merriment if they could see us now. I didn’t care about anything. It felt like we were flying. Bareback, yelled the voices in my head, suddenly delirious with joy; bugger everyone.

(Sorry. I get very sweary in moments of high emotion.)

I slid off and did a little hopping sort of jig, I was so happy. The Remarkable Trainer laughed a lot. ‘I’m so proud of her,’ I said, kissing the mare all over her dear face. She nodded her head, and wibbled her lower lip, and did her donkey ears, and came as close as an equine ever can to a smile.

I do think she was pretty proud of herself. She doesn’t give a hoot about being on the YouTube, or winning gold cups, or learning to do a flying change. But she does know when she’s done something very clever, and she does know when she has made me dance with joy, and she gets this happy, secret look on her face, as if to say: yes, yes, see what I did. If I were only slightly more flaky than I actually am, I would suspect that she likes exploding stereotypes just as much as I do.

 

Today’s pictures:

The brilliant girl, at rest:

Goofy this is bloody good grass face:

Sheer beauty:

(There may be pictures of the Great Bareback Moment later. The Remarkable Trainer took some.)

Meanwhile, Stanley the Dog is also in full fig:

And more Sheer Beauty:

The hill:

Sunday pictures

A very long and very lovely games weekend. Far too tired to write anything, but there is just time for a couple of pictures.

This one made me laugh. It sums up entirely the difference between my two animals. Red, despite being in the middle of doing some work, is virtually asleep. Stanley the Dog has his eager, antic, whizz-about face on. It makes me laugh and laugh:

Red also has a sweet new friend. The new friend has had to sell her own horse on account of being away at university, so I offered her Red to ride whenever she is at home in Scotland. They are already having the most lovely time together. It is very touching:

And possibly the other most sweet thing was that today, as the family gathered for lunch on the lawn, the great-nieces did a display of highland dancing for us. They are really, really good:

The other person who possibly had the best time of all of us was the glorious dog of The Older Niece. She is very fond of her life in the south, but there are no burns for her to swim in where she lives. Here she is, about to go in, waiting for an attentive audience:

Which she duly got:

And a very quick taste of the dear old games:

My family, and other happinesses.

This is always hectic time of year for us. The clans begin to gather as the day of the highland games approaches. The entire family is here – both nieces, and all four of us brothers and sisters together, which is a very rare occurrence, especially as The Younger Brother lives in Bali. We also have visitors from abroad, which is rather thrilling: one from Australia and one from Thailand. Scotland puts on her pomp for them, as the sun dazzles and dances, and they go off this morning to see the glory that is Glen Muick. I feel happy that they shall see the mighty glen at its finest.

Last night, very tired after a long week, I attempted, as graciously as I could, to refuse a kind dinner invitation. The Brother-in-Law was having none of it. ‘But I’m speechless with exhaustion,’ I said. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘You can just sit there and say nothing.’

Two hours later, I WAS SINGING.

Yes, my darlings, there was singing. Various humans actually played the tambourine. I may have picked up a pair of maracas. The Older Niece has the voice of an angel, a proper voice, which can send shivers up your spine. The rest of us can just about carry a tune. The Brother-in-Law and The Man in the Hat (husband of Older Niece) both whack merry hell out of a guitar. There is even a Gibson in the house.

So, we have a musical evening. I perk up amazingly when it turns out we are having Friday night wine on a Thursday. Nothing like a bit of Margaux, miraculously produced by the kind guest from Thailand, to put a spring back in a tired step.

I sang, I laughed, I shouted. It was one of the best evenings of my life. I used to be a bit cynical about family. Blood was certainly not thicker, in my rather jaded view of things. Now I think that there is nothing like it. There is nothing like being surrounded by the people who have known you since you were born, and whom you have known since they were born. They don’t mind if you sing and shout, because they’ve seen it all before. There are all the old jokes and the collective memories and the stories of childhood. It is a thing of enchantment.

Despite an excess of the good claret, I have no hangover. I run about in the dancing sunshine, doing the horse, going to HorseBack, writing my book, having two astonishingly successful bets at Goodwood, thanks to the mighty combination of Hughes and Hannon, who can do no wrong just now. Stanley the Dog has a ball and is in seventh heaven. I never saw him so happy.

There is a lot of joy in these hours.

Most of the time, I am pretty cheerful. I have a lot of delight in my life and a lot of great good fortune. I have animals I adore and a job I love and some voluntary things to keep my conscience reasonably clear. I live in a place of beauty. I have the trees. But there are the daily worries and stresses which fall into any life, however lucky. This sheer, soaring happiness which comes with the family around me is actually quite rare, I realise. It pushes everything else out. It lifts me up and sends me out into the day thinking that nothing else matters.

I like to record it too, so that when life returns to normal and I am assailed by doubts and frets, I can look back and remember. It’s important, I think. Write it down; write it down. Record the joy.

 

Today’s pictures:

Scotland, this morning:

Garden:

Stanley the Dog, in canine heaven:

Best Beloved, who was of such goodness and sweetness today that I run out of adjectives. She did three amazing pieces of work, two for strangers she had never met before, and was greeted with cries of joy and disbelief. She is making up into a horse that dreams are made on:

The hill, almost lost in the dazzle:

As I write this, the wizard that is Dermot Weld sends out Unaccompanied to win at the Galway Festival he makes his own. It completes a very happy little treble. I shall have some cash to spend at the games tomorrow. And I end the day as I started it, with a smile on my face.

A very brief meditation on an absurd passion.

A quick bulletin, as it is another of those crazy days, and I want to get everything done in double quick time so I can watch the racing and listen to the cricket.

Sudden, pouring, Scottish rain. Gentle horse morning, but no riding as rain has stopped play. Work, work, work. 1178 words of book. The picture becomes a little clearer although I have made life difficult for myself by deciding the whole thing is set in the wrong season. Weather is important in fiction.

Dawn Approach did not win. Toronado finally fulfilled his promise, repaid all that hope and love the Hannons have put into him, all the faith they have kept, and he flashed up on the outside and took the race with a storming late run, by half a length. It was a brilliant, brilliant contest between two titans, and the strong bay horse prevailed on the day. I can’t wait now for the next chapter in that story. There must be a rematch for sure.

But I won my money back because a lovely, rather exciting filly called Ribbons won the 4.50 for the most excellent James Fanshawe. He’s a trainer I admire, and I think he might have a bit of a star on his hands.

She’s a diva for sure. She stopped dead, half way to the start, and her jockey James Doyle had to jump off and attempt to lead her down. She wasn’t having that either. Some poor hapless fellow ran down to wave his arms at the filly in a vain attempt to get her moving, and she stared at him as if she were Lady Bracknell confronted by a handbag. I’m not sure I ever saw such equine de haut en bas.

Once she eventually consented, purely on her own aristocratic terms, to get to the stalls, she went in kindly, leapt out like a running deer, and absolutely took apart a big field, dancing away with the thing as if she had never had a mulish thought in her pretty head. I love her. She’s my new heroine.

Stanley the Dog is happy; all the family is gathering for the highland games; I wish there were twenty-seven hours in the day instead of twenty-four. I have had slightly too much coffee. But the racing is glorious, the cricket is starting, and I feel keenly aware of my luck.

It’s a sort of blanket luck, to be alive when there are such sights to be seen. It’s a very specific luck too: to be self-employed, so I can switch about my schedule and watch it all. Mostly though, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, it’s the good fortune of having passions.

It’s all a bit nutty, my idiotic love for racing; my adoration of these horses I shall never meet, my forensic following of the form, my living through the triumphs and disasters as if they were my own. A nice man wrote, kindly, forgivingly, on my Twitter timeline yesterday that he did not understand a word of my racing tweets but quite enjoyed them anyway. I thought that was very generous.

It did make me feel a bit goofy. I am forty-six, after all, not sixteen. But I read somewhere not long ago that one of the vital ingredients of happiness in life is to have a passion. It’s quite tiring, minding about the things I mind about so much. But it does galvanise. It keeps me alive. It does not let me slip into blah existence, but acts as a roaring shot in the arm. I think I’d rather be a bit absurd than be bored and disengaged. Well, that is my story, and, my dear Dear Readers, I really am sticking to it.

 

Too wet for the camera today; here are a few pictures from the last 48 hours:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack mares:

The mare and her little filly foal. I rather love that I got this picture all wrong and that they are slightly out of focus. Sometimes I am quite fond of my mistakes:

Garden:

My lovely Red, last night, having a good old pick out in the wild grass:

LOVE:

The Older Brother and his Beloved came to pay the dear old duchess a visit:

We haven’t had a good Myfanwy picture in a while:

My most excellent sight dog, sighting things:

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