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And...we are back.

The holiday was very heaven. Stanley the Dog went on a ferry for the first time (immaculate), saw the sea for the first time (slightly baffled levels of excitement), made human and canine friends (extremely friendly and polite), and generally had more fun than he could shake a stick at. And that is a lot of fun.

I read a whole book, sniffed the salty air, felt the wild island wind on my face, caught up with old friends, and walked on Hebridean beaches as white and gleaming as those of the Caribbean.

And now it is back to work. I wrote 1278 words of book, ran up to HorseBack and did my daily tasks for them, and rode the mare. Not only rode. JUMPED. We did a JUMP.

I woke furious this morning, because my break was over and I was grumpy and grouchy and even contemplated extending my holiday into a week’s staycation (horrible but rather effective word). It is the last Ashes test coming up, after all, and the great York festival of racing, one of my favourite meetings of the year. I would say bugger everything and just do nothing for a further seven days. But I could not justify it. I may, if I am very, very good and efficient, allow myself the odd afternoon off to watch the lovely horses, but the word count must be up first. So I began the thankless task of pummelling my recalcitrant brain into action.

Sod it, I thought, as I clambered crossly onto Red. I was so cross that I could not be bothered with what we are supposed to be working on, which is my correct position and her stretching out her neck in extended walk. (This is all part of a programme to recalibrate her old working muscles from racing and polo. They are tight and short and bunched, and I want to get them long and lean and low.) Let’s just zoom about, I thought, recklessly, even though I had not been on her for a week and she is, after all, a thoroughbred whom I appear to be riding about in the long grass in nothing more than a rope halter.

She seemed delighted with this programme. Despite my hurling caution to the winds, she gave me the most lovely collected canter. It had an ebbing, rolling aspect, so it was like being on a ship at sea going over a mild swell. She could have caught my mood and buggered off. I always wonder why she doesn’t. She has been bred and trained for speed, after all. I am still rusty as buggery, and my puny muscles would not be enough to stop half a ton of determined horse. And yet, there she is, with all her high blood and great breeding, rolling around the set aside with kindness and politesse and ease.

And over the jump we went and I whooped out into the clean Scottish morning, startling the swifts. Even Myfanwy the Pony raised her head to watch.

We have done a little jump before, but that was a slender fallen silver birch, which was about four inches high. This was an actual jump jump. Admittedly, not much more than fifteen inches high, but still. I’ve been teaching her to do it on the ground, and sometimes she leaps and sometimes she just stops, stares at it, looks at me as if saying ‘You want me to do what?’ and then steps over the thing, one foot at a time, with duchessy disdain.

So I was taking a slight risk. It could have gone horribly wrong. She is ten years old and she raced on the flat. Jumping is really quite odd and alien to her. But over we flew, and I dream now of dragging every fallen tree on the entire compound into cunning positions and making a little cross country course for her. She is so clever and good.

So, as always, Red the mare came to the rescue, surprised and delighted me, blew the grumbly glooms away, gave me her daily existential gift. And that was how I sat down at my desk and wrote 1278 words.

 

Some quick holiday pictures for you:

Gone fishing

Dear Readers: I am on the island of Colonsay. I am ON HOLIDAY. I sort of forgot to tell you. As you can see, there is actually internet, even here on a tiny island in the Hebrides. I could do a blog. I could tell you of sea birds and wide skies and fierce sheep and beaches as white as the Caribbean. I could tell you of Stanley the Dog's first ferry boat ride.

I COULD.

But I won't.

Because this is my five precious days of holiday this summer and even though of course the puritan voice in my head says that there should be no such thing as holiday, not when the world is so fraught with all the things it is fraught with, and not when I have to write a book, and not when there is all the HorseBack stuff to do, and not and not and not, I am in fact going to close down the computer now and not write another word.

I am going to read Scoop, which I suddenly realise I have not read for twenty years. Can't really think of a finer treat.

The only, only use of the internet I shall make is to listen to Test Match Special tomorrow, via the miracle of the BBC iPlayer. Somehow, they can send wi-fi all the way across the sea from Oban, but they cannot send radio waves for the old school kind of wireless. The people in this nice place shall think me very odd as I sit with an earpiece in, muttering 'my dear old thing' under my breath.

The angels of the world wide web even align and make me forget my email password. I am going to live for a moment, in this rushing world of technology, away from internet, away from email, away from all. And when I get home, I shall take the weekend off too, and watch a bit of racing and sit very still in my room, and come back to you on Monday week, restored and renewed. I shall tell you what it is like to exist happily with only boots and elements and a dog and a good old papery book.

PS. I'm not actually fishing, despite the title of this blog. I just like that expression. It's the kind of thing old-timers used to write on a sign, and hang on the door of their shacks, when they were taking a step out of the world. It will do for me now.

The Tarland Show

The Tarland Show was absolutely, gloriously marvellous. I went up, thinking I would stay for an hour or so, and ended up being there all day. It took me back to my showing childhood. Stanley the Dog behaved very well and was widely complimented. I made friends with complete strangers, and admired everything from Aberdeen Angus cows to heavy horses to some excessively splendid goats. (Stanley was very excited by the goats.) The HorseBack team did a demonstration and looked fabulous in their Western kit, and everything was as enchanting as human wit could devise.

Too tired now for more words, although I might tell you about it tomorrow. A small, highland show, with the gleam of the mountains in the distance, and some of the finest livestock in the county – I could write a sonnet about it. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Here are some quick pictures for you:

I know this Shetland very well. He finished in the money, despite being mildly unimpressed with the proceedings:

Don’t you love the whole Little and Large thing going on here?:

THE GOATS. Stan the Man was beside himself. I don’t think he’s ever seen a goat before:

This was my favourite of the ridden ponies, an utterly splendid Connemara called Vince. Vince! What a great name for a pony. His rider, a rather brilliant and very articulate young gentleman of eleven, smiled widely as he got his red rosette, and said, without any shadow of shyness, for all the show to hear: ‘Oh, I love this pony.’ A fellow traveller, I thought:

The HorseBack UK demonstration:

I have to say, I could feel my competitive spirit rising. I went down to the field afterwards and took the red mare out for a quick canter (and, madly, a JUMP), and promised her that next year I should enter her for Best Ridden Horse. Surely she has Supreme Champion written all over her?:

Although she will have to go up against this very beautiful mare, who was in fact today’s Supreme Champion:

We may have a little way to go. But as I told Red, if there were a class for sweetest wibbly lip, she would win every day and twice on Sundays. She looked at me very seriously as I told her this, and then gave me her duchessy whicker, to let me know it was time for her tea.

And Mr Stanley must of course go for the Pet Parade:

Ha. We’ll have some black type beside their names before we are done.

No blog today.

It’s been a long week, and I have hit the wall.

But I did want to say that the Dear Readers have been particularly dear in the last few days. You have left wise and kind comments, sent dancing tweets which made me laugh, written antic Facebook remarks. I don’t want to descend into Hallmark card territory, but this generous virtual back and forth damn well does warm the cockles of my absurd old heart.

So, thank you.

And here is Stanley the Dog, because I know everyone loves Stanley the Dog:

And speaking of dogs, and love, for a convoluted and labyrinthine set of reasons, I really, really missed these old ladies today. The universe, in its funny old wisdom, sent me reminders of them, and I’m not ashamed to say that I shed a bit of a tear. They are in the past, but they live with me still, stitched into my heart:

The Duchess and the Pigeon; really, two of the most beautiful canines that ever graced the good Scottish earth.

Light and shade; or in which I witter on about the blindingly obvious.

Life is so curious. Up and down it goes, round the houses. There is a thing that people say – are you a happy person? Or an optimistic person, or a cynical person, or on and on with the single adjectives. I think that there are underlying character traits; of course there are. I tend to see the best in things, I believe in acts of will (teeth gritted, dander up); I am cussed, dogged, emotional and more sanguine than jaded.

But I think that the idea that one is a certain type of human is a little misleading. Even the happiest person will feel grief or regret in the face of sorrow; it would be absurd to do anything else. I begin to believe that life is a matter of moments. There is joy in one hour, and fret in the next, and melancholy in the one after that.

This is a new theory that has just wandered into my mazy brain, and I always like a new theory, so I write this on the hoof, my notions inchoate and incomplete. But it makes me think of the raging arguments about social networks – Twitter is evil, Facebook is crass. It’s the same mistake, almost a category error. Some people on the internet are ghastly, just as some people (despite my enduring faith in human nature) are catastrophic in life. They behave in a manner which is rude or boorish or bigoted or cruel. There is a possibility that they may comport themselves slightly better at cocktail parties than they do when protected by the curtain of anonymity which the theatre of the web provides, but they are still do what they do, to greater or lesser degrees. 

So although I like to think of myself as a fairly cheerful person, I don’t think one can necessarily categorise oneself into happy or optimistic or whichever box is beckoning. What I do think is that retaining the capacity for joy is the most enduring thing.

There is a thing which happens to horses, because of course I must bring everything back to equines, when they have been overwhelmed by life. They shut down. You see it mostly in riding school ponies, or horses who have been overworked in a discipline which does not suit their character. They’ll go through the motions, but their eyes have a dead blankness in them. That’s the aspect I think that humans too must be wary of. One can’t be joyful all the time, unless one is on strong medication; it would be idiotic. But being open to the sorrows and the joys is perhaps the key.

Sometimes I feel a bit peculiar when I can mourn one moment and celebrate the next; there is a skittering sense of guilt, as if I may be callous or unfeeling. There is an old lefty voice in my head, from the black and white days of my youth, which says: how can you laugh when the world is so oppressed? I think, now I am older and more bashed about, with those clean, sure edges worn off by time, that one must laugh when the world is so oppressed. Wandering about in a cloud of baleful despair because of all the misery that exists in the dark places does not shed light, but only deepens the umbrous veil.

So, yesterday, I was amidst the shadows, and today I walk out into the light. The sun came out, literally and metaphorically. I wrote 1798 words of book, I felt delight as I watched my mare take her ease in the morning grass, actual real-life humans made me smile, virtual online friends brought me gladness. There is some interesting racing on, and I shall watch it and bet on it and shout for my thoroughbred darlings, at Leopardstown and Yarmouth and Sandown. And tomorrow, I shall start all over again.

Up and down it goes. And round those dear old houses.

 

Today’s pictures:

Her Ladyship was very happy this morning, out at liberty in the wild spaces where the good grass lives:

As was the dear little American Paint filly, who was allowed to graze off the rope for the first time:

Stanley the Dog was delighted on account of HIS MOST EXCELLENT STICK:

And Myfanwy the Pony was preening with pride as she was given a show pony groom:

Congratulating Red after a lovely, bouncing canter through the high grass:

One of the things that made me smile the most today was that the Older Niece put up a whole lot of pictures of the family weekend. You know that I said there were actual humans playing the actual maracas? Well, I am completely busted, because I was in fact one of them:

The Brothers were lost in merriment:

As were The Sister and The Younger Niece:

Moment of still as The Older Niece plays her haunting guitar:

And then, of course, there was Scottish dancing the next day on the lawn:

I very rarely put up recognisable pictures of the family on this blog. I’ve got a weird privacy thing. It is this which makes me give everyone special blog names, even the animals. Red’s name is not really Red. Although, for some odd reason, Stanley is actually called Stanley. But these are all on Facebook, so they exist in the world, and they are so sweet in their simple happiness that I wanted to show them to you. We are not always like The Waltons. We bicker and groan and get scratchy with each other, as all families do. But this particular past weekend was of a shining loveliness, and everyone was in harmony, and I want to mark it. Remembrance again, I suppose.

Today’s hill appears to have a HORSE LOOKING AT IT. You see with Red the Younger Niece’s friend, who had to sell her own horse when she went to university, so now, in the holidays, she comes and rides mine. They are having a ball together:

As I read this through I think: goodness, that was a little exercise in stating the bleeding obvious. But it was what I was contemplating at the time, so I’m not going to go back and change it. And I suppose that obvious is not the very worst thing one can be. And, and, part of the point of this blog is that you get me warts and all. It’s not Look Ma, no hands. It’s not shiny and impervious. It’s one ordinary life, with the Scottish hills, and the love and trees, with the mare and the dog and the family and the rotten time management and the good and bad word counts and the incapacity to tidy the office and the sudden terrible weather and the days when my brain does not work, and the moments of glad grace. I get a little baffled by those glossy magazine lives. I want people to nod their heads and say: oh yes, I know that. And nobody does that when there are no warts.

Or something.

Stopping now. Really am.

Finger hovers over the publish button. Should I write something better, cleverer, less rambling and ambling? No. Bugger it. The Dear Readers will understand.