Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 14

Ouch

Whack, whack, whack goes life, bashing me in the solar plexus. Take that. And that. And this. Here is an upper-cut to the jaw and there is a blow in the kidneys and there is a sucker punch.
Woo, I say, reeling backwards, all my defences down. Ah, I say, that hurt.
Keep smiling, I tell myself. Smile and smile and smile and take the blows.
I keep smiling.
Then I stagger away, bloody and bowed.
I quite often see posts and articles and memes on the internet which say that things can only hurt you if you let them. This is buggery bullshit. It is meant well. It is intended to be consoling. You have power over your own mind, says this encouraging school, and you can choose whether to take something to heart or not. You can choose to see the thing in perspective and to let it go and not to let it wound you. You are the captain of your soul and the mistress of your fate.
This is not true. It is nearly true. What you can do is learn to talk yourself down off the ceiling afterwards. You can learn to console yourself and to stop yourself obsessing and to bind up your own wounds. But you cannot prevent the wounds in the first place. No human is impervious. Hurt hurts. It’s what you do with it afterwards that matters.
I do work. Work is the thing. I do book work and HorseBack work. I update my red mare page and my happy horse page, which I set up to go with the book I wrote about, you will be amazed to hear, how to have a happy horse. On that Facebook page I put everything I know about keeping your dear equine peaceful and contented. So I feel in some tiny way that it is adding to the sum total of human happiness, and of horse happiness too.
I watch a race at Sandown and talk to a friend. I do not tell the friend about the punching and the biffing. No need to dwell on it, I think. Kick on.
I can fall into the beckoning pit of thinking: why now, why me, why that? Or I can examine myself for cuts and bruises and find that they are there but they are not fatal.

Hurt hurts, but it does not have to be the end of everything. And now I am going to walk the dogs and give the horses their hay and look at the gloaming and take a deep breath and start again.

Love and the Corn Laws.

This morning, I stood in a quiet Scottish meadow and talked about the repeal of the Corn Laws. This is possibly my favourite subject in the world and my kind friend The World Traveller was gracious enough to let me bang on about it.
The horses grazed on the end of their ropes, not much interested in vested interests and the man of principle that was Sir Robert Peel.
Then we talked about ten different things: children, and family, and our weaknesses and strengths, and the importance of manners, and how there is never enough time.
Afterwards, as I went back to my desk, I thought: I should start every day like that. Laughter and interesting chat and the balm of human sympathy can take a dull day and dazzle it with metaphorical sunshine. One good person can banish all the frets and worries and low level anxieties. There is something almost miraculous about that and I don’t take it for granted.
I did book work and then HorseBack work and then went on an epic six mile ride along the Dee valley on my red mare and she was so bright and brave and fine that I almost fell off with delight and gratitude. I whooped into the air and fell on her neck with love and told her, over and over, how mighty she is. She blinked her sweet eyes and let me get it all out of my system.

Outside, the sky is the colour of violets and my house is very quiet. Both dogs are asleep. I type these words, looking for a good place to finish. Love, I think. Today was all about love. Love, and gratitude. Two people, one human and one equine, made my ordinary life extraordinary today, lifted my heart and made me think that everything will be fine and stopped me falling down the rabbit hole of worry. If you’ve got the love, I think, you can do anything. 

The critical voice is definitely suffering from low blood sugar.

Edit, edit, edit, edit.
Cut that bit, says the critical voice.
But I quite like that bit, I say, trying not to sound plaintive. And it’s about love.
Love, schmove, says the critical voice. All this love is giving me a headache. Couldn’t you be cynical sometimes? You know, a bit jaded and world-weary and funny. This is all so fucking earnest.
Oh, I say, in a very small voice.
You are, says the critical voice, in a rare access of generosity, quite funny in life, I suppose. You make people laugh in life. But the minute you start typing it’s all love and buggery trees and the meaning of sodding life.
Well, I say.
Lighten up, says the critical voice. Give the punters what they want, which is a good laugh.
Yes, I say, wondering when the critical voice will get her coat and leave for another party. The all-you-can-eat buffet is finished and the last of the good claret has gone and there must surely be other people she wants to bitch at somewhere else.

The door slams. I breathe a gusty sigh of relief. I stare beadily at my earnest tendency, which stares back, unblinking. But, it says, there is nothing else apart from love and trees. Oh dear, I think. I’m buggered. 

The ship sails on.

After yesterday’s horrors, I wake this morning in a different frame of mind. The sun is shining and I walk the dogs down to the burn. Scotland glimmers and gleams in the light. ‘Well,’ I think, slightly hilarious, ‘if this ship is sinking at least we shall go down singing.’
A kind man in the village does something for me which makes my life very, very much easier. Not only that, but he speaks generous words of sympathy and understanding. I stand, rather overwhelmed by his goodness, in his little shop in my gumboots and my hat and my muddy coat, listening to his words of wisdom.
‘Thank you,’ I say about five times, overcome with gratitude.
Down at the Co-op, a small boy is helping his grandmother with her shopping. He is perhaps eleven. He is wreathed in smiles, as if helping the old lady is all he wants to do in the world. I buy courgettes for soup and as I get to the car, I hurl them accidentally to the ground. I fiddle about with the keys and a voice behind me says: ‘Here you are.’
A smiling lady has picked the things up and is handing them to me. I am even more overwhelmed. Is the universe just sending me loveliness today, because it can? ‘That is so sweet of you,’ I cry. ‘Thank you so much.’ We beam at each other, as if we have a secret compact.Back at the house, the lovely man from Scottish Fuels has arrived, despite his hectic schedule. ‘We might not be able to get to you till Monday,’ they had said, and I had resigned myself to a freezing weekend. ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ I warble, my voice now entirely out of control. ‘You came. That is so, so good of you.’
He too smiles. Everyone today is smiling at me. ‘Not a problem,’ he says, cheerfully. He looks at my three jumpers and my hat and my boots and smiles even more. ‘Now you can take the jumpers off,’ he says. I am quite bored of sitting at my desk in my hat and my boots and my three jumpers. ‘Yes,’ I cry, ‘I really can. All thanks to you.’
The horses are happy in the sun and my kind friend has done all the hard work, putting out the haynets and filling up the frozen water trough. It is as if dear elves have come in the night and fixed everything up, so all I have to do is stand with the magnificent creatures and do the love. The little brown mare in particular wants the love, and when I turn to go, she follows me, to get some more. I give her more. There is no end to the love.
I work and work and work. Yesterday, I felt as if I were getting nowhere and that all the words were pointless. Today, the sentences made me smile and some of them were even quite good.
And then, as I pass the side door, I see a small package that has fallen behind a chair. A friend has sent me a proof copy of her book. ‘Oh,’ I say, to Stanley the Dog, who was hoping it was Bonios. ‘Just look at that.’
I’ll just read the first page, I think. Just a quick peek. Ten minutes later, I am conscious of a slight crick in my neck. I look up. I have read twenty-two pages, standing in the hall, my head bent in concentration and delight. It’s a beautiful book, funny and fascinating and true. It’s the real thing. And this good writer went to the trouble to send it. So much goodness and kindness, I think, in a haze.

Yesterday, everything went to hell. Today, everything went to heaven. I still don’t really know how or why that happens. All I do know is that I feel very, very glad, and soothed to my soul. On we bugger, the dear equines and the dancing dogs and I, up and down and round the houses, sometimes on a stormy sea, sometimes over a ravishing calm. This dear old ship is a bit creaky, and it sometimes leaks, and it is not in its first flush of newness and youth, but it does keep sailing on.

Not even soup for supper.

No riding today as the ground is too hard. It’s been minus six every morning for a week. The light is ravishing and Scotland glitters and gleams, pristine and white with hoar frost, but it’s no weather for working a horse.
This gives me extra writing time. I work and work and work. Suddenly, instead of feeling a holy sense of achievement, I grow furious and frightened. All this thinking, all this typing, all these words, will they ever add up to anything? Will the agent ever ring with that good telephone call? I hunch my shoulders, suddenly terrified that I will never be able to make this into a proper, grown-up job. I spend so much time counting my blessings and looking at the beauty and searching for the silver linings and concentrating on the small things and trying to be a half-decent human and, all at once, despite all this striving, everything falls apart.
I feel the fear and despair run through me like an ache, like a blow. Oh, bugger, I think; this again. It comes from time to time, often when I am least expecting it. I know every day can’t be Doris Day, but really, do we have to go through this again?
It’s probably because you are cold, says my kind, sensible voice.
I forgot to ring the nice oil people (they really are very nice and always deliver incredibly quickly and with a beaming smile) and so the heating is off and I’m sitting in three jumpers and a hat and my gumboots in the office with one convection heater battling the chill. That battle is not being won.
Yes, says the sensible voice, you are cold and you’re a bit tired and you’re missing your mother and you’ve only got yourself to rely on and you are responsible for the hay bill and sometimes that’s all a bit much. It’s only human, says the sensible voice, to have a bad day from time to time.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers, says the furious voice, who is eight years old and has had too much sugar. I’m just spinning my wheels and everything is gone to hell and each time I look at the internet there’s that scary and clever financial gentleman who says that Britain is going into its worst economic crisis for seventy years. And who is going to have money for buying books then? We are doomed, yells the furious voice, and there’s no point to anything.
Are we extrapolating a fraction too far? says the pedantic voice, who has been in a bit of a state ever since a top writer misplaced a modifier this morning. (This feels like the world gone mad to the pedantic voice.)
You could always make some nice soup, says the sensible voice.
Soup!!!! I suddenly remember that I put on some celery soup to simmer this morning before I barricaded myself in the office with the heater. I rush to the kitchen. There, tragically, smelling of burnt dreams, are the charred corpses of my little chopped celery sticks. They huddle in the scorched pan, looking slightly apologetic, as if they really didn’t mean it.
Now I can’t even have soup, I think. I am fifty years old and I can’t remember to take the pan off the hob. It’s bread and water for supper and no more than I deserve.
We could list your blessings, says the sensible voice, hopefully; that will make you feel better. Bugger that, I say. I know that I could talk myself off the ceiling, I know that thoughts define my reality, I know all the things I should and could do. I wrote a whole bloody book about all those things. But you know what? I’m livid and I’m having a shitty day and I can’t be arsed. I’m just going to stare into the middle distance and be furious and you can damn well stop trying to make me feel better.  

The sensible voice and the pedantic voice are now going shopping, because they’ve just remembered that there is something on special offer. Either that, or they’ve run away to join the circus and I don’t blame them. And I’m going to sit here in my hat and feel crappy for a bit. That is my plan.

The tiny triumphs.

.
A grand day. The sun shone, and a dear friend and I took both mares out for a walk and stood in the sloping meadow looking out over the hill and talked and talked and talked. The dogs had already been dancing along the burn with their small friend who is four years old. ‘Where has that Darwin gone?’ she asked sternly, slight exasperation in her voice.
I did a lot of work and then had a huge ride with our training partners in the Wobbleberry Challenge. This was mighty on at least eight different levels. It was hard exercise for mind and body, it had some moments of pure beauty in it so that I cried out into the bright air with admiration and pride, and the red mare remembered that her grand-sire did in fact win the Derby and put her racing shoes on for a moment and I felt her power. That power used to frighten me; now it no longer does. Come on, old lady, I said, we are both far too advanced in years for such nonsense. And then she settled herself and reverted to her usual dowager duchess self and the ancestral voices that were singing in her head stopped their siren song.

It was a day of achievements. They are all very small, in the ways of the wide world. In my world, they are vast, and they make me smile as I think of them. A triumph can still be a triumph, even if it is so tiny that it can hardly be seen by the human eye. Record those little victories, I think, so that when the failures come, you can go back and read and remember.

The beauty versus the ugliness. I choose the beauty.

I heard something very, very ugly on the wireless today. I was going to write about it. I started writing about it. And then something in me died a little, and I turned away.
I did my work. At the moment, I’m beginning a new project which has actually been requested by my agent. For the last two years I’ve been doing everything on spec, which means I write and write and write and the agent says, well, yes, very nice, but we need more changes and a bit of this and a bit of that and I wrangle away with version after version and then nothing gets published and I want to go and live in a barrel.
This one is an idea which we cooked up together and is aimed at an actual gap in the market. It is a heart project and a commercial project. You may imagine my delight.
Part of the new project involves going back and looking at old writing. I’m going to use some of the old writing for the new book, which also delights me as I hate waste. As I was rummaging around in the archives this morning, I found a conversation I had written down with my smallest and most adored cousin. It took place two years ago, and I have absolutely no memory of it.
Thank goodness for the blog, I think, smiling as I read the words. Thank goodness that I listen to those lunatic voices in the head which yell at me: write it down, write it down. Thank goodness this little piece of loveliness has been preserved.
I heard something very ugly and it shocks me still. I’m putting up something beautiful and sweet and funny and true against it. Everyone fights ugliness in their own small ways. This is mine.
Here it is, from November 2014:
As always, I slightly forget the absolute enchantment of the family life with the Beloved Cousin. For enchantment it is. There has been a lot of cooking, picking the last vegetables from the garden, walking, admiring the apples still on the apple trees, watching the glorious polo herd have their happy winter off, and playing with the ravishing black dogs.
The Youngest Cousin has turned into a mine of wisdom and information. She looks at me very seriously and says things like: ‘You know, being pretty is not important. Being kind is. And being happy.’            Grave pause.            I say, with interest: ‘How do you know that? Did someone tell you?’            Slightly reproachful look.            ‘I do a lot of thinking, you know.’            She is six years old.            Then, gathering momentum – ‘Boasting is no good. Nobody likes a boaster.’            ‘No,’ I say, chastened. I hope she is not referring to me. I think of all those blog posts about the wonders of the red mare and all the clever things she does. Has the Youngest Cousin been secretly reading the internet? And disapproving?
Then she moves swiftly on to information. ‘Do you know how many dinosaur names I know?’            ‘No, I don’t.’            She kindly lists them.            ‘Do you know that whales can hear from really far away? A thousand miles sometimes?’            ‘I did not know that.’            She puts her head on one side. ‘They talk to each other,’ she says, slightly wistful.            ‘What do they say?’ I ask.            ‘Oh, I don’t know.  Hello I’m lost, I expect.’            ‘I see,’ I say, trying to keep up.            ‘Do you know how the Germans started the Second World War?’            I’m on slightly surer ground now.            ‘They invaded Poland?’ I hazard, trying to remember what would count as the definitive starting gun. ‘Or the Sudetenland?’            Dismissive frown. ‘I don’t know that country, but they were very, very cross with the English.’            ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I expect that’s what it was.’
Then I get a little break while she watches an episode of Scooby Doo.
Soon, she is back for more. She fixes me with her basilisk stare. ‘Do you know?’ she starts. I have begun to see there is a pattern here. ‘Do you know?’ is her newest and most regular conversational gambit. I sit up straight and concentrate.            ‘Do you know,’ she says, ‘that King Henry put gunpowder in the holes so that when the Spain came they blew up?’I retire from the field, defeated. I have no memory of the Spain being blown up.
Can she mean the Device Forts?

I know better than to ask.

An ordinary Monday.

Minus seven this morning. The water trough is sadly empty, containing nothing but doleful ice crystals. I ferry buckets of hot water back and forth in the car whilst the red mare serenely eats her breakfast. My oldest friend calls from the south and says that it is raining so hard that when she goes out to the car to do the school run it is like someone has emptied a bucket of water over her head. I look up at the limpid blue sky and feel grateful. It might be cold, but it is so beautiful that I need new names for beauty. Then the oldest friend makes me laugh so much that I can’t breathe. She can do this out of nowhere, turning on a sixpence like a London taxi. If I wrote down the actual words she said, you would not laugh at all. It’s all in the timing and the tone. It’s in the thirty years we have been best friends. I laughed and laughed, doubling over, slapping my legs like a character in a cartoon.
The world is very mad at the moment, but that extraordinary human can make me laugh as if everything were bonny and blithe. That sounds like a small thing, but I believe it is a big thing. I think it is a huge thing. I sometimes think it is everything.
I talked to a few friends today. We spoke of politics and children and fear and family life and our own flaws and the songs of Aimee Mann and the Scottish light and dogs and the oddities of the internet and Iceland. They are very good at subjects, the friends. They are always interesting. They make me feel better than I am. This is an absurd gift and they give it, easily, naturally, without asking for anything in return.
I edit ninety pages of a new project. There always must be a new project. My brain stretches and creaks as the dogs doze in the warm house.

The light fades. The sky grows translucent and beckoning, as if it is trying to tell me the secret of the universe. I must go and do the horses, I think. I must put out the hay. The secret of the universe can wait.

A very remarkable thing. Or, memories of Kauto Star.

Five years ago, on a gloomy day at Haydock, something very remarkable happened. At that time I was in the aftermath of my father’s death,staying with my cousin in the south and doing things with her children, and I never could tell what day of the week it was. I was so immersed in family life that I had completely forgotten that it was the Betfair Chase and that Kauto Star was running. I’m not sure I even knew it was a Saturday.
Once I opened the paper and saw it was a day for the titans, I made the whole family watch. The youngest was three. I explained to them all about Kauto Star and his glory days and how he was getting on a bit now and people were saying he was past his best and that Long Run, the young pretender, was coming to take his crown. I explained that all horses have their time at the top and his had been glorious but that it was probably in the past. I told them that quite a lot of people were, in a slightly bossy way, saying that Paul Nicholls should retire the grand old warrior.
Interestingly, I was not in this camp. Eleven is old for a champion, but it’s not that old, and it was Kauto Star, and Nicholls wouldn’t be sending him out to disgrace himself. And then I got cross about the doubters, because I always get cross about the doubters, and I bashed twenty quid each way on for love and loyalty and the old times we had had together. I think I fully expected that he would finish second or third and I’d have a bit of a shout and get my money back.
And that was when the something remarkable happened, and it really was remarkable, and I’ve never been so glad that I wrote something down. I wrote it all down, every word, and I’m reproducing it here in memory of a great horse, perhaps one of the greatest, who made me laugh and made me cry and made me catch my breath in awe and wonder. I miss him still, as if he were an old friend, gone too soon. But nothing can take away the memory of that extraordinary day.

This is what I wrote, in 2011:

It started off as a very ordinary day. The sun was muddling through an autumn mist. The Pigeon was looking very regal. We went to watch the Godson do some riding. There was delicious chard from the garden for lunch. I am always rather amazed that anyone would have a garden with delicious chard in it.

Then, I noticed in the paper that Master-Minded and Kauto Star were both running today, at Ascot and Haydock. I have been so out of touch that I had not realised this was happening. For those of you who don’t follow National Hunt Racing, this is a bit like Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench appearing on stage together.

They are not only two magnificent champions, but they are real old troupers. Master Minded is not actually that old, only eight, but he’s been racing in this country since he was four, so it feels as if he is an enduring fixture.

What is interesting about him is that people have often been keen to write him off. If you look at his figures, you find an extraordinary list of victories: 13 out of 18 races in Britain won. I think it was that when he first started winning big races he did it in a way people hardly ever see. He would demolish highly talented fields as if they were a bunch of selling platers. He would jump and gallop everything into the ground with soaring disdain. He was so much better than everything else it almost felt embarrassing. He would win at Cheltenham by 19 lengths, and pull up as if he had only just gone for a mild training canter.

So it did not even take for him to get beat for people to start sucking their teeth and saying he was not really as good as all that. If he won a race by 9 lengths instead of 19, the knowing sages would nod their heads and all but tap their noses and say he was on the decline.

I’ve always stuck with Master Minded, because I haven’t seen that many horses as truly majestic as he in my lifetime, and it’s almost as if I want to reward him for that brilliance by keeping faith with him. (I’m a bit sentimental about racing, in a way of which my late father would certainly not approve; when it came to betting he was flinty as a hedge fund supremo.) As a result, I’ve lost a bit of cash on him over the years, but I’m a great believer in putting my money where my mouth is.

He lost his last race: he looked lovely on the first circuit, flat on the second, got fairly easily beaten. My twenty quid went down the drain. Never mind. I was not down-hearted. There is a thing about very great champions, a mystery, an enigma that will never quite be solved: some days, the world-beater shows up, some days, it’s just a very good horse, who can be beaten by something else on its top form. I still thought the real Master Minded would pitch up later in the season.

And then there is Kauto Star. He is eleven, which is old, in racing years. Not geriatric, but a sure veteran. The young pretender, Long Run, had come last season and taken the Gold Cup. Worst of all, he had usurped Kauto Star’s crown in the race he had made his own, the King George at Kempton. Bear in mind Kauto is the only horse in history who had won that race four times in a row, the last time by over 30 lengths, against some of the best chasers in the country.

He is the mightiest and most beloved champion since Desert Orchid: first horse ever to win a Gold Cup, lose a Gold Cup, and come back to regain it; first horse ever to win fourteen group one races. There was a time when he seemed almost unbeatable. In his early days, he used to put in terrifying mistakes, quite often over the last fence when it seemed as if he had everything sewn up; in his later years, he could put in exhibition rounds, making such mighty leaps that it seemed as if he had wings.

The thought was, though, that his great days were all behind him. People were muttering about retirement. Today, he was facing three tough miles, up against much younger horses, at least four of whom had big wins under their belts. He might fall, be pulled up, get tailed off; the talk was that if he did not run well today, he would be retired on the spot, and that is the last we would all see of him.

I’m going to give both my heroes another chance, I thought. I got distracted by children’s lunch, and did not get my bet on Master Minded on in time. Still, it was a great delight to watch him prove his knockers wrong, and trot up, back to his talented best.

Then there was an hour before Kauto. I’ll just put on a little twenty, I thought, mostly out of love. I was not sure he could do it. Long Run is a very, very good horse. I was acting on sentiment. Then I got a bit more forensic. Paul Nicholls had trained Kauto to the minute for this race; Long Run would be being saved for later in the season, and often does not run well first time out. I’ve always thought there is a little question mark over his jumping; he can go a bit flat and careless.

I examined the form. There were definite drawbacks over another of the two main dangers. Sod it, I thought; this really could be Kauto’s moment. Five minutes before the race, I put on another twenty. Sod them all, I thought: my boy is not done yet.

I explained some of all this to the children. They got very excited. They watched the quick replays of his earlier triumphs that Channel Four was showing, and decided they loved him. ‘Come on Kauto,’ they said.

Off the horses went. Kauto Star was jumping very well, but almost too stupidly well, standing off outside the wings. I was worried he would take too much out of himself. The lovely Ruby Walsh, his regular jockey, took him to the lead, and kept him there. He can’t stay in front for three miles, I thought, not at his age. But he kept pinging his fences, and was bowling along as if he did not have a care in the world. Ruby was so relaxed half the time he seemed to be riding with just one hand. It was delightful to see the two old pros in such perfect tune with each other.

‘Maybe he can do it,’ I said.

‘Come on, Kauto,’ cried the children.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He can’t do it. It’s too much to ask.’

But Long Run was making mistakes, and running a little ragged. Kauto was collected and foot perfect. He’ll fade, I thought. The younger fellas will come and pick him up.

Into the last four fences. I was on my feet. ‘Come on my son,’ I shouted.

‘Come on, Kauto,’ yelled the children.

The Pigeon was also on her feet, barking her head off, which is what she always does when I shout at the racing.

Three out. Kauto Star still in the lead, against all the odds. At this stage, I actually jumped onto an armchair and started bawling my head off. ‘Come on, you beauty, ‘ I yelled.

The Pigeon was jumping up and down on all fours.

‘Come on, come on,’ shouted the children.

The younger horses were gathering themselves for their final effort. Ruby still had not asked Kauto the question. ‘Oh just steady,’ I shouted. ‘Just stand up.’

The heavenly Ruby Walsh kept the old horse balanced and straight and steady, using only hands and heels, preserving all his energy for the final push. Everyone else was scrubbing away. I suddenly thought the mighty champion could do it.

Over the last, everything else faded away. Kauto was tired, but he’s not only a once in a generation talent, he’s got enormous courage. He does not give up. He just went on galloping to the line, brave and true, seven lengths in front.

The crowd went nuts. Paul Nicholls jumped in the air for joy. Ruby Walsh fell on the horse’s neck, hugging him. I was shouting and crying. The children were yelling Yes, yes. The Beloved Cousin looked at me in amazement. ‘He looks as if he could go round again,’ she said.

The King was back in his castle. He walked back to the winning enclosure, his ears pricked, his head held high. The crowd gave him three cheers, twice. No one could quite believe it. It was one of the best things I ever saw in racing.

So, it went from an ordinary day to an extraordinary double from two remarkable horses. I wish my dad had been here to see it.

Finding the balance.

The sun shines, brightly, bravely, from a sky the colour of periwinkles. Out in the field, the red mare is happy and mighty. We ride around like old ranch-hands. I throw my arms in the air and whoop at the universe.
This week has been up and down and round the houses. I have had to remind myself that everyone has their view, their vision, their path. I feel the things I feel so intensely that I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that everyone sees the world as I do. I tell myself that false expectations are the enemy of happiness, and then I expect something all the same. The expectation is not met, and I feel as crushed as a small child who has dressed up in her best party frock, only to be told that she looks silly.
Not everyone, I think, is going to exclaim in delight when you tell them something that has made you so proud and happy that you thought your ears were going to fall off. Sometimes, the reaction will be an odd look, a kindly laugh, a faintly puzzled lift of the eyebrow. But I tell myself, that does not mean that the thing itself is diminished. The thing is still the thing, existing gloriously in the world, even if it is only in your world. And, I say firmly, with my grown-up hat on, you did not do it for praise or reward; you did not do it for claps on the back and marks out of ten. You did it because you love it.
I’m doing a lot of deep breathing. Let it all go, I tell myself. It’s been a funny, scratchy week, with little darts thrown at the heart. That’s fine. That’s what life is. Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; the sorrows that flesh is heir to. It’s about balance, I think. Did the good balance the bad? Yes, it did. The beloved creatures were happy and beautiful; some work was done; there was a HorseBack day; the sun shone and the trees glimmered in the last of their autumn motley and I went and looked at the indigo hills. This morning, I saw the brave blue of the Dee, far below me as I hung on to the sturdy trunks of two silver birches, flashing at me like a beacon of hope.
Two old friends called, two of the oldest and the finest, two of the ones who go back over all the vicissitudes of thirty years. I hear the reassuring strength in their kind voices, laugh at the ancient jokes only we can understand, feel appreciated and got. Sometimes I think all anyone needs is to be got.
There is the kindness of strangers too, the generosity of people I may never meet who take the time to say nice things on the internet. The internet can be the Wild West, but it can be a place of consolation and kindness too.

The balance balances itself, delicately poised. The needle quivers, and comes to rest in the positive side of the dial. There is enough, I think. Stare hard at the beauty, hold hard to the luck, concentrate hard on never taking one single good thing for granted. That will do.