Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 11

Remembering to listen.

I was talking to the farrier today about her horse. I adore the farrier and am genuinely interested in her horse and like always to hear the stories. But as I was out in the field with the dear red mare dozing as she got her feet done, I thought: listen.
I know about listening. I’ve written about listening. There’s a whole chapter in 77 Ways about listening. Yet sometimes I forget to listen. I get all excited and think about the thing I’m going to say next. My mind leaps about like a jumping bean and my voice rises to an inexplicable register and I can’t keep my hands still.
Stop, I said to myself. Hear what the farrier is saying.
So I stopped and I heard and that was better.
And when it was my time to speak I thought: what are the sort of things I love to hear about my own horses? A complete stranger made me almost fall over with joy the other day when he looked at the red mare and said: ‘She’s very gentle, isn’t she?’ That was like a Nobel Prize for me. A friend said this morning: ‘Oh, she is a brave girl.’ And sometimes people ask questions about her and I love that too. Say those things, I thought; say the things you would like to hear. Ask questions. Don’t just make blanket statements about what you think.
So I did that, and that was better too.
There are skills in life which seem so small and so obvious that the temptation is to think one knows how to do them. They are like the ABC. They are taken for granted and not considered. Today, I went back and considered. I think listening well and using empathy and not making everything about you are all tiny things that add to the sum total of human happiness. They spread a little brightness instead of adding to the dark. Take a deep breath, I tell myself, and count to ten. Remember how to do the obvious things well. 

365 Days of Shakespeare.

Very tired after a stupidly long day of extreme work, so I can’t say anything useful about As You Like It. I’m just going to copy my favourite passages of the day and leave you to enjoy them.
O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thoudidst know how many fathom deep I am in love! Butit cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknownbottom, like the bay of Portugal.
O, I know where you are: nay, 'tis true: there wasnever any thing so sudden but the fight of two ramsand Caesar's thrasonical brag of 'I came, saw, andovercame:' for your brother and my sister no soonermet but they looked, no sooner looked but theyloved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no soonersighed but they asked one another the reason, nosooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairsto marriage which they will climb incontinent, orelse be incontinent before marriage: they are inthe very wrath of love and they will together; clubscannot part them.
Both these are from Rosalind. She really does get all the best lines.

There. I’m happy now.

In which I make no sense at all.

I have a new idea cooking in my head and it is so complicated and so vivid and so antic that I can’t think about anything else. I have to speak bits of it out loud to try and get them into some kind of order. I get to the end of the day and realise I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world. Buckingham Palace could have been stormed for all I know; Donald Trump could have run away to the South Seas; the entire cabinet could have resigned over Brexit.
I have not eaten anything since breakfast and am not entirely sure what my name is.
I slightly wish that I could approach things in a reasonable manner. Tomorrow, I’m going to attempt to make a better timetable and stop for lunch and listen to the news and generally act as if I were not fifteen years old. My brain swells and throbs and all the voices in my head are shouting.
It’s such an odd job, I think, rather ruefully. I have six people who did not exist two days ago now living in my mind. I can see them and hear them and am already a little in love with them. I know their secret fears and their greatest desires. If this one works out, they will live with me for the next year or so, until I know them better than I know myself. I’m pleased they have arrived, but they’ve come in such a rush that it feels rather like having a new puppy: enchanting but absolutely exhausting.

At least, I suppose, they will not pee on the carpet. One must be grateful for the small mercies.

365 Days of Shakespeare.

My daily Shakespeare is a perfect antidote to the mean weather outside. There have not been the havoc-wreaking storms the voices on the wireless were warning about, but it is still very cold and bitter. Inside, there is the warmth and comfort of dancing prose.
This is easily my favourite speech of the day. It is Rosalind to Orlando. In true Shakespearean fashion, she has dressed up as a man and is now making the fooled Orlando pretend to woo her as if she were his adored Rosalind, even though he thinks her a rather saucy boy. He is gusting and sighing and saying he will die for love and she won’t have any of it:
No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world isalmost six thousand years old, and in all this timethere was not any man died in his own person,videlicit, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brainsdashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what hecould to die before, and he is one of the patternsof love. Leander, he would have lived many a fairyear, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not beenfor a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he wentbut forth to wash him in the Hellespont and beingtaken with the cramp was drowned and the foolishcoroners of that age found it was 'Hero of Sestos.'But these are all lies: men have died from time totime and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

And here she is again, in rattling form:Say 'a day,' without the 'ever.' No, no, Orlando;men are April when they woo, December when they wed:maids are May when they are maids, but the skychanges when they are wives. I will be more jealousof thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen,more clamorous than a parrot against rain, morenew-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desiresthan a monkey: I will weep for nothing, like Dianain the fountain, and I will do that when you aredisposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, andthat when thou art inclined to sleep.

I especially love the clamorous parrot and the new-fangled ape. Why should an ape be new-fangled? We shall never know. 

The small things add up.

On the wireless, doomy voices predict a thundersnow apocalypse. In the quiet Scottish field there is a bit of wind and a flurry of blizzard and then the weather gives up, as if it can’t be bothered. The horses, stoical to the last, hunker down under their favourite weather tree and look slightly askance when we tell them it is time for breakfast. Eventually, they mosey on over, as if conferring a great favour.
I have a small helper with me. She thinks the horses are perfectly splendid. ‘Can I stroke her? Oh, she is soft. She is furry. She is dirty.’ (The little brown mare had been having a roll and the top part of her neck that was peeking out of the rug was covered in mud.) ‘She is hungry. She likes that food. Can I stroke her again?’
The mares are obviously highly trained, so I trust them around small people, but really it is more their good heartedness than my dedicated schooling that digs the trust deep. The red mare in particular is an absolute goof for children. She goes very still and blinks her eyes at them and exudes peace and pleasure.
So, despite the bitter wind, the day got off to a roaring start. I went back to my desk and got things done. I even tidied up the house a bit, which made me wonder whether I have been kidnapped by space aliens and replaced by a pod. I usually allow what I euphemistically call an artistic muddle to develop. (I am a creative; I have no time for bourgeois pursuits like dusting. This is my story and I am sticking to it.) Rather inspired by the order, I did serious productive work for the first time in three days. Lately, I’ve been spinning my wheels, staring at the screen and pretending to do something useful while my brain feels as if someone has thrown a sack over it. Today, I was able to see the words properly and do something with them.
Out in the world, Donald Trump grows more and more inexplicable. On grave news programmes, august security experts come on and talk about whether or not he went to bed with twenty prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. They speak of this with as much thoughtful gravity as if they were discussing The Four Last Things. I suspect he did not and that this story is throwing sand in the eyes. The real story is about the money, not the sex, and the money is much, much more shocking.
In my small room, the world recedes and the small things obtain. The dogs dance about, enchanted by the snow; I make tomato soup; I think of my sweet little helper this morning and how much untrammelled joy she took in those dear mares. I think: if every day has one moment of pure delight in it, that is enough. Write it down, mark it, give it respect. I become a little hokey and a little hippy and a little goofy, in grave danger of tumbling into platitude. Do one nice thing for one person every day, I think, even if that thing is so tiny it would hardly leave a scratch on the wide world. Say yes, instead of no. The small things may be small, but they all add up. 

365 Days of Shakespeare.

As You Like It.
I had forgotten how much I love this play. Every line is pure joy.
Here are my favourites from today. They are all short and pithy and entirely delightful to my eyes:
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderfulwonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that,out of all hooping!
I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn.
I am he that is so love-shaked: I pray you tell meyour remedy.
Then there is this little exchange, which must be I think, where the expression ‘rhyme nor reason’ comes from:
ROSALINDBut are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?ORLANDONeither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
I just looked up rhyme nor reason and in fact it was first used by John Russell in The Boke of Nurture in 1490. So Shakespeare gleefully pinched it and made it his own.
And then, to finish, there is an excellent goat joke. I’m not certain that there are many writers who manage to get goats and Ovid and the Goths into one sentence so effortlessly. I watch, as always, in awe and wonder:
I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most
capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

The sun shines.

The wind drops, the sun comes out, the sky is blue. The fabled storm that is about to blow in feels like a distant rumour. The horses are dozy and soft and happy and the red mare gives me a canter of such grace and poise that I feel like crying with happiness. My friend and I stand in the feed shed filling haynets with the good hay and talk about life and unpredictable humans and small problems and the perspective police. This is the sort of conversation that makes me feel better about pretty much everything.
I go up to HorseBack and everyone is smiling and kind and I make some Marine jokes. It is always good to make a Marine joke to an actual Marine.
Someone said something very kind to me today. It was very simple sentence, but it meant the world to me. She said: ‘You do a lot for us.’ That was all. But it was like an unexpected present or a bunch of flowers. It made me think about how much humans need acknowledgement.
I’m a huge believer in the paying of compliments. It’s not very British and I have to fight against all my cultural instincts of reticence and not saying the thing. I believe in it so much that I wrote a whole chapter in Seventy-Seven Ways about the giving of compliments.
I do believe in them, but I thought this morning that it is the plain acknowledgement, the quiet tip of the hat, that has almost more power. It’s lovely to tell someone they are brilliant or dazzling or talented or clever, but I wonder whether it’s even more lovely to make a simple statement of ordinary fact. You showed up; you helped; you worked hard. I mean: the kind of unadorned statements that show somebody noticed. I mean the kind of sentences that do not need to be freighted with adjectives or hyperbole or gush, but act as little validations.
Everybody, I think, needs to have their passport stamped from time to time. Everybody needs to be seen. Everybody needs to know they are not taken for granted.

It worked for me, anyway. The grumpiness and scratchiness of the last two days fade into the background. Their work is done and they’ve got someone else to bother. The sun is shining, literally and metaphorically. The storm will come, in the night. But we’ll batten down the hatches and steady the buffs and ride it out.

It can't be that bad.

‘Say something interesting,’ shout the voices in my head.‘Hmm,’ says the writing voice, which has run out of ideas. ‘What kind of thing?’‘You know,’ shout the furious voices, ‘something wise and true about life. A universal truth or something.’
I think and think and think. I can’t really find anything interesting. Today, I have nothing of interest in my brain whatsoever. The only thing I can come up with is that a job is much more fun if you do it with someone else. And this is only because my kind friend helped with the haynets this morning as the storm raged in and she was so funny that she turned a chore into a pleasure. Also, it’s not always true. Some jobs are more fun on your own. So I can’t even say that is a universal verity.
The winds have blown across the hills from the west and there are bitter flurries of snow. The horses hunker down with their usual stoicism and the dogs race around in keen delight. The dogs are tough boys and don’t give a damn about weather; the wilder the better for them.
I don’t like the winds. They make me jangly and I’m always thinking the internet is about to go down and what would I do if I did not have one more Trump outrage to read about and chunter over? (I’m still convinced he is doing all the lunatic things he is doing for a bet.) These are the dog days of January and I feel a bit fed up generally. When I sit down to work my brain does not dance and sing but feels as if it is wading through mud. My critical judgement is surly and blunted. I can’t tell what to keep and what to chuck. Is that a good sentence? Or not? Who can tell? I should be editing at a hundred miles an hour but instead I squint at the screen and think slow thoughts which don’t have much substance to them.

I’m getting better at the grumpy days as I get older. I used to see them as a mark of moral failure. How dare I feel out of sorts when there are people who don’t have shoes? Now I accept that I can’t do a tap dance every day. As long as I don’t take out the grumpiness on hapless bystanders, then it is perfectly allowed. All the same, the ruthlessly cheery voices in my head start chattering. You have a roof over your head, they say, with a sliver of reproach; and sweet horses and sweet dogs and a shed full of the good hay and heating that works and chicken soup simmering on the stove and the ability to type. So, say the chirpy voices, it can’t be that bad.

365 Days of Shakespeare.

I start As You Like It, an old friend. I nod my head happily as I read. 
One of the things I notice is how Shakespeare does not hang about. Once he has decided on a plot point, he gets the thing done. If they are to go into the Forest of Arden, into that forest they will go even if that rather dramatic event seems decided on the merest caprice of the cross duke. Never explain, never apologise.
And then, of course, there is one of my favourite bits in all of Shakespeare:
And this our life exempt from public hauntFinds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I smile and smile and smile as I read it. Yes, that is a very, very old friend indeed.
It’s funny, when one stumbles upon the very famous passages. There are so many lovely ones that I could copy them all down. I won’t, because this would become longer than War and Peace. But there are some which caught the universal imagination and have lasted and lasted and lasted, so that four hundred years later schoolchildren can still recite them by heart. That is taken for granted, but if you think about it for a moment, it really is rather miraculous.
So here is the very, very famous:All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.

And this passage is not famous at all, but I love it and I rather identify with it. They should put it in the all self-help books:
Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, getthat I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man'shappiness, glad of other men's good, content with myharm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewesgraze and my lambs suck.

I was feeling quite grumpy before I started my daily reading, because it’s horrid bitter weather out there and the wind is blowing and blowing. Now I feel better. One can’t help but smile when in the company of such prose.

365 Days of Shakespeare.

All's Well That Ends Well.

 On we go now, into the final furlong. And here’s something lovely –'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick athousand salads ere we light on such another herb.
I especially like ‘such another herb’.
Another perfect little gem:I am now, sir, muddied in fortune'smood, and smell somewhat strong of her strongdispleasure.
I think it is the use of muddied that makes that so perfect.

And there, I have finished. Well, it is a very silly play and ends abruptly and inexplicably as if Shakespeare suddenly grew bored and wanted to go down the pub. I can imagine him writing ‘Will this do?’ at the bottom of the final page. But even though the central characters are entirely unsatisfactory, the supporting cast are magnificent and they have all the best lines. There is a running joke about a drum which is tremendous and I adore the naughty Lords. There’s so much beauty in the language that I don’t mind that the plot makes no sense at all. Although I imagine that it might be one of the ones that is better read than seen. I'm awfully glad I have read it anyway, and it made me laugh quite a lot and raise my eyebrows and occasionally gasp. Plot: nul points. Everything else:  ten out of ten.