Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 25

Not quite fine.

Yesterday, I said to someone, quite without meaning to: ‘Be careful. I’m still fragile.’            The words flew out, beyond my volition. This is not the kind of thing I usually say.            There was a look of astonishment.            ‘But you seem so fine,' the someone said.            I screwed up my face a little bit.            I said: ‘I put on a very good front.’            Because that is what you do. That is what you do if you are me and you are British and you don’t make a fuss and you don’t want to be a bore. You put on a good front.            Sometimes the front is true. I can laugh belly laughs now, and mean them. When I find something really funny, I double over and shout with mirth. I can smile and listen hard and take things in. My brain is working again, which it was not in the beginning.             I am waving now, not drowning.            I take pleasure where pleasure lives. My heart feels love. I look at the stars and think of all humans being made of stardust.            I write words and think thoughts and watch the 3.30 at Huntingdon.
            But I’m not fine. I have glimpses of fineness, moments of fineness, sudden remembrances of what fine was like. I know it is there, waiting for me. There is a road to travel before I get there. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, and I have miles to go before I sleep. 
I won’t be fine for a while yet. 
Oddly, I have sort of made my peace with that.

Work and thoughts and better angels.

Sunshine and snow this morning. Horses and dogs in dazzling form, enjoying the light after a winter of dreich and rain.
Then it was work, work, work, work. It was words, words, words, thirteen hundred of the little darlings.
Also: thinking, thinking, thinking.
My brain scoots off on twenty-seven tangents and I have to corral it gently. I am afraid to say that sometimes I have thoughts which I think rather brilliant. (This is most unBritish and entirely indefensible.) I think: I must write that one down and share it with you. The Dear Readers will like that, I think. Then, when I get to my desk, the dazzling thought has entirely evaporated, leaving not a trace behind. Can’t have been thatclever, I tell myself, grumpily.
I took a moment out of this maelstrom of working and writing and thinking to watch a race at Huntingdon. A very tough mare called Emily Gray was up against a Willie Mullins hotpot, who went off at long odds-on. But Emily Gray knows nothing of betting or mighty yards that drive all before them. She did not know that she was giving away weight to the favourite. All she knows is that when someone asks her a question, her answer is always yes. (I find this attitude in horses almost unbearably moving.) It looked as if she was going to get beat, as the Mullins mare ranged up alongside her, going the better of the two. But little Emily Gray turned her head and eyeballed her rival, said no, not today, you are damn well not going to get past. She threw every inch of her brave, fighting heart into it, and scrapped like a tiger to the line.
They once said of Mill Reef: he was something to brighten a morning. That little mare was something to brighten an afternoon.
My own sweet mare brightened my own morning. When I am with her, I manage to switch off my brain for the only hour of the day. It’s all heart and soul and feeling. We went into the woods and looked at the trees and the shadows and the mysterious places. We did a little dance. When a mere human is at one with all that great, grand thoroughbred power, there is no feeling like it in the world. She is so much finer than I; I aspire to her ravishing authenticity. Her mind is not cluttered with all the absurd thoughts and frets and desires that live in my mazy mind. There is a great purity to her. Sometimes I stand and gaze at her in awe and wonder. She has the astonishing talent of making me, for a short time every day, my best self. When I am with her, I feel the wings of my better angels flapping.

And now I must fall back to earth and go and get my poor bashed old car back from the garage. Every time I go there, which is quite a lot, they give me a look. The car is full of hay and rugs and horse feed. Its wheel arches are clogged with clots of Scottish earth from where I have driven across fields and run down muddy tracks and breasted potholes and skidded on the soft ground. It was once quite a nice car, the looks say, and then the insane horse lady got a hold of it. The better angels, defeated and chastened, flap off to the far horizon, knowing when they are beaten.
PS. As I finished this, I suddenly thought I should look up the better angels. It’s a phrase I use all the time, in writing and in speech, and I wondered where it came from. It turns out it is from Barnaby Rudge, a book I have never read. The whole passage is worth quoting, because it is magnificent.
‘The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine by night and day so brightly that the blind may see them; and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning.It is curious to imagine these people of the world, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless spheres that shine above us, and making them reflect the only images their minds contain. The man who lives but in the breath of princes has nothing in his sight but stars for courtiers' breasts. The envious man beholds his neighbours' honours even in the sky; to the money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, the whole great universe above glitters with sterling coin--fresh from the mint--stamped with the sovereign's head--coming always between them and heaven, turn where they may. So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.’
Isn’t it brilliant? Chance is such a funny thing. I might have gone my whole life without knowing that passage. But for some reason, because the thoughts I believed so clever had fled from my mind, I decided to write about my sweet mare, and she led me to dear old Dickens, and now I know something I would not have known. That is my happy moment of the day.

The ordinary and the extraordinary.

Sunshine, sweet ride, a lot of shovelling of shit. Excellent political discussion at breakfast. (The dear Stepfather and I cannot get enough of the Euro-argument.) Errands. Really good, pointful errands, clearing out stuff and taking it to the charity shop and things like that. I even tidied the kitchen and the office, which is a world record for me. Work, work, work, work, until my eyes crossed. Three thousand new words. My fingers would not stop typing.
I thought, quite a lot, about making every day count. Sometimes, a day just goes wonky. I can’t seem to save it. After lunch, I’m in damage limitation, merely hoping the next hours will pass fast so that I can go to sleep and wake up and get a new day. I’ll make something of that one, I think.
My days are very ordinary. I don’t save the world or meet the famous or run the government. There are few dramas, except the absurd ones of my own making, like when the tyre goes flat and I startle the neighbourhood by cussing like a fishwife. But ordinariness counts. Or at least, it counts to me. I read a book, think some thoughts, laugh at the dearness of my animals, see something adorable or moving or stimulating on the internet, feel some feelings, remember some memories, do some necessary jobs, look at some trees, gaze at the stars as I take the dogs for their last midnight outing. I chat some chat and write some emails and make some green soup. None of this really matters, but all of this really matters.
One of my errands was to the Co-Op, to get spinach and butter and bin bags. Oh, the glamour of my shopping list. Our Co-Op is a very small supermarket, down towards the river, more like a village shop than a faceless chain store. People tend to meet people they know in there and stop and chat. Everybody knows all the men and women at the check-outs. It is stitched into the heart of the community. At the Co-Op, they understand that I walk about with hay in my hair and, quite often, little smears of mud on my face, they know that I am nuts for my mare (‘How is your horse today?), a few of them know that my mother died. I know a bit about some of their own lives. With some of them, I even have little in-jokes. One of the ones I have a joke with is a gentleman of a certain age, late fifties perhaps, with glorious hippy hair and a San Francisco in the ‘70s beard. I saw him today and he did his usual gentle comedic shtick and we laughed about nothing much and talked of the sunshine which has come after the rain and said goodbye to each other with fondness.
I drove away thinking of that man. He does not just do this for me. He does it for everyone. As I left the shop, I heard him start up with the next person in line.
Working at the check-out in the Co-Op is never going to feature in any headline or aspirational article or magazine cover. There is no red carpet for the Co-Op workers. No hungry news hound is going to ask them what they think about world peace or Donald Trump. Yet, every day, that man makes the lives of many people a little bit brighter. He smiles his smiles and makes his jokes and beams goodness and friendliness from that crazy beard. Over a month, he must touch hundreds of people with his sparkling rays of sunshine.
I suddenly thought: that really counts. That means something. There will be no monument or awards ceremony or glittering prize for a man like that, but he makes a difference.

The ordinary, I thought, can be really rather extraordinary, if you just move your head and squint a little and look at it from the right direction.

In which a catastrophe turns out not to be a catastrophe.

One great ride, one sunny morning, one restorative breakfast, two acts of kindness, one thousand four hundred words of book, one near catastrophe.
Of course, it was not really a catastrophe. It just felt like a catastrophe.
One of the interesting things about grief is that at around the four month stage one can get a bit of a false dawn. I say one; I mean me. I remember this from my dad. First of all, people expect you to be all right by now. This is not because they are callous or unimaginative; it’s that they have their own lives to get on with. I try to live up to this expectation because I dread being a bore. Second of all, time is doing its work. There are spells of something almost like normality. I am no longer carrying around the huge bucket of sad water and slopping it about all over the place. The grief still comes from time to time and hurls me round the canvas like a crazy wrestler, but it is not wrangling with me all the time. I’m also in a stage where the sorrow comes out quick and naturally in bursts of tears and then I can move on from it. I think this is quite healthy and am secretly rather proud about it.
But this is where the danger comes. It’s easy to forget, at this stage, that something huge has happened. I’m so in love with stoicism and getting on that I tend to forget that I am still acutely vulnerable. I hate being vulnerable so I don’t like to think about it and am almost certainly in denial. I think I am back on some kind of even keel and then something so small that it can hardly be seen with the naked eye comes along and undoes me.
It was not a catastrophe. It was a flat tyre. For ten minutes, it felt like the end of everything.
It did not help that it was not a gentle, slow puncture, but one of those stupid operatic flats. One minute I was driving along, thinking of the twenty things I had to do today; the next, I was driving on the damn rim.
I heard the terrible noise, felt the wrench of the poor old car, managed to get it back to the drive, got out, saw the devastation, and shouted: ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.’ This slightly surprised two nice men who were planting a hedge next door.
I did not think: oh dear, a flat tyre, that is a bore, happens to everyone.I thought: that’s it; I’m finished.My inner drama queen, who had been at the crème de menthe (she has appalling taste in liquor), came out and did her cruellest, most lipsticky, told-you-so dance. ‘Can’t even keep your car running,’ she shouted. ‘Can’t go anywhere, never learnt to change a tyre, day ruined, work gone to hell, plans shot, organisational skills shown up for the shoddy pretence they are, no silver lining in sight. You are cooked, baby,’ she cried, doing a rather wonky arabesque.‘If only,’ she added cruelly, ‘you had learned to be one of the Organised People.’
It took quite a lot of stern effort to pull myself back together. I called the dear Stepfather, who came and collected me for breakfast and let me vent my spleen. I called the garage and the AA. I went home and wrote a lot of words and then the enchanting AA man arrived and did his work in the flash of an eye and got me back on the road. I love the AA men. They are so nice and non-judgemental.
The sun came back out and gentled the bleak winter land. There was a silver lining, after all. I had to clear out the boot so the AA man could get to the spare tyre. My car boot is worse than my cupboard of doom. But I found several pleasing items that I thought I had lost: a pair of Converse sneakers, two thermoses, a rather muddy and dog-eared copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Crowded Dance of Modern Life.
It was not a catastrophe, after all.

Go slowly, I tell myself. If this were Edwardian England, you would not even be in lavender yet, but still in deepest black. It’s allowed to miss your mother and feel that crack in your heart and sometimes be overset by small things. You are not superhuman, but very, very human. This is what happens. Just keep looking for the light, I tell myself. Because there is light. There is always light.

In which I get a stern reminder never to take any single thing for granted.

This morning, I woke up and stretched. I got up, dressed, put on my socks, brushed my hair, and went downstairs. I took the dogs out and I made breakfast. My mind was full of all the things I had to do that day.             There was some particularly horrid admin which I had been dreading and putting off, so I just did it. The absurdly nice lady at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs was so kind and charming that I felt better about being such a flake. She did not seem to hold it against me and I thanked her for that. (She appeared to find this quite amusing.)            I went down to the horses, checked them over, mixed their feed, hefted down the hay that they need at this time of year, cleaned the water trough, picked up some dung, and took the red mare up to the shed to saddle up. We had a great, very physical ride, working both our bodies, picking up speed in the cold air, stopping on a dime, moving in and out of different gaits and over and across different ground. All our senses were heightened and engaged.            I settled her back in her field and went to do my own work. I made some coffee and started typing fast and hard.
Why do I tell you this? Why do I record these mundane details of the most ordinary life?
Because, somewhere in all that, I met a young man who can do none of those things. One random accident, and that’s all she wrote. He can do no single, usual, daily, taken-for-granted task without help.
I tell you this, because somewhere in there I fell into the abyss. The weather turned sour and bitter and I came across a card from my mother with her writing on it sending me love and that made me cry. I felt stupid about the hopelessness of my administrative skills. I had a slight misunderstanding with someone, which pierced my thin skin. I worried about my good brown mare, who is going to have to have an operation for her sarcoid. Darwin the Dog had an accident and there was shit on the floor. I felt that however hard I worked and however fast I typed, it would never be enough. I felt furious and revolting, as dour and doleful as that dirty sky outside my window.
It’s just a mood, I told myself, sternly. Not every day can be sunshine and tap dancing. I began the long, intricate process of talking myself down from the ceiling.
And then I thought of that young man. However crappy my day is, and sometimes I have crappy days just like the entire human race, I can walk down to a green field, and stroke the kind face of my dear mare, and swing my leg over her mighty back and feel her power under me and sit deep in the saddle as she stretches out under me, strong and true and brave. I can put on my own socks. I don’t know how the mind of a person confined to a motorised chair works, and would not presume to guess, but I kept thinking: they must dream of being able to put on socks. Forget riding a thoroughbred, the dull act of pulling on a sock might seem like the ascent of Everest for someone who cannot move their own body.
I don’t know why fate deals one card to one human and one to another. The whole shooting match seems so monstrously random and unfair that my puny human brain can hardly comprehend it. As usual in these moments, I cling on to the very small, the very immediate, the closely understandable. I understand that I can never, should never, must never, ever, take anything for granted. I pay lip service to this idea, but I quite often forget about it.

There was birdsong today, as the avian chorus starts to rev up in preparation for spring. Yesterday, I heard the first woodpecker, growling in the woods like an old bullfrog. The resentful wind might be blowing in from the north, but yesterday there was sun, and tomorrow there might be again. 

Sunshine and Britishness

It really was the International Space Station and not the six o’clock to Stavanger. I looked it up. Aberdeen, 5.46pm. Too thrilling.
Today, the sun shone all day out of a sapphire blue sky. I had a mighty ride on the red mare, and, fired with triumph, came inside and wrote 3930 words of my new project. This is absurd and should not be allowed, since the quality tends to tail off with the quantity. Trollope used to write five hundred words and then go and invent the pillar box. Still, it was quite something and I felt pleased and proud.
There was something absolutely vital and I’m sure riveting about this day that I had to tell you and now I have completely forgotten it. This is a slight pity, since I was hoping to give you something really juicy today. I feel the blogs have been slightly workaday and blah lately. I wanted to hit you with the wonder, but it’s run for the border and there is nothing I can do about that.
I am working so hard that I don’t really know what is going on in the world. I turn the wireless on for brief moments and hear snatches about the Supreme Court justices and President Obama, and the European wranglings, and Boris Johnson seen coming in and out of Number Ten wearing an interesting hat. I see both sides of Europe and find it impossible to make up my mind. I love the dream of unity and the freedom of trade and movement; I hate the democratic deficit, the awful Brussels gravy train, and the bonkers fish quotas.
I did see that Emma Thompson got into trouble for saying something about poor old Blighty being cold and gloomy and filled with cake (I think that was what it was) and that she felt European, not British. I thought about that for quite a long time. I don’t feel European at all. When I was younger, I wished I did. I thought the Italians and the French were so much more glamorous and sophisticated and intellectual than the British. Now I cast yearning eyes at the Scandis with their civilised social contract. But whatever I might wish or think, I am British to the backbone. All my cultural references, societal attitudes and turns of phrase are so British that they are almost a caricature. I am Marmite and Dad’s Army and The Beano and Nancy Mitford and high tea and the 3.30 at Huntingdon and Radio Four and our own dear Queen. I go to the shop and talk to the ladies about the weather. When asked how I am, I say: ‘Not too bad.’ I have absolutely no idea how to accessorise and cannot make head nor tail of philosophy.

I know that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, but I love these windy islands with every beat of my bashed old heart. I have a deep and enduring faith in the Ordinary Decent Britons who inhabit them. I know one should really be a citizen of the world, but I have British written through me like Brighton through a stick of rock. 

In which I wave at the sky.

Out in the clear evening, the owls were hooting and the gloaming was gloaming and the moon was gleaming and the horses were dreaming. A man on the wireless said something about waving to the International Space Station. I fed the horses and watched the dogs having a rumble. Then, up in the limpid indigo sky, there was a great object lit up like a Christmas tree, sailing overhead like a stately galleon.
I waved.
Could that really be the International Space Station? Can it be over my very field?
I think it might have been a very slow aeroplane, although there was no sound. But, for a magical moment, in my own mazy mind, it really was that great piece of technology from which humans can look down and see the curvature of the earth. I felt very magical, even though the whole thing is to do with science and empiricism.
A lot of work today: book work, HorseBack work, field work. I cleaned the water trough, a perfectly terrifying job, and shifted piles of dung. I am a creature of the earth now; I can hardly remember the days when my clothes and hands and nails were clean. I’m one of the dirty people. Oddly, I’m quite proud of this, although I do sometimes feel a pang when I see women in the chemist who do not have smears of mud all over their trousers and whose hair does not contain small pieces of hay.
A friend sends me a message from the south. Can I come for a party? I don’t know how to reply. I can’t go anywhere, because I’ve got books to write and animals to look after and family obligations and no spare cash for the journey. This sounds so tragic and mimsy that I hardly dare admit it. I’m going to miss all the fiftieth birthdays, which does make me a little melancholy, but I chose a job with an unreliable income stream and that is the price I have to pay.
Actually, it’s not just the vast expense. I find the logistics of leaving home and the long journey and the packing and the planning overwhelming. I lose days beforehand, getting ready, and days afterwards, settling back into my routine. This is a sad reflection of advancing age. I need steadiness and quiet in order to think and write. I need the room of my own.

The incredibly lucky thing is that it is such a nice room. It’s a bit muddly, but it’s got books and pictures and photographs and dogs in it. It has a fine selection of hats. It has a view. Some people never have a nice room in their whole lives. I don’t take that room for granted, not for a single minute. 

The sweetness.

Was having a fairly gnarly, cross Monday, grumpily bashing out 1349 words and feeling as if my head was filled with mud.

Then the family came to the field, and everything was all right, because this happened -

My funny valentines.

I was thinking about romantic love and why I don’t believe in romantic love and why I was never any good at romantic love and how Valentine’s Day means about as much to me as a Crown Green Bowls Day when I heard a voice on the wireless.
It was a young man with a good voice. I did not catch his name. He was on Desert Island Discs and I was thinking about twenty other things and let him go on in the background, heard, but not heard. He was talking about the explorer who died recently in the Antarctic, heartbreakingly close to his goal. ‘Henry was a good friend of mine,’ he said, in his good voice. (It was calm, and decisive, and somehow holding a secret note of merriness in it, although he was talking of rather a lot of serious subjects.) ‘He had a pair of my skis with him, and my jacket.’            Kirsty Young was astounded. ‘He had your skis and your jacket?’ she said, her voice rising with incredulity.            I must put that in a book, I thought.
I walked straight out of the kitchen to the computer, thinking of the book I would put it in. The dying man, so near his life’s dream, with his younger compadre’s coat. What would the book be? I cast around for it, it was on the tip of my tongue, but then it went away again. Never mind, I thought, strictly. I’ll put this haunting fact into a file of things I want to put in books. It would be like F Scott Fitz at the end of The Last Tycoon. It would be like ‘don’t wake the Tarkington ghosts’.
Last week, I wanted to put the thing about the whales dying into a book. Huge, helpless whales were washing up on the east coast of Britain, hopelessly lost, foundered and fatally off course. Humans could do nothing for them. Nobody really knew why they were washing up on the beaches in such numbers. That is a thing for a book, I thought. I’ll write a book about someone who is worried about the whales.
Everything in my life goes into the file marked: write it down, write it down. I sometimes think I should get better at simply living. I perhaps should have stayed and listened to the end of that man with the good voice, so that I could find out who he was and hear more of his fascinating story. But I was too busy typing.
This morning I got up early and made the house ready for guests. I bought flowers and tidied up and made potato cakes and chocolate fridge cake and hot chocolate for the children. Then they had to cancel. I took some of the flowers and the potato cakes and the delicious chocolate mess (for that is what it is) to the dear Stepfather, because it is his first Valentine’s Day without my mother. She used to beckon me aside secretly and get me to go to the village to buy him a special card every year. She would whisper the instructions in high conspiracy so he would not hear.
After all that rushing about, I went down to the horses in the field. They were dreaming in the bright snow. I took their rugs off to let them get the sun on their backs and gentled them and fed them and made sure they were happy.
Valentine’s Day means nothing to me and then, suddenly, in that quiet field, it meant everything because of that loving husband being without his wife. I fell to my knees in the soft snow and let out a shout of grief and missing and regret.
The crying comes in different ways. Sometimes it is a couple of solitary, silent tears which slide easily from my eyes; sometimes it is a storm, like those winds on the north ridge of Everest which strip sense and thought from vulnerable humans. This was a storm. Out it howled, the sadness, into the clean Scottish air. The horses, who are used to this, carried on eating. The red mare looked over for a moment and lipped the top of my head and blinked her eyes and returned to her food.
Like any violent storm, the thing passed on, and I was myself again. I’ve got a free day with a tidy house and vast amounts to eat, and I’m going to watch the racing from Exeter and read a book.
It turns out that my Valentine’s Day is rather lovely. When I say I don’t believe in romantic love, I am not being jaded and cynical. It was never my pot of mustard, but I know that other people do it well and make it work. What I really mean is that I think it is oversold. It is marketed, especially to women, as the mountain peak, the key to bliss, the meaning of life. I believe in all the other loves, the ones that don’t get the press.

I believe in the love of friends and family, the love of beloved creatures, the love of place, the love of the earth, the love of beauty, the love of the written word, the love of the stars and the trees and the moss and the green, green fields. I shall feel love when I watch the grand old chasers this afternoon, galloping through the west country mud. I feel love when I watch my dear old dog play with his new puppy friend in the snow. My heart lifts and sings when I am with my red mare, who is the love of my life. None of these will send me flowers, but that’s all right, because I bought my own, a little pot of delicate tulips. But I don’t need flowers, because I have all that other love, the love that lasts a lifetime, the love that keeps my creaking old ship sailing on.

A sweet dog story.

The temperature drops and the snow comes in. It’s light gentle snow, although the air is hard and frigid. The dogs find the whole thing enchanting; the horses are stoical and hunkered down for the duration.          This morning, a very sweet thing happened.            Each day, I go to my stepfather’s house and make him breakfast. We have excellent eggs. Today, it was a mushroom omelette. I take Darwin the Dog and Stan the Man and they have their breakfast there too.            This morning, as I arrived, I saw a father and daughter walking their dog near the house. I waited for a bit in the car, as Darwin is incurably friendly and cannot help rushing over to any new human he sees and I did not want him capering about the place. But the daughter was very, very tiny and walked very, very slowly and I realised it would be ages before they were out of sight.            So I decided to wrangle D the D in through the front door, not giving him a chance to escape. Stanley, sight-dog that he is, had spotted the party and instead of charging on ahead of me and opening the door, leapt out of the car and tore off after the little group, barking with excitement. He loves making friends too, but he can’t help being noisy about it. I know that he is racing off to play, but if I were a person out for a quiet walk and saw this barking hound roaring down the drive I would be a little daunted.            I got Darwin in and rushed back, shouting for Stanley, who was by now happily sniffing the nice little spaniel and seemed not to be causing too much trouble. He cantered back, looking very pleased with himself, and I put him in the house and went back to lock the car.            I looked down the drive at the tall figure and the tiny figure and the capering dog. I knew what they must be thinking. Stupid woman, can’t control her dogs, bellowing like a fishwife. I felt rather ashamed. I should have had both canines on leads and I didn’t. The child was very, very young, and I feared she might be scarred for life.            I was about to slink back into the house in shame when I changed my mind.             I ran down the drive and caught up with the little group. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I do hope your daughter was not frightened. I do apologise.’            The man nodded and smiled, entirely unfazed. His small girl, huddled up against the weather in a thick coat and bobble hat, looked up quizzically. ‘Oh,’ the father said. ‘Don’t worry. She’s used to dogs.’            I explained about Stanley and how he was still a bit insecure from being a rescue and that although he wanted to be friends he could not help the barking thing. I apologised again.             The father smiled and nodded and said more nice things.            Then, down the avenue, hurtling like a bullet, came Stan the Man. He can famously open any door and he was clearly tired of waiting for me and had come to see what I was doing. ‘Oh,’ I said, in embarrassment. ‘Here he is.’             There was no barking this time, just a lot of dancing and tail-wagging. I explained to the little girl about the escape artist. ‘He can open doors,’ I told her. ‘So he’s come to find us.’            She looked at me, her eyes round and curious. ‘Big dog,’ she said. ‘With his paws.’            ‘Yes,’ I said, pleased she got it. ‘He opens doors with those naughty paws.’            Then we talked about the snow and about dogs in general and all was merry as a marriage bell.            I loved about twenty things about that moment. I loved the little girl and her staunch bravery and her questing mind. I loved the kind father with his sanguine view of the world. I loved their excellent snow outfits. I loved that Stanley came back and showed them his best and kindest side. I loved that I made the decision to catch them up and apologise instead of hiding in the house, muttering like Muttley, convinced they thought me risible and hopeless.
            It was a tiny story, and a rather profound one at the same time. This will be the kind of story I shall be very, very glad that I wrote down. It’s the kind of story I like to remember.