Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 24

Birdsong

Today, I heard the birds sing. I don’t know if they have been singing like this for a while and I had been too busy thinking of other things to hear them, or whether they are really revving up for spring.             The pied wagtails have arrived, which is always a hopeful sign, and one came and wagged his tail at me on the gate. The dear, faithful robin who stays with us all winter was flitting and hopping from perch to perch. I always think of robins as fat, stolid characters, mostly I suppose because of the Christmas cards, but in fact they are nervy, athletic creatures, always on the move.             I worked my little brown mare and then we stood in the rain and listened to the birds.             I suddenly thought of the more urban of the Dear Readers. Is it odd, I wondered, to be sitting on a bus or a train reading about a slightly flaky woman listening to birds in the rain?             I adored the city when I was in it. I loved the myriad of faces, the Babel of languages, the feeling that all the world was there in London. I loved the taxi drivers and the men in frocks and the old timers down the North End Road who were such Londoners that they were almost a caricature. I loved jumping on and off the grand old Routemasters and standing on the platform holding the pole with the wind in my hair. I loved the elegant arcades of Mayfair and the greasy spoons and the old-fashioned barbers which still had the red and white swirling thing outside. I loved the dodgy basement clubs in what was still the front line (that part of Notting Hill where gentrification had not yet reached) and the wide open space of the Serpentine and the tan ride at the bottom of Hyde Park where the army horses exercised at dawn.             I loved all of it and I never thought I would leave and then I left.            I fell in love with these hills like you fall in love with a person. Now, I spend my life with mud on my jeans and hay in my hair and mysterious little smears of dirt and horse feed and other imponderables on my forehead. I wear absurd hats, not for fashion but to keep off the weather. I stand in the field with a gentle thoroughbred mare and listen to the birds.
            I remember the birds from my childhood. We would ride on the downs, that grand, sweeping arc of country that rose out of the Lambourn valley. My mother would lift her head and look up and say: ‘Listen to the lark on the wing.’ I can hear her saying that. I can see her face, lifted to the sky.

Gordon's alive.

This morning, in the Co-op, my favourite check-out lady and I were having a little chat about the vicissitudes of existence.             ‘Life,’ said my favourite lady, rolling her eyes. ‘What a business.’            ‘I know,’ I said, eagerly. ‘I like to think that I am a student of the human condition, but then I realise I know nothing.’            Beside me, a bright-eyed woman was putting her groceries on to the counter. She gave me a laughing sideways look, and said, with all the dry pragmatism of this part of the north-east: ‘I should stick to dogs.’
I laughed my head off. I was still laughing when I went out to the car and drove home. That’s my blog for the day, I thought, right there.
I laughed not just because it was very funny, but because today a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. Both my horses have been on the sick list, and despite the fact that I pretend not to indulge in worry, which is a pointless emotion and does neither them nor me any good, I have been fretting so much that I could not sleep for two nights. I love those mares so much and the thought of losing them was pressing down on me like a malevolent stone. Today, both were better. They were back to their true selves. The red mare was dreamy and dozy and duchessy, at ease in her world. The little brown mare was bright and light and comical. (If she were a person, you would say that she had a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous sense of humour.)             I don’t think I had quite realised how heavy that weight was until it was removed. I am used to pressure. My work is very, very pressing at the moment, and I’m driving myself on mercilessly, and constantly trying to think of new ideas and working on new secret projects and typing and typing and typing and thinking and thinking and thinking. There’s a bit of a make or break aspect to the thing, just now. I think I was so used to having pressure on that I did not recognise how heavy that extra weight was.
The horses are usually where I cast aside all care. They are my lightness. They carry such authenticity and goodness, they are so present in the moment, they are so honest and genuine and true that they have the power to banish worldly worries. In the first weeks after my mother died, when I was carrying grief around with me like a heavy bucket of water, the only place where I did not feel sad at all was on the back of my red mare. I still wonder at this. It was not a conscious letting go of grief for half an hour or any switch in perception, it simply happened. I sat in the saddle and the sadness went away. I got back on the ground, and it came back. I’m still not certain how this came about, and I don’t know anything else which has that power.
But in the last few days, and with the brown mare over the last few weeks as her hideous sarcoid grew and grew and I had more and more doleful conversations with the vet, that lightness went away. I would go to the field with dread instead of joy in my heart, fearing one would have bled to death and one would have succumbed to a raging infection. Today, the red mare’s leg is no longer filled and hot, and the brown mare, having got rid of her ghastly sarcoid herself, is bright and healing. She will still have to have an operation to clean up the last of the mess, but it will now be a fairly simple procedure, not the high-wire act I was fretting over.
Don’t worry, say the sages, over things which have not yet happened. I know that wisdom intellectually. I tell it to myself. I even think I am doing it. But in my gut, away from my rational head, I do run those doomsday scenarios, and they wear at my spirit. Words of comfort spin off me, unable to gain purchase. I grow convinced that these gentle creatures, whom I love so much and who illuminate my days, will be lost to me.
But this morning, there they were, in all their glory, amazingly alive and vivid in the mild Scottish air. They are furry and muddy and happy and here.
I am determined to use them as a cautionary tale. It really is high time that I learnt not to waste precious emotional capital on those things which have not yet happened. I am going to wait until I stare disaster in the whites of its eyes before getting myself bent out of shape.
I sometimes wonder how many times life has to send me its lessons before I learn them. I always thought I was a quick study. Apparently not. The lessons come, over and over, and one day, eventually, some of them will stick. I shall be learning until the end of my days.

In the meantime, the sun is coming out. I hear Brian Blessed’s voice, roaring in my head, yelling in his blazingly theatrical way: ‘GORDON’S ALIVE.’ The mares are alive. And the dear old hills are alive too, with the sound of music, as I sing songs out loud into the lightening, brightening sky. 

The day is saved.

           

I slept badly, wracked with horse anxiety. In the morning, the Today programme told me that George Martin had died. I felt very melancholy. I remember years ago watching an interview with him and he was so self-deprecating and dry and witty and elegant. He made The Beatles, and now he was gone.             He was ninety and it sounded as if he died well. He had run his race, with great glory. It should not be so very sad, really, yet it was. There was another of the grand old gentleman, from that grand old generation that remembered the war and knew stoicism and could teach the rest of us young shavers a thing or two, gone. Every time a member of that generation goes, I feel bereft.            Then the Today Programme played A Day in the Life, and I cried.             That song was written partly for my uncle. ‘I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade; he blew his mind out in a car, he didn’t notice that the lights had changed.’ Tara, my father’s half-brother by my grandmother’s second marriage was one of those impossible golden boys of the sixties. He was gentle and charming and funny and he knew everybody and then, at the age of 21, he was dead in a car crash.             On a chill December dawn, my father drove up the M4 to identify the body. I have often wondered about that black morning drive. Not long before she died, I asked my mother about it. ‘Bill Payne took him,’ she said. ‘He could not drive on his own.’ Bill Payne was one of my parents’ most stalwart friends. A trainer and true horseman, his roots deep in the country earth, he used to go up on the downs and pick dandelions for his racehorses because they were good for the blood. He was cheerful and bluff and no-nonsense and he trained good horses out of a tiny yard in Eastbury. He once saved my sister’s life, when she rushed through the hall and put her hand straight through a plate glass door and sliced open an artery. Bill Payne was the only person there who knew how to apply a tourniquet, without that, she would surely not have got to the hospital in time.            And then, as if that was not enough, he drove my father to see his brother’s body.            ‘Your father was broken when he got back,’ my mother told me. ‘I just tried to be there for him, to help him. I held him and he cried and cried.’            She was heavily pregnant with me. I would be born six weeks later. Mum was heartbroken too. Tara was an urban boy to his fingertips, all Chelsea and nightclubs and glittering parties. But sometimes it must have got too much for him, because he would suddenly appear at our house in the Lambourn valley, often in the small hours, and Mum would get up and sit him down on the sofa and make him tea and let him talk.             My grandmother had lost her third child, and never really recovered. She was a tiny, bird-like woman, but she must have had a streak of steel in that tiny body, because she somehow survived those crushing griefs and lived until she was eighty. She used to make the driest, most ironic jokes, with deadpan timing, but she wore an air of melancholy like a Dior coat until the end of her life.            I was thinking of all this, in my sleep-deprived state, as I went down to the field to look at my poor wounded horses. The little brown mare is on the mend and bright as a button. She, too, has perfect comic timing, and even though I was feeling sad, she made me laugh. The red mare is still doleful and needy, and I had a sudden burst of tears, looking at her poor, sore leg. ‘I can’t lose you too,’ I said, out loud. (She’ll be fine, of course she will be fine, but I fear infection like the very devil.)            What with the lack of sleep and the maelstrom of emotion and the family memories, I thought the day was a write-off. I would have to cancel everything and put myself back to bed and make up the hours at the weekend.             Then I went to the dear Stepfather for breakfast. He wanted me to help him book an aeroplane ticket. He still find the internet and the computer baffling, but they are where I work every day, so I love amazing him by formatting a document in three minutes or solving some little software glitch in the flash of an eye. I was confident at least I could get him his ticket.            But British Airways were not going to let me have it easy. First of all, they tried to fob us off with a ticket which cost half the national debt. ‘Ha,’ I said. ‘I think we can do better than that.’            So I dug about and found the discounted seats. There were only five left and the clock was running, so when all those stupid extraneous screens came up – Do you want to register? Do you want to create an account? Do you want to rent a car? Do you want to take up our offer of a special credit card? – I started yelling, no, no, no, no, no. There was a degree of swearing. The dear Stepfather laughed and laughed.            And then – fatal moment – there was an error message. Contact your local representative, said the screen, cold and unfeeling.            So there was telephoning. There were forty-seven options, stupid modulated voices, plinky plonky music. I swore and swore. No, the booking did not exist, said an actual person. I stopped swearing, since my rule is that I am only allowed to be rude to automated systems. Transferring you to the sales department. Thank you so much.             Ah, said another idiotically cheerful computer voice, we are experiencing an unusually high volume of traffic. Fifteen minutes’ delay on the line.            Bugger, bugger, bugger, I bawled.            Back to the website. My blood was up. I would not be defeated. I typed and typed. I filled in all the asinine forms all over again.             THERE IS AN ERROR.            Swearing reached epic levels. If I was going down, I was going down cussing like a longshoreman.             One of the cheap seats had gone. There was a new, more expensive price. ‘The bastards,’ I shouted. ‘We should sue them for eight pounds and emotional distress.’            More typing. More forms. More pointless questions.             At last, at last, through sheer bloody-mindedness, cussedness, dander and straight rage, I got the adorable words: Your Booking Number Is...            I hurled my arms in the air and celebrated as if I was watching Desert Orchid win his Gold Cup all over again. I had got the dear good man his ticket. I had not given up.            This ridiculous episode saved my day. I did not write the day off. I came home and wrote actual words of book, 1796 of them.            I wrote this absurdly long blog. I am so shattered in the head that I have no idea why I am telling you all this, but I am past questioning. You are my dear readers, and you get all the stories, some of which make sense and some of which don’t. You are so kind and good and generous that I know you understand the flaky, goofy days and don’t hold them against me.
            This day is not my best day. But it was saved, for all that.

A note on the photograph:This was taken in Ireland. My father is on the right, his brother Garech next to him, and his brother Tara on the far left. You can see the fondness and affection and love lighting up my father's face. I remember that smile. I find it impossibly moving.

A little bit broken.

Here is a sentence I never thought I would say out loud: ‘The sarcoid is in the fridge.’            The sarcoid, a revolting growth that suddenly put on a spurt and expanded to the size of my clenched fist, was hanging off my sweet little brown mare like a life-sapping vampire bat. An operation had been scheduled, and in the meantime, she was confined to close quarters with a ligature on. Then, suddenly, the thing wrenched itself off. I had been terrified that if this happened she would bleed to death. I kept telling myself not to worry, because worry does her no good and me no good and does not achieve anything, but for all that, I’ve been living on my nerves.            The thing came off and she did not bleed to death. She has a small wound which is healing. The brilliant surgeon will still come and she will still have to have a procedure but it will be nothing like as dramatic as the operation which was planned. The clever little mare just did it herself. She is a bit stiff and sore, but she is as dear and friendly and calm and faintly comical as ever. She is a trooper.             When animals are ill, not themselves, in discomfort or pain, I find it lacerating. I can’t explain to them what is going on. I can’t tell them that I am doing this to make them feel better, or doing that to keep them from harm. I can’t tell them about the devotion of the vets or the brilliance of the surgeons or the hope in my heart.            In the meantime, the car has to go into the garage for the third time in a month and we have to make heart-breaking decisions about my mother’s things, and I am desperately trying to keep up with my work, and my To Do list sprouts tentacles like some alien being, and I feel stretched to my very limit. And then, just as I beadily eye my remaining emotional and physical resources, the red mare goes lame. There is heat and swelling in her leg. The drama behind this is too long and mad to go into now, although I might write that story later.             The kind vets come again. I feed the mare her special concoction of antibiotics and painkillers. I try to push the terrifying fear of infection from my mind. She is doleful and needy and wants me with her. I stand in the field and stroke her head gently and beam love and strength into her. She is no longer a proud duchess, but a creature who is a little bit broken.            I feel a little bit broken.            Well, I say to myself, that is not surprising. It’s one damn thing after another. Your adrenals are fucked.             I make chicken soup and more chicken soup. I need the protein. I need the comfort.
            We are all a little bit broken. But we shall get mended. The car got mended. So shall we. 
Oh, and PS. Just in case you are wondering why precisely the sarcoid is in the fridge, it is because I want to preserve it for surgical analysis. Also, it's so freaky that I have to keep staring at it in wigged-out wonder. (No wonder my adrenals are buggered.) It's got an internal structure that looks like some kind of hitherto unknown sea creature. My poor sweet mare. I can't quite believe that someone so beautiful could have something so ugly on her glorious body. 
And PPS. I'm so exhausted that my eyes are crossing, so there is a very real possibility that this blog makes no sense and is riddled with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Forgive me. I'm going to sit very quietly in a darkened room and regroup and shall be back to fighting strength soon.

In which my plan absolutely and categorically fails. Or, one brilliant horse puts a spoke in my idiotic wheel.

I had a really good plan for today. I was going to wake up feeling cross and resentful about all the idiot hullabaloo of Mothering Sunday. I would stump about muttering about the stupid, crass commercialism of Mothers’ Day. (I used to say this, with some force, to my mother every year on this day, and still give her flowers anyway.) I would then feel doleful and melancholy and miss my mum a lot.             I started off brilliantly, fulfilling every part of the plan. I was sad and cross and I went furiously to the field not to greet my mares with joy but in the spirit of just getting them seen to. I would heft the hay and check the water trough with sullen, heavy steps and then bugger off.            I did this part of the plan in dashing fashion, ticking all the gloomy boxes. I had a good old blub as I carried the stupid hay.             And then I realised that the sun was shining and the birds were singing and the red mare was looking at me with a question in her eye.            Oh, all right, I thought. I’ll do five minutes of lateral flexion. But that’s it. I’m far too busy with my plan, The Plan of Unrelieved Misery.            The red mare, as she so often does, saved me. The lateral flexion was dreadful. That’s almost being too generous. At some points, it was not there at all. (For non-horse people, it is not important to know what this is or what it means or why it matters. In basic terms, it’s bending the horse’s head around, and if it is not soft and sweet then one of your most vital foundation stones is missing.)            The mare even seemed to be having a joke, as instead of giving lightly to pressure she leaned against it and appeared to go to sleep.             I’ve been working on this for three years, I thought, in amazed chagrin, and we’ve suddenly lost our lateral flexion? What the fuck is going on?            What was going on was that the mare had no brief for my asinine plan. She had a plan of her own. She does not deal in sub-standard humans. She requires me to be my best self and she will not countenance anything less.             So I had to go right back to the beginning and work on that damn lateral flexion as if I were teaching an unbroken two-year-old. It took seventeen minutes before I got the first real softening and a great, relieved, equine sigh, which gusted out into the bright Scottish air, as if to say: yes, thank you, that was what I wanted.            Then I spent another fifteen minutes refining it.            By this time, I was in that state of flow that the brilliant Hungarian gentleman with the unpronounceable name (it sounds something like chick-sent-me-high and I’m not even going to try to spell it) identified as the highest peak of happiness. My plan was gone to buggery. I was so immersed and focused, so in harmony with the beautiful thoroughbred creature beside me, that I had no time for gloom and doom.             On we worked.             Then I got into the saddle and we went deep into the woods and stood in our favourite glade and took our ease and looked at the trees. The mare sighed again, this time it seemed in profound satisfaction. Then we did some dressage diva trotting, and, finally, in our full pomp, we did the loping cowgirl canter on a loose rein, round and round the wide field. I whooped and told her she was brilliant. ‘Now you are rolling,’ I told her, in triumph. ‘Rolling, rolling, rolling.’            ‘And,’ I said, about to say something else, but she came to an abrupt halt, stopping on a sixpence. I shouted with laughter. I’ve taught her voice cues, but I suddenly realised that when I say Whoa I always presage it with a drawn-out Aaaannnnddd. So now she stops dead on ‘And’. For some reason, I found this deliciously comical. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.            This really was not in the plan. The HMS Plan of Unrelieved Misery steamed out to sea, without me on board. I waved at that silly old boat, as she sailed over the horizon.            Then I went up to see the dear Stepfather and he showed me some of his first editions, which is my favourite thing, and gave me some beautiful books that he did not want any more so that it felt like my birthday instead of the Day of Gloom.
            My plan, it turned out, was a crashing failure. My mother would be so pleased. 

There are times I miss her more than others.

There is snow in the air and a raw cold in the wind. In the shop, where I collect my Racing Post, the lady and I look at each other and smile rueful smiles. ‘Funny old day,’ I say. (I am British; this is the kind of thing I say to the lady in the shop,even though she knows all about my life and my dogs and my horse and my mum.) We both look out of the window, where the weather is quarrelling with itself. ‘It does not know whether to laugh or cry,’ I say.            ‘I know the feeling,’ says the lady in the shop. There are many ladies in the shop and I love them all, but this one is possibly my favourite. I once apologised to her, as I handed over some money, for my filthy hands. She looked at the ingrained mud and said, in approval: ‘Working hands.’ It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. (I know one is told not to call people ladies any more, and I would rather die than do anything to make the ghosts of the Pankhursts weep, but somehow I can’t call them women in the shop. It sounds just off, to my ear, and does not convey the slightly old-fashioned atmosphere of this shop in this village, where so many people know so many people. Besides, I am old-fashioned myself when it comes to words. I still listen to the wireless and look in the looking glass.)Then I went to the dear Stepfather and we drank coffee and spoke of this and that (Churchill and Boris and the Euro-argument) and he showed me two beautiful books. One was a first edition of Osbert Sitwell’s autobiography, inscribed by Sitwell to Dear Morgan. Dear Morgan. I nearly swooned with pleasure. I’ve been re-reading EM Forster, and I start to believe that everything one needs to know about life is in A Room with a View. ‘We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.’  The other was a copy of Dylan Thomas in a beautiful modern binding which the dear Stepfather had had specially made for my mother.We looked at that one for a long time, unspoken sorrow running between us. We knew everything about what that book meant.‘I find it quite difficult,’ I said, diffidently, ‘all this talk of Mothering Sunday.’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Horrid.’‘I miss her all the time,’ I said, keeping my voice level. ‘But there are times I miss her more than others.’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’‘It’s not people’s fault,’ I said, as if he might think I wanted the entire media and the internet to shut up shop just because I don’t have a mother this year. ‘They don’t know.’‘No,’ he said.
Then I showed him how to get up The Night Manager on the iPlayer so he could watch the first two episodes before the third one is shown tomorrow night, and then I went home to get ready for the racing at Newbury. There is a veterans' race today. It's a grand series and a brilliant idea. Some racehorses love their retirement, and some don’t, so much. They still feel fit and strong and want to go on jumping over fences; they don’t know that they are twelve or thirteen and that the younger legs will outpace them. So an imaginative person invented the veterans’ races, where the glorious standing dishes can compete against each other out on the bright green turf which they still think of as home. It’s a fine sight to see these great campaigners, with all their canniness and knowledge of the game, still fired with enthusiasm even if they are not quite as fleet as they once were, bowling round with their ears pricked. They are still capable of breathtaking leaps, and they are clever enough to put in a short stride and fiddle a fence, and they sometimes seem to have all the racing wisdom in the world in their sage old heads.             Each Saturday, I would take Mum her racing paper and talk to her about the runners and we would reminisce over old friends and get excited about the new young stars. Each Saturday, after the racing was over, the telephone would go and I would hear her voice, often shaking with love and emotion. ‘Did you see that?’ she would say. ‘Did you cry?’             The answer was always yes.            She remembered Arkle and Mill House and would often speak of them, a mystical note in her voice. She always said, of Arkle: ‘He had the look of eagles.’            Pete the Feat, my favourite horse in the veterans’ race today, is not in the same league as those legends, but I adore him because he is bold and brave and tough and he loves his job. He might win and he might not, but he’ll do his best as he always does. Today, there will be no telephone call, no voice saying ‘Oh, Pete the Feat.’            There are times when I miss her more than others.

In which I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.

1556 words today.
I’m really pleased about that.
It’s been a funny week. I’ve felt really quite happy and suddenly very sad. I’ve been harried and fretful, and then sailed back into calmer, more optimistic waters. Four people have performed real acts of kindness and generosity. The dogs have been delightful and athletic and funny. I have worked hard at my HorseBack work. The house went from chaos back to faintly respectable.
The house will never be entirely respectable. I thought this morning: if you have a job and two horses and two dogs and do voluntary work and cook breakfast each morning for your dear Stepfather and have a mother to grieve, something has to give. In my case, it is the house. My organisational skills are not stellar at the best of times, and at the moment I am stretched to my limits.
But even though the house sometimes looks as if it has been ransacked by crazed teenagers, when a small amount of tidiness is restored I remember that it has books in it, and lovely pictures, and photographs of all the people I love, and dear objects that have been given to me by best beloveds, and pretty pieces of glass, and precious things that I have picked up on my travels, from the days when I did travels. Sometimes, I am so blinded by the muddle that I start scolding myself and forget all the beautiful things and only see the tottering piles and the old copies of the Racing Post and the sad bags waiting to go the charity shop which never seem to get there. It’s important not to miss the beautiful things, which I am so lucky to have.
I realise now that I have absolutely no idea what I wanted to write here today. I think I had something important to say, but I’ve quite forgotten what it was. When I wake up in the morning, my brain starts revving up like a frantic Maserati whose engine is wound too tight. By the time I have cleaned my teeth, I have written acres of prose in my head, contemplated some existential conundrum, thought of three new book ideas, argued a point with an annoying guest on the Today programme, mapped out this blog, rewritten this blog, wondered why I do this blog, stared my To Do list in the whites of its eyes, fallen into a reverie over the comedy stylings of Stanley the Manly, decided what work I want to do with the red mare that morning, worried about the eighteen things I worry about, told myself sternly that worry is an entirely pointless emotion, and castigated myself for my lack of time management. That’s all before I leave the house.
This sounds dangerously like boasting. Oh, look at me, with my jazz hands and my antic brain. In fact, I see it as a bit of a weakness. I’d love a quiet mind. All this mental shooting about does not get me that far, because so many of the thoughts and ideas tumbling about in the tangential corridors of my mind are lost, never to be reclaimed.
There is a hamster wheel aspect to the whole thing. Mental discipline, says the Mary Poppins in my head; spit spot. It would be delightful to have mental discipline. Perhaps I could develop some. I schooled the mare in straightness this morning; that was, in the end, what I decided on. (I see where we are on any given day, and then choose the aspect which needs work and will amuse us both.) I was very disciplined about that. We started off rather wonky, and ended up ravishingly straight. If I can do that with a thoroughbred, perhaps I can do that with my own mind. A little daily schooling of the cerebellum. That’s the ticket.
            

A Manichean struggle.

I always interested in how one small bad thing can trump many, many good things. (If you let it, says the stern, rational voice in my head.) It’s like a rotten smell. Why is it that the stink of old fish or dog crap or that nasty soup that gathers in the bottom of dustbins always wins over the delightful scent of rosemary or fig or lavender?
Why does the bad news always triumph, leading the news night after night? There must be a hundred good stories of human kindness and generosity and hope, but they have no chance against venal practices or natural disasters or criminal acts.
(Oddly, I think the internet is on the side of the angels when it comes to the bad news. People laugh at the cute puppies and baby pandas, but every day on my Facebook timeline there is at least one heart-expanding story about someone rescuing an orphaned elephant or a service dog doing something extraordinary or, as happened this morning, a kind trainer reclaiming a racehorse who had been sold on into the wrong hands and cruelly neglected, thus giving him a happy home for life.)
Today started off with many, many good things. The sun shone. I rode the red mare with joy in my heart and my arms in the air. (I do this officially to improve my independent seat. I really do it because it feels like flying and because in my own mazy head I am proving all the doubters wrong, the ones who believe that a thoroughbred cannot do a dressage diva trot with no reins.) Dogs were gambolling about having fun, and humans were laughing. I had some proper work thoughts in my head, and was looking forward to getting to my desk and writing them down. The world news was not even that bad, for once, just a bit of a grumble about the Euro-argument on the Today Programme.
And then, a small disaster struck. It was my fault, and arose from a poor decision.
I am at that stage in grief where I can assume a simulacrum of normality for quite long periods. When everything is trundling along smoothly, I can feel the joy and see the beauty and count my blessings. But a death wears away at the emotional resources. The skin is thin and fragility is never far away. Small setbacks can take on looming proportions, and perspective flies away into the ruthless air.
So the small disaster felt like the end of the world. I cursed like a longshoreman and let my critical voices off the leash (always a mistake, especially when they have been at the gin) and shouted at myself for my own stupidity. I actually did this out loud. Instead of taking stock and putting the thing right, I fell at once into the elephant trap of pointlessness and fecklessness and uselessness and hopelessness. Into the garden to eat worms, said the critical voices, enjoying themselves hugely.
The small disaster might have entirely wrecked my day. All those sweet, good, enchanting things that had just happened might have counted for nothing. I would have gone on until evening with that bad smell singing my nostrils.
Luckily, there was a wise friend on the premises. I had help. The mistake got put right, but, much more importantly, I had a human companion to assist me in talking myself down off the ceiling.
I’m still cringing a little, from time to time. I think: I wish that had not happened. I wish I had made a better decision. I wish that I had thought.
But the potential shipwreck was averted. Today, because of a good person, the bad news did not win.
Oh, and I did go and write down those work words. Thirteen hundred of them. Yes, says the kind, reasonable voice, frowning at the gin-drinkers, not quite waving, but certainly not drowning. We shall not drown today. 

The Puffin of Hope.

   
The day started with ravishing sun and a feeling of spring in the air. I got on the red mare and pretended I was rounding up cattle. ‘Come on,’ I told her. I whooped in her ear. ‘We have cows to herd.’            She seemed mildly surprised but went with it and we cantered about with our invisible herd, having a blast.             This is a good start to the day, I thought, driving off with purpose to a meeting at HorseBack, the small charity for whom I volunteer. That was good too. Lots of things are happening and I had interesting conversations and saw a dear old friend who had come to visit.            I took some pictures and scribbled in my notebook and all was merry as a marriage bell.            Then the weather grew cold and raw and the feeling of spring disappeared and a sudden blizzard flew in over the hills. Bugger this, I thought, I must get back.            At which point, it was discovered that the drive was blocked by a ton of rubble.             A determined convoy went up the hill, this way and that, looking for a way out. Absolutely no dice. The top track was far too treacherous. Like the Grand Old Duke of York, we marched our way to the top of the hill and then marched down again. At one point I was so furious that I stomped down the drive with a spade, as if I believed I could shift that rubble with my bare hands. ‘I can’t sit here and do nothing,’ I said, between gritted, livid teeth.            Finally, the entirely unrepentant rubble man came back with his idiot tractor and reluctantly drove a very dodgy path through the mess. I hurled the car over it, desperately hoping that I would not rip up the tyres or bugger the suspension.             Back at the paddock, the snowy horses stood sweetly as I threw on their rugs and gave them some extra hay. Still pretty cross, I got to my desk and wrote 987 words and wondered what had happened to that lovely promise of spring.            Then I looked to my left. A generous friend had sent me a picture she had made of a puffin. She had posted it on Facebook, I had admired it, and she sweetly offered to send me a copy. Early this morning, before my day kicked off, Pearl the Postwoman brought it to my door and I pinned it up in my office.            There he was, the ravishing puffin, fine and upright and faintly wistful.            I stopped feeling cross.             It was such a kind thing to do. The good person did not have to make a copy, find an envelope, go to the post office, send it off. She did not have to take the time and the care and the thought, but she did.             People are sometimes not very thoughtful or kind, especially, it seems, grumpy fellows in fuck-off tractors. But some people are sometimes enchanting, and that makes all the difference.            My puffin is now the Puffin of Hope. That is his official title. He restores my faith in human nature.

Up and down and round the houses.

The last couple of days have been rather fraught and horrid. My sweet brown mare is not well and I’ve been stumping down to the field to meet with the vet and putting my brave, game face on. No point in worrying about things you can’t control, I tell myself; no point in fretting about things which have not yet happened.             Yesterday’s frets were compounded by mean, raw, bitter weather, so that the cold seeped into my bones and I never got warm. It did not help that I had started a new healthy eating jag. Green drink with turmeric is all very well, but not that comforting when the chill is biting into your very soul.            I had one fine moment when I watched a lovely, strong, bright horse and his very collected amateur rider win a race at Plumpton which is run in honour of my late father. I still miss my dad, but I think of him now with more pleasure than pain, and like to be reminded of him and all the horses and jockeys he loved, all the races he won, all the courses he adored. (He was very fond of Plumpton.)             In the evening, just as I was settling down and thinking tomorrow is another day, a vast flash of violent light lit up the sky and there was a great crack, as if a tropical thunderstorm was about to shatter over a West Indian island. That’s all we need, I thought. That was not forecast on the BBC weather, I thought. Then blackness descended again and there was nothing more.            Nobody seems to know what it was, although there is speculation it might have been a meteor crashing into the earth’s atmosphere.            This morning, I was still unable to shrug off the emotional stretch of the last few days. It was an ugly, dour, dull morning and I had shit to shovel and everyone was covered in mud. This day, I thought crossly, is going to have a great big line through it. I’ll just have to get through it and wait until tomorrow comes.             But then the hard physical work got my body going, and the red mare was at her crest and peak of sweetness, and I spoke to the Beloved Cousin and bellowed HAPPY BIRTHDAY at her several times down the mobile telephone on account of it being her birthday and then we had a lovely time discussing the shenanigans of the Europe referendum and mining all the political gossip and making a quick detour into the perfectly puzzling developments on The Archers. By the time I got to my dear stepfather’s house and made him his eggs for breakfast, the day had somehow redeemed itself.            I went to my desk and wrote 1391 words. Which is not nothing.The dogs are sleeping beside me. The puppy is making little snuffling and sighing noises in his sleep. The sun, which was not expected, has come out, just to show it can.             I’m going to go on with the green drink and the edamame beans, but I’m also planning to have a crumpet for my tea. I love a crumpet. I’m reading a really interesting book about the 1953 expedition to Everest, because, for no known reason, at the age of forty-nine I have suddenly developed an interest in mountain climbing, a subject about which I knew nothing and cared less until three weeks ago. Now I can tell you all about George Mallory and Sandy Irvine and Edmund Hillary and Bonnington and his boys. I know my South Col from my Khumbu icefall. I don’t know how this came about, but I like having something new to be fascinated by.
            I may lose that little horse. She’s got to have an operation which is pretty high risk. I stare beadily at that horrid fact. But in the meantime, the sun is shining and we are all buggering on.