A small photo essay. Or, sheer joy.

I think, as I get older, that things often turn out for the best. Or at least, better than one hoped when the plan changed. Because I got stuck in traffic, I caught that magical programme on Radio Four I would otherwise not have listened to. Because so-and-so was late, I was in when an old friend on the other side of the world happened to ring up. That sort of thing. Little things.

This has happened in two different ways in the last week, both to do with the camera.

On the third day of Cheltenham, I was contemplating not taking the camera. I love catching my equine heroes and my old four-legged friends forever, so I can go back and look at them with love. But the problem with having a camera is that it does get between me and the actual world. I am so busy looking for angles, that I almost miss the beauty right in front of me, in an odd, paradoxical way. Still, I could not bring myself to leave it behind for all that, and I planned my usual snap snap snap. When I got to the course I found I had left my memory card at home.

Because of that, I have no pictures for posterity of the mighty AP winning his last ever race at Cheltenham. But I have it in my head, in my muscle memory almost. I can still feel my throat grow sore with shouting, the hard percussion of my hands clapping, the flat gallop of my boots on the tarmac as I ran to the winner’s enclosure, the beat beat beat of my delirious heart. I don’t have any visual proofs, but I have that moment with me until I die.

Part of the reason that I drive all those miles is that I love seeing the beautiful athletes up close. I rush to the pre-parade ring before each race, and on this day, without the camera, I did what I always used to do, which is get in right up close, on the rail, so I can smell the beauties. Racing horses smell of leather and air and excitement and honesty. I can drink them in and feel the beauty and the glory and the sheer power, right down to my toes.

I never took a photograph of Frankel, but I can still remember watching him stalk round the tiny little top paddock at York, under the shady trees. I can still hear the excited cries of the small boy who was seeing him for the first time, and the hushed, awed murmur of the crowd.

So that was a lack which turned out for the best.

Today, there was a piece of luck which went the other way. I’d done the mare and was dashing off to HorseBack when I remembered I’d left the camera in the feed shed. Back I tore, to find that the two gracious ladies were taking their ease in the sun. There they lay, as dozy and happy and at one with the world as any horse you will ever see, whilst Stan the Man capered about and the bright Scottish light fell down like honey.

If I had not been so dizzy and forgetful, I would not have seen that enchanting sight.

I did photograph it, and then I put the camera away and sat on the ground with them for a bit, feeling the bliss pour out of their great, resting bodies.

When the red mare first arrived, uncertain and unhappy in a strange environment with an unfamiliar, clueless human, I felt guilty. I had acted on a whim, and over-horsed myself. I had not looked after an equine for thirty years, and now I had a thoroughbred mare, and I could not remember how to do anything except grit my teeth and stick on. That was not enough for the duchess. She became troubled and unsettled and started doing wild Champion the Wonder Horse rearing, fast downhill reversing, and her patented vertical leap in the air at the very sound of a pheasant.

In despair, I googled How to Have a Happy Horse. That is how tragic I was. This brought me to this new kind of horsemanship which now gives me so much delight. That is why I can now ride her on a loose rein in a rope halter, and why she will take her ease in the sun, not even getting up as Stanley sprints and barks and jumps, and some random man in a huge off-road truck guns his way round the field because it appears he is lost, and the fellows up in the building yard make crazy noises with vast power saws.

After everything, I got a happy horse. And because I am a bit goofy and always thinking of forty-seven different things and so forgot my camera, I was in the right place to capture all of that sheer joy.

 

Today’s pictures:

Non-horsey people – look away now. These will sear your eyes with horsiness.

The regular pictures of the early morning. It was bitter cold last night, so the rugs had to go back on:

Then I had to go back, and this was the first thing I saw:

I thought they would surely get up as Stanley raced towards them. He clearly decided this was a splendid new game. They gave him mildly disdainful looks. They were OFF GAMES:

He got bored, and ran off to chase pheasants:

And someone went back to sleep:

They say horses are mirrors of their owners. Looking at this photograph, I really, really hope that is true:

I love the synchronised sleeping:

As you can see, I kept on snapping and snapping, because you can’t have too many lying down pictures. Or at least, I can’t:

Somehow managing to be completely dozy and completely elegant all at the same time:

And then I went off to HorseBack, where the dear ex-sprinter Brook was looking wide awake and extremely handsome:

An ordinary blog for an ordinary day.

On the drive home, I had such glorious ideas for a New, Improved Blog. Oh, it was going to be a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I smiled as I swung the car through the wild spaces of Glenshee, thinking of what treats I had in store for you.

Then, reality bit.

I am, as always after time away, cantering about, trying to get back into the rhythm of my days, ordering horses, family, work, HorseBack, Stanly the Manly, and the necessary domestic tasks which must be done to keep my life on track. As always, my logistical skills and my time management are sorely lacking.

I cannot remember now what it was that was going to improve the dear old blog. The mantra in my head says: try harder, work better, write sharper. I think there was a vague idea that I was going to give you not only dancing prose, but some DEEP THOUGHTS. I am actually laughing out loud as I write that sentence. Stanley, who was dozing, looks up in astonishment. He knows my limitations, and forgives them, because he is a very nice dog.

As it is, I write this just as I usually do, in the middle of all the other demands of my day. I write it, as I usually do, about forty minutes behind, chasing time as my sweet lurcher chases his tail. I write it, as I usually do, in the lurching hope that something brilliant will come to me, so that you might sit up and smile and say hot damn. As the words come out, that singing hope settles into ordinary acceptance: no prizes today.

But now, as I rue the lost brilliance with which I was going to dazzle you, I think: that is all right. It’s like me, this blog. It’s a little bit good and a little bit bad. It’s a little bit muddly, and a little bit goofy, and a little bit scruffy. In middle age, I wave a cheerful goodbye to dreams of diamond perfection, and accept the fact that sometimes good enough is good enough. I’ll keep on trying, because I believe in trying, and I love the triers of the world. But not everything has to be fabulous. Some things can just be what they are: ordinary, human, flawed.

 

Today’s pictures:

Glenshee, on the way home:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack mares, at work this morning:

I could watch this gentleman all day long. Even though this is an ordinary blog for an ordinary day, anything which has Robert Gonzales in it has a little sprinkle of stardust:

Here’s another one of my favourites – KayCee, a mighty chestnut mare, having a little bit of a rodeo moment as she comes back into work after a long winter break:

And then, having got the twinkles out of her toes, she remembered that she is a very lovely person and hooked on to her novice human like an absolute sweetheart, and even did a glorious posing photograph face for me:

Very, very happy to see these two dear friends again, muddy and moochy and at peace:

And they kindly did a good pose too:

I generally bang on about the goodness of keeping horses out in the field. They are flight animals after all, and herd animals, and they like to move their feet. But after I spent half an hour brushing the mud off the red mare this morning in a vain attempt to make her look respectable, only to watch her have a huge, indulgent roll right at my feet the moment I put her back in the paddock, so that she was caked from ear to toe in black Scottish earth, I did suddenly understand why some people like a stable.

She gave me such a look after the roll. Ha, she was saying, it’s a spa day and mud packs are good for the skin. Well, she was saying, let’s see you try to get that off in the morning. I swear she rolled her eyes at my puny human plan.

Goodness, I’ve missed her.

The Champ.

Alan King, on AP McCoy: 'We'll never see his like again.'

Yesterday afternoon, I was in tears. Not because all my fancies got beaten out of sight, but because a gentleman whose example I live by saw his dedication, hard work, belief, and refusal to give up pay off. The Champ finally, finally, ran his race.

The tears were tears of joy.

When I feel gloomy, or defeated, I ask myself: 'What would AP do?' The answer always is: ride another winner.

This Cheltenham is Tony McCoy's last. He'd had a few fancied runners, and they had disappointed. Even the famous McCoy drive could not lend their leaden feet wings. People were starting to get a faintly haunted look in their eyes: the terrible thought that McCoy might go home from his final festival winless hovered in the back of thousands of minds.

Uxizandre in the Ryanair was not the obvious candidate to pull the Champ out of trouble. He's a big, scopey, athletic sort of horse, and he's run well at Prestbury Park before, but his last two runs were rotten, and there was some suspicion that he might not quite get every yard of the searching two miles five. He was sent off at sixteen to one, very much Alan King's second string, as all eyes turned to the beautiful dark bay figure of his stable star, Balder Succes.

But the delightful Balder, a horse I have loved since he was a novice, ran no sort of race from the start, blundering about at the back with the equally out of sorts Ballycasey, who was busy bringing Ruby Walsh back to earth as only a thoroughbred can, whilst at the front AP had gone off at a furious clip, as if he thought his fella really wanted  every inch of the trip and could run the rest ragged.
I turned to my brother, who had doubts about the extra furlong. 'He's certainly riding him as if he thinks he stays all day,' I said, a little seed of hope growing in my heart. My money was on the other way, but I'd been backing the Champ all week, hoping that I could shout him home, as if the very weight of my cash might push him over the winning line. (I try to resist magical thinking, but when I'm on a racecourse, my rational self runs off to join the circus.)

Dashing off in front and staying there is always difficult. Commentators call the tactic 'doing it the hard way', although in a big, hurly burly race, if you can make your own running at least you stay out of trouble and get a clear view of the fences.
Uxizandre was seeing his fences with x-ray specs. He was bounding, pounding, leaping for joy, as if every atom in his body was scintillating with health and joy, as if this hour on this day was the moment he'd been waiting for all his life.

The further he went, the higher he leapt, whilst the fast pace was forcing good horses in his wake into making amateurish blunders. Uxizandre did not touch a twig, whilst the birch went flying behind him. AP must have heard the sound of thumps and curses in his slipstream; under him, the only sound was the glorious pounding hooves of a horse who is meeting every fence just right.

At the third last, the hope, which I had pushed sternly down, barged its way to the front and started up a chorus of its own. 'Oh, come on AP,' I shouted, unable to contain myself. He couldn't go on galloping like that surely? Not at that relentless pace, up that unforgiving hill? Surely the pack would come and swallow him up and a faint anti-climax would fall from Cleeve Hill like soft British rain?

The doughty mare, Ma Filleule, gave it a good shot. She put her tough head down and got her sprinting shoes on, but it was not enough. It was not nearly enough. Uxizandre was damn well going to write his own moment in history, and he accelerated away, something heedless and fine and uncontaminated in him - that pure brilliance that only good thoroughbreds have, the old call of the herd, the will to win, to lead, to be the man, all combining at the right time to send him past the winning post in glorious isolation.

Sometimes, a sixteen to one winner is greeted with puzzled silence. Not this one.  Four men and a dog had their beer money on him. But he was roared up the hill with the biggest shout of the meeting, as if he were a red-hot favourite, sixty thousand hearts expanding like flowers in springtime. 'Come on, AP,' hollered the crowd. 'Go, Champ,' I bawled, hardly able to believe my eyes.

Afterwards, half laughing, half crying, AP talked not of the winning, but of the thrill of riding a horse who could tank on and make such leaps.
Uxizandre's last two outings might have been dire, but from the way AP rode him you would never know. The Champ sent him off with all the confidence in the world, as if this was a the only horse in the country he wanted to ride. The bold Uxiandre responded, getting the mesage down the reins, stretching out his strong legs, dancing, romping, showing off, laughing at the rest.

'I'll miss riding horses like this, that jump like stags,'  said AP.

People were running to the winner's enclosure, points of light shooting out of their eyes like stars. I made friends with the man standing next to me. 'At last,' he said, smiling with delight and relief. 'Nobody deserves it more.'

'We just love him. It's the best thing that ever happened,' Mrs McManus was telling the television microphones.

AP's wife, who has had to watch her husband smash up his indomitable body for more years than she probably would like to count, and somehow always manages to be serene and smiling and thoughtful, was beaming with joy.

'He was slightly melancholy this morning, but he'll be burning with happiness now,' she said. 'He just loves riding in the green and gold.'

Into the cauldron of joy, the good, genuine Uxizandre walked without pausing, his ears pricked, as if he knew he was taking his place in racing history. A lot of horses would have baulked at the noise and the hysteria, but not this proper fella. He hardly moved a muscle as the three cheers flew up into the spring air and his humans hugged and kissed each other about him. He posed for pictures like a seasoned star, breathing softly through his nostrils, accepting a kiss on the nose from one exuberant gent.

The whole McCoy family were gathered, brothers, sisters, the father. 'We're bursting with pride.' There were tears from the sisters. 'They say it comes from the dam's side,' said AP's father, wry and slightly overcome.

'Phenomenal,' said Alan King. 'The dedication, the hard work.'

And then, because it was still a working day, AP marched back into the weighing room, with his trademark quick walk, to get changed for the next race, as if it were just another day at the office, and the cheers died away, and people shook their heads, as if not quite certain they had just seen what they had seen.
As I headed for the pre-parade ring, to see the runners for the World Hurdle, wiping the tears from my cheeks, I turned to my brother. 'I can't believe that just happened,' I said. I smiled. I thought of how AP's example lives with me every single day. 'And we were there,' I said.

We were there.

 

Today's pictures:

I forgot my memory card, so could not capture the Glorious Moment on Kodachrome. In some ways, I'm glad I could not. I had to take the pictures with my human eyes, with no filter in the way.
Here's a picture from the second day, of another great gentleman. He'll never hit the headlines or fill the front page. But he's a good, honest horse, and I've always enjoyed watching him, and I love his dear freckled face. So, not AP for you, but Sire Collonges instead, a worthy understudy:

 

PS. There will be spelling mistakes in this. There were yesterday. I write these in a hurry at seven in the morning. Forgive the errors.

A different day.

The unsaddling enclosure at Cheltenham is one of the loneliest places in the world. It is here that the broken shards of hopes and dreams quietly swept away.
In that little square of green grass, as the cheers for Dodging Bullets and Sam Twiston-Davies rumbled from the winner's enclosure, a big black horse walked round whilst a small, huddled group of humans gazed at him in puzzlement and worry. The vet was there, smart in his tweed suit, but there did not seem to be anything wrong with the horse. He looked quite calm, not bothered by anything, just a little muted perhaps.

Sprinter Sacre was once a dancing, dazzling, gleaming champion, who could set sixty thousand people on a roar without moving out of second gear. And now, here he was, pulled up in the race he used to win by seventeen lengths.

In the pre-parade ring, he had looked magnificent. He was the same gleaming physical specimen that has delighted so many people for so long. Oddly, it was Dodging Bullets who would not knock your eye out, a little tucked up, a tiny bit starey in his coat. People said he was not a spring horse, and I thought he looked a little out of sorts. So much I know: he flew up the hill, whilst Sprinter laboured behind, and Barry Geraghty, who would never let anything happen to that horse, called it a day.

I had braced myself for the fact that the great champion had gone, but it's a melancholy thing to see. Of course a secret part of me hoped he would lift his head, hear the roar, and romp back to his rightful place. Yesterday was the day of fairy tales; today, under a surly sky, with Cleeve Hill doleful in the gloom, was the day of reality.

I hope they retire Sprinter.  I hope they find him something useful to do, because he's an active intelligent horse who needs a job; something not too taxing for the old ticker; something that will make him prick his ears and feel pride in himself. He always had a swagger about him, a hint of peacock preen. He'd need a little acclamation and applause from time to time.

Sire de Grugy also had to cede his crown, but I think he will be back. The ground was a bit quick and his preparation has been unorthodox and he's still got the fire in his belly.

Perhaps the most bittersweet of all was watching dear old Sizing Europe. He really was the pick of the paddock, looking more like seven than fourteen, gazing up at the gathered crowd with bright interest, lighting up the gloomy day. He bowled along for a while, reminding me of glory days past, and then it all got a bit fast for his old legs and he faded. But in that unsaddling enclosure, in contrast to the sadly shaking heads of the Sprinter connections, Sizing Europe's lad was wreathed in smiles, and Henry De Bromhead was giving him affectionate congratulatory pats. 'Ah,' said the lad, 'he's had a grand day out.'

One lady had come especially to see him, and was taking pictures, ruthlessly igoring the Nicholls victory party going on only fifty yards away. She obviously loved Sizing Europe and that was who she had come to see. She was allowed to pat the glorious old fella on the neck and her smile was that of a child who has been granted an unprecedented treat. The travelling head lass smiled too, as Sizing Europe skittered about, his ears pricked towards the applause that once was his: 'I'm afraid he's not very good at standing still,' she said. He was once very, very good at running fast, and he's still full of the joys and entirely undismayed by defeat, so perhaps they'll find him a race or two yet.

In contrast to Ruby Tuesday, when I could not back a loser, it was a day of defeats. My lovely Kings Palace looked his usual ravishing self, and went off with dash and purpose and I thought he would delight as he has all season, but he folded tamely, in the mysterious way that thoroughbreds sometimes do. It was a day of different pleasures to the first day. Just seeing dear Kings Palace had to be enough; the soaring victory I had hoped for was not to be. I really, really wanted the Champ to have a winner, so I could roar him up the hill, and the crowd could go crazy nuts in the head, and the valedictory cries of AP could ring round the Cotwsold hills. But he rode no winners, and seeing that familiar determined figure in real life for the last time, trying to imprint him on my memory so I could bore the great-nieces and nephews, making mental snapshots that I could bring out on a rainy day, also had to be enough.

Despite the fact that I bang on about ignoring the humans and going to see the horses, I did run into two of my favourite humans in the world. Both were huge racing fans in their teens and early twenties. I used to go with one of them to Sandown and Kempton and Newbury; we watched Desert Orchid together on his high days and holidays, when people would throw hats, newspapers, scarves, anything, in the air, and commentators went made with superlatives. The other I would see at every race meeting I attended, his eyes lit with dreams of glory.
Both of them took their passion and decided to make it their job. Doing what you love is great advice but very hard, but they both did it. They both say, with slight amazement, that they are living the dream. One is a trainer, and one a bloodstock agent. One had just come back from Meydan, where his most beloved old handicapper had just won a huge race, and one secretly believes that he might, just might, have bought the winner of this year's Derby. And only ten minutes ago we were all twenty together, wondering whether Desert Orchid could ever shake off his Cheltenham bad luck and finally win the Gold Cup.

They bought me pints of Guinness and the years rolled away and I called them my boys because even though we are all nearly fifty, they will always be boys to me.
The other amazing human thing was that, in a crowd of thousands, I bumped into the equine photographer I most admire after the untouchable Edward Whitaker. Michael Harris is not even a professional; he takes time off from his day job to take photographs of horses for love. Some of them are so beautiful they make me catch my breath. I've followed him on Facebook for a while and suddenly there he was, buying a cup of coffee from the same stall as I.

I've tried to take some pictures this week and I can tell you that catching good shots on a racecourse is one of the hardest things I've ever attempted. It's one thing, getting the red mare looking enchanting in her quiet field; it's quite another in a moving, teeming, crowded place, with the light seeming always to come from the wrong direction and everybody always moving about in a most disobliging way.

I take my hat off to Michael, who has taken his passion for horses and his passion for photography and made them into something very wonderful.

It was not Ruby Tuesday. It was more contemplative and less giddy. There was grit in the oyster. But without the grit, there is no pearl.

And when I got home, after thinking all this, and getting it all sorted out in my mind, I found that the one thing I had been saying all day had in fact happened. David Pipe won the bumper. And I had been on first thing at 8-1.

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

Today’s pictures:

A few snaps for you. If you want to see good ones, go to Michael Harris Photography on Facebook:

When I look at that picture, I think of one of the saddest parts in Out of Africa, when Meryl Streep says something like:

He gave us joy; we loved him well. He was not ours. He was not mine.

Too much love

I'm not really blogging at the moment, because I am on holiday at the Cheltenham Festival, but it turns out there are some words I have to write. It's like a disease. Type, type, type, eh Mr Gibbon?

It's just after seven and the winter sun is shining. I wake up like a child at Christmas and think: it's Sprinter day and Sire de Grugy day, and my heart is cleft in twain. I adore and admire them both, and can't choose between them, and just hope both of the mighty fellas get round fine and come home safe. They have given so much joy and owe nobody one single thing. Anything more is jam.

This is not a betting day for me, but a pure love day. My relation-by-marriage, The Horseman, said to me yesterday: 'Did you see many friends?'

'Well,' I said, 'equine friends.'

It's true. The old compadres had four legs, although there were some new friends made too, like Douvan and Un de Sceaux, who flew into my heart and lodged there, who made me smile and clap and howl like a banshee. 'Ruby, Ruby, Ruby,' sang sixty thousand people, as that dazzling smile lit up Prestbury Park, and all the good Irish horses turned out to be exactly as good as Willie Mullins thought they were.

Ted Walsh, Ruby's father, when asked on the Morning Line whether his son could indeed win on four hot favourites, shook his sage head. 'It's Cheltenham, not Disneyland,' he said, dismissive. After Douvan soared away from the pack, and Un de Sceaux did what everyone said was impossible, by going off in front in the Arkle and staying there, jumping for fun, and Faugheen finally proved beyond any cynical doubt that he was the real deal, I ran down to the winner's enclosure, part of a heaving, joyful, delirious crowd, and I yelled at my brother: 'Damn it, it IS Disneyland.'

The friends do have four legs, and when one of those legs buckled, and the gleaming powerhouse that is Annie Power went down on her knees, I groaned and cried out loud 'Oh, Annie,' as if she were my own.

I do not drive five hundred miles for a cocktail party, although it's always lovely to catch a glimpse of old muckers; I drive for the equine stalwarts who feel like friends to me. I drive so that I can stand up close to the thoroughbred beauty that makes my heart sing. I drive to look in their genuine eyes and watch their swinging walk and be dazzled by all that bunched, muscular power.

Today, I'll watch these two glorious athletes with my race glasses shaking in my hands, and hope with my whole heart that both their stars shine again.

Meanwhile, in a quiet Scottish field, the red duchess is reportedly enjoying her holiday immensely, luxuriating in sunshine and the good hay, which the kind farmer just delivered for her. She is being wonderfully well looked after in my absence and the new field joke is that she is boring the arse off her poor Paint friend by telling endless stories of her own racing days, in honour of Cheltenham week. (For some reason, imagining what horses would say if they really could talk always makes me laugh.)

I also want King's Palace to win the RSA, but I adore The Young Master and Don Poli too, and I have a huge soft spot for Southfield Theatre. There is never a race when I can pick one and ignore the rest. All the champions have come to shimmer and shine under the benign gaze of Cleeve Hill; all the young hopefuls and the fast improvers and the ones who have had their problems and are on the comeback trail; the handicap blots and plots, the talking horses and stalking horses and the nearly horses and the dearly beloved horses. In my idiotic, soft heart, I sometimes wish that they could all come over the finishing line together. I think that only I and the handicapper dream that. The handicapper and I should have a drink some time.

I have taken some pictures, of which more tomorrow - in the meantime, here is one red mare, and one new star:

Pictures only today.

I have a very happy story to tell you, but I’m off on the road tomorrow and am rushing about getting ready to leave and there is no time for typing. The good story will wait until I am settled at dear old Tebay.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures –

Up at HorseBack, Robert Gonazles was working his magic. Actually, it is not magic, although it looks like it to the untrained eye. It is the product of years of experience and practice and thought, and also, I think, comes from an inborn gift. But having a gift is no good if you don’t work at it, and Robert’s dedication is second to none. This little filly is only two, and has been in a field for the last eighteen months, entirely unhandled. This is only her second session with Robert, and she has already learnt many mighty lessons:

The red mare is having a holiday for the next few days, and enjoyed herself vastly in the set-aside this morning. Despite all my angst about the teeth, today she is happy as a nut:

Even though this is not a well-framed photograph, because there are branches in the way, I love it because it shows the sweetness of the little trio down in our quiet, hidden field. Autumn the Filly, Red the Mare, and Stan the Man, having fun:

Some of the HorseBack herd this morning. Even though this was taken in blinding sunshine, it’s come out in a lovely moody blue, as if they were drowsing in the gloaming:

I took my dear friend The World Traveller up to HorseBack this morning, to meet Robert and watch him work. First of all, she saw Brook, the wonderful ex-sprinter who shows all the willingness and versatility of the thoroughbred in his new job working with wounded veterans:

Everyone here gets a blog name, except for Stanley the Dog, who really is called Stanley. (It was too splendid a name to change.) The World Traveller is so called because she once rode all the way along the Silk Route. I am still of awe of that remarkable achievement. She also, as you can see, has excellent taste in hats:

The joy that Stan the Man takes in a really good stick never dims:

The snowdrops will probably be gone by the time I return, but they have been a keen daily pleasure:

Mortification.

Interestingly, in the light of yesterday’s post, this morning I discovered I had a done a properly bad thing.

It was not one of the usual mistakes I make – not a little bit of goofiness or muddle or poor time management. It was not letting the piles of paper grow up like mushrooms in the office, or the refusal to clear out the cupboard of doom, or the inability to reply to emails. These are regrettable, but you can make a joke about them, see them as almost charming, because diamond-sharp perfection is a sad, repelling ambition.

It was bad because it caused actual pain to someone I love more than almost anyone in the world.

I had taken the red mare up to work with Robert Gonzales again. She was coming on in leaps and bounds, and everything was improving, and I felt happy and proud. But she was still holding something back. That softness that Robert looks for was not quite there. She would blink and soften her eyes, ruminate with her mouth, let her ears fall into the relaxed quarter to three position, but she would not quite release that neck and shoulder. That’s where a lot of anxious emotion gets stored in horses, and if you don’t let it out you have no foundation to build on.

Robert said: ‘I really think you need to get her teeth checked.’

I said: ‘Oh, I have been meaning to do that for weeks, but I’ve been a bit hopeless about it.’

This is one of my less desirable defaults: I admit, with that humorous British ironical twist, to hopelessness, as if the rueful, faintly comical admission makes it all fine.

It does not make it fine.

The vet happened to be there, watching the horsemanship in action, and he very kindly said he could do her teeth on the spot. I had no need to book an appointment and take her up to his surgery. There he was, with all his state of the art tools.

He frowned as he felt in the mare’s mouth. She groaned a little. He exclaimed, in horror. The teeth at the back had grown needle-sharp, and were chafing against her cheek.

It took him twenty minutes to set her straight. He needed to do so much deep work in the back of her jaw that he gave her a sedative in order that his work could be quick and uninterrupted, and so that it would cause her no distress. My poor, stoned girl dropped her head in relief as he finished and I felt as guilty as I’ve ever felt about anything.

There are absolutely no excuses. I’d had the teeth in the back of my mind, in my mental To Do list, but I had not made the call.

I thought of all the work we’d been doing over the last few weeks. I’ve asked her so many questions, and she has answered kindly and willingly. She was in some pain and discomfort the whole time, but she did not buck me off or bolt with me or plant her feet and refuse to move, as she had every right to do. She went on trying, offering, with her good heart.

I write on this blog every week of my love for this horse. I am afraid to say that I sometimes boast on Facebook of the things I do with her. Occasionally, I cannot resist the childish desire to say: look at me, Ma, no hands. Literally and metaphorically. And all the time I was thinking I took such great care of her, I had, through arrant carelessness, allowed her to live with a sore mouth.

I feel ashamed too because I’ve sometimes said that she is not the bravest horse in the world. She is not one of those swaggery, sanguine sorts who deals with everything that is thrown at her. She is sensitive to stimuli, and needs strong boundaries and a profound sense of safety to function well. In fact, I see now, she is a very, very brave person indeed, because never once did she complain, but went on trying her best, with a gentle, doughty courage.

Often, when I feel angst, I talk myself carefully off the ceiling, use the good, rational side of my brain to restore perspective, forgive myself for perceived faults, and generally make myself comfortable again. In this case, I am not going to do that. I should feel some mortification, and I am going to feel it. I am not going to lash myself into shatters, but I am going to sit with the sensation of having made an egregious error. I have given hurt, and I should hurt too.

Then I shall move on, and make it up to her in every way I can think of, and learn this lesson well. I quite often write about the little things, in the context of quiet, daily joys. Notice the small things – the moss, the lichen, the tree bark, the light on a dry stone wall – and every day the heart will lift. I have noticed, watching Robert Gonzales work this week, that he too is a man of the small things. Nothing escapes his eye. He will see from the most minute flare of a nostril that something is happening with a horse; he can divine tension in a hock or tightness in the tail or tautness in the neck from thirty paces. Nothing is too small to be beneath his notice.

Teeth are not a small thing, but I had thought of them as an ordinary chore, something that got put on the list but did not have flashing lights and wailing sirens. In my mind, they should have had dancing girls and pyrotechnic displays and a Welsh male voice choir. I thought I was observant, but I was careless. It shall not happen again.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just one today, of my poor, brave girl, still a little dopey but comfortable again, with the dear old Scottish sun on her kind back:

In which I ponder lessons in horsemanship and humanity.

Today, my darlings, I lifted up a horse’s ribcage with my feet. If you were not lifting up horses’ ribcages with your feet then I don’t know what you have been doing with your time. (Especially Anne Westminster and her Grenson’s. Which is a reference only four people and a very posh dog will get.)

There was a wonderful moment before I got on. Robert Gonzales, horseman, gentleman, spectacular human, said, in his gentle, easy voice: ‘Just start warming her up there.’ I’d made an absolute cack-handed farce of the groundwork the day before, at one point managing to swirl the rope round my arm and corral myself, but I’d been thinking and pondering and brushing up overnight, so I thought: now he shall see what an old British gal can do. He watched for about three minutes, out of the corner of his kind eye. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There are five things you are doing wrong right there.’

‘OF COURSE I AM DOING FIVE DIFFERENT THINGS WRONG,’ I bawled, in hilarity. The mare blinked at me as if to say: decorum. I doubled over with laughter. I think I may have actually slapped my thigh. Oh, the flap flap flap of the hubris angels’ wings.

Robert showed me the five wrong things. He then showed me how to do five things right. I did five things right. The mare, forgetting for a moment that she is an aristocrat, and all this trundling about the valley in trailers is quite beneath her dignity, looked first surprised and then delighted. Round she went, relaxed and athletic, using her whole magnificent body, her head down searching for softness, a lovely bend in her body. We never really get bend, but there it was. All because I was now standing in the right position and directing my energy in the right direction and putting my hand in the right place.

‘Poor old lady,’ I said, when we stopped. ‘What you have had to put up with.’

‘Right,’ said Robert, quietly pleased. ‘Get her saddled up.’

So, we rode. Under that brilliant, eagle eye, we found a glorious soft trot, we disengaged the buggery out of the hindquarters (‘move, move,’ said Robert, when he saw I was falling into mimsy), we did easy transitions, we made delicate changes of direction. I lifted that ribcage with my heels, so that her powerful thoroughbred arse could be free to do its job.

I did whoop a bit, I must confess. The new feeling coming off the mare was like a rolling, liberated wave of energy. ‘It’s as if I’ve being trying to dance Swan Lake in clogs,’ I shouted, ‘and now someone has given me a pair of ballet shoes.’

I learnt to let softness run all the way through my own body, from my shoulders to my pelvis to my calves, so that her body too would grow soft, from ears to tail.

‘Wow,’ I bellowed. (When I grow excited, I lose all volume control.)

Robert, still quiet, still smiling, taking all this on the chin, looked me in the eye. ‘Good work,’ he said.

Out on the wild shores of the internet, there is a very lovely woman who also writes a blog, and also has an adored thoroughbred, and also loves almost nothing more than a good canine. She and I became blogging friends, and then real life friends, since it turned out, rather amazingly, that I knew her brother in my university days. She often writes, very bravely and lyrically, about difficult subjects. A few days ago, she wrote a piece on loneliness. Successful, professional woman are not really supposed to admit to such frail emotions, and I thought it took a great deal of courage. One of the anonymous keyboard warriors went at once into battle. Instead of saying nothing, or writing in empathy and encouragement, Anonymous was ungenerous and unkind. Pull yourself together and stop moaning, was the burden of the mean song.

It made me think about the art of criticism. All humans make mistakes and get things wrong and fall into muddles. This morning, that good horseman told me, without apology or embellishment, that I had got five whole things wrong. He did not mean that I am a bad person or I should go into the garden to eat worms. He wanted me to get the things right, for my sake and for the sake of the mare. I sensed he had faith that I could, and so I did. Not perfect, but better. Better and better and better; every day in every way.

The critique was all practical and hopeful. That is why I laughed instead of being downcast. The anonymous critic who attacked my friend had no positive end in mind. The harsh words were purely destructive, tearing down the house with no thought for the real, feeling human who lived inside. The criticism had no utility. All it did was bruise an already bruised heart.

The cruellest voices often come from the lacerating gin-soaked critics in one’s own head. I’m learning the art of not falling into category errors; it’s one of my quiet obsessions. I do drive myself onwards, because smugness and complacency are horrid companions. I make mistakes in writing, and mistakes in horsing, and mistakes in life, and I like to look those mistakes in the whites of their eyes and strive to correct them. This does not mean that I am feckless, pointless, useless and hopeless, and that there is no health in me. It just means I got something wrong. The good critic is a lovely voice, and should be welcomed in and given cake. The bad critic should be locked in a room with a bottle of Gordon’s and left there.

And this is what I love about my red professor and all the things she teaches me – I can go from lifting a ribcage to category errors to the art of constructive criticism all in fourteen paragraphs.

 

Today’s pictures:

I did not take the camera today. I wanted to take everything in with my eyes and my brain and my heart, and not have a filter. So there are just a couple more shots from yesterday:

Oh, and I have one more thought before I go. It is this: it’s never too late. I’m nearly fifty, and I’m learning something completely new. I hope I shall be learning it until I am ninety, because you never reach the end of a horse. What I like is that I find a joy in learning. I always was a bit of a girly swot. At the same time, there is an absurd voice in me which says that when you are a grown-up, you should know stuff; that there is something almost undignified about going back to the beginning and admitting rank ignorance. This is a stupid voice, and I mostly give it a Maggie Smith raised eyebrow. What is truly undignified is closing your mind, thinking you know it all, refusing to harvest wisdom wherever you may find it. I don’t think there is ever a moment when you are done. Hurrah, I say, without embarrassment, for going back to school.

The red mare takes a journey.

Today, I had the dazzling good fortune to take the red mare up to HorseBack to work with Robert Gonzales.

I knew that I was at the very beginning of my journey, and I understood, humbly, that I was in the foothills whilst he bestrode the mountain peaks. Even so, when he took the mare in hand and showed me all the things that I had been getting wrong, in the gentlest and politest way possible, I did feel a moment of chagrin. I’ve been learning this new kind of horsemanship with the dedication of someone taking a university course, and I had felt that I had made some strides forwards.

In fact, I saw at once that I had been mimsing about. One of the things my father disliked most was mimsiness, and he was a horseman to his bones, and I should have damn well learnt that lesson by now. I’d been staying in a safe comfort zone, and letting the mare get away with things that I should have corrected. I write a lot here about rigorousness, but I had sadly lacked rigour.

When I had got over the bruise to my amour-propre, I felt excited, because a new door had been opened, and I could step through it. We’ll go on learning and I’ll go on getting better, and when you start from such a low place, the only way is up.

The mare, once she dealt with the slight shock of having someone work her who really was not messing about, had a lovely time, and when her lesson was over, rested happily, ground-tied, whilst the ex-sprinter Brook went through his paces. When they were formally introduced, she took to him with a faint degree of shamelessness, breathing into his nose and batting her eyelids at him. Often, when two strange horses meet, there is a degree of squealing and tail-swishing and a little dance as they work out the hierarchy. There was none of that. Just a gentle, questing hello, as if he were an old friend she had been missing. It was very touching.

Apart from not being firm enough, I think I have let emotion get in the way. The thing I notice about Robert is that he brings a delightful, calm neutrality to each horse. He does not get frustrated when they do the wrong thing, just keeps on persisting until they give him the right answer. When that answer comes, he does not, as I am prone to do, shriek and whoop and fall on the horse’s neck. He merely exudes a quiet satisfaction and gives them a good rub.

The love I have for this mare gets in the way of working her well. She does not really need human love; my bursting heart is all to do with my delight, not hers. She wants a place of safety and a sense of ease. My new resolution is to leave not only my worries and tensions at the gate when I work her, but to leave the love there too. I may indulge that when we have finished. It’s one of the hardest lessons in the world to learn, but I must learn it – it’s not, not, not all about me. It’s about her. That is the very least she deserves.

Oh, and PS. I was so inspired by this revelatory lesson that I cast away any shyness about saying the thing. I looked the great horseman right in the eye, smiled my goofy smile and said: ‘Robert, you are a giant among men.’ And that is no more than the truth.

 

Today’s pictures:

Resting, after work:

Despite being in a new and antic environment, she settled very well, just casting the odd look out of the door, where she could hear the rest of the herd moving about in the fields:

It was quite tiring:

I love this picture for about eighty-seven reasons. First of all, you are popularly not supposed to be able to do any of the things that we are doing here with ex-racehorses. One is standing quite happily by herself, with no human constraint, whilst another horse and several humans are working away about her. The other is going easily on a loose rein in a rope halter, stretching down his neck to find the place of softness, whilst his human rides him bareback. He is also in the middle of doing an exercise which he would never have learnt in his racing days, of yielding the shoulder, so he is having to concentrate very hard. Despite that, the softness is there. I also love the  look on the mare’s face:, a little bit dozy but a little bit thoughtful, as she processes everything she has just learnt:

Oh, those hot-blooded thoroughbreds, those crazy ex-racehorses; can’t do a thing with them:

She worked so hard she actually got sweaty, which is not what normally happens, so on went her cooler, making her look like a proper show pony:

I didn’t take any pictures of Robert working the mare, because I was avidly absorbing everything with my human eyes. Here he is with Brook, waiting for softness. He’ll wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. As long as it takes. That patience is one of the great lessons I take from all this. You can’t rush this, or skip parts, or think that half a loaf is a good enough. You’ve got to wait for the golden moment:

I try not to fall into anthropomorphism, but my idiot brain says the mare is flirting. I don’t blame her. Brook is a very handsome fella, as well as a very nice one. Actually, she is not really flirting, she’s just saying hello. But there did seem to be some sweet sense of recognition in her. They are related, after all. You have to go back four generations on his side, and three on hers, but there it is – Northern Dancer, in black and white, the grandaddy of them all. Maybe that good Canadian blood really is thicker than water:

Thank you to HorseBack, and thank you to Robert. It was a huge day.