Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 35

No blog today.

Happy day. Family, enchanting telephone call, sunshine, mare, Stan the Man digging for rats, HorseBack, book, and all work done and done and done so I could sit down and watch the racing. The glorious fillies are about to come out for the Oaks, and you know what I am like about the thoroughbred fillies.

As a result of the dancing girls in the Epsom sun, I have no time to write the blog. I am ruthlessly sacrificing you to the beauty of Legatissimo and Jack Naylor and Crystal Zvezda and Lady of Dubai. I expect that the mighty Aidan O’Brien will run away with the spoils, and give his usual modest interview afterwards so that I can play AOB bingo and count how many times he uses the word ‘listen’. (Also: ‘the lads’.) But today I’m a Luca Cumani girl, and I hope his brave, galloping Lady of Dubai might upset the odds.

Whatever happens, I hope they all run their race and come home safe.

Happy weekend. Back on Monday, I hope with some more coherent sentences than these.

 

Today’s pictures:

The duchess was bred to win the Oaks, but couldn’t even manage a selling plate. Bless her sweet, slow hooves:

Stanley the Manly, posing with some interested cows:

A shining light. Or, some thoughts on friendship.

I ring up the Beloved Cousin.

‘Oh,’ she exclaims. ‘I miss you.’

‘I miss you too,’ I shout.

‘I was only thinking, just the other day,’ she said, ‘that I miss you. It was something that made me laugh, that I knew would make you laugh too.’

The Beloved Cousin and I are quite distant cousins. Our great-grandfathers were brothers. Our grandmothers knew each other quite well, and our fathers met as boys, but then went in radically different directions, one into racing, one into politics. So, in the end, we met quite by chance, when we were in the same university town at the age of eighteen. It took a while. She was very glamorous and went to London a lot. I was a bit of a swot and spent most of my time discovering new libraries. (The day I found the Codrington was the day I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.) I did go dancing in the evening, because it was the eighties and we really did go disco dancing, but for quite a long time I was more of a History Faculty sort of gal. And then our worlds, which had always slightly overlapped, came together, and suddenly, almost from one day to the next, we were friends, and that was that.

Thirty years, give or take. Imagine that. We’ve driven across Ireland together, and flirted with poets and piano players and a famous old politico, who appeared out of nowhere rather to everyone’s surprise. We were together on the Worst Holiday in the World, when a group of twelve of us crammed into what was advertised as a Spanish villa, and turned out to be a house the size of a postage stamp, situated opposite a 24-hour petrol station. The fallings out started within half an hour and by the end no-one was speaking to anyone, except for the cousin and I.

We’ve bitten our lips as we watched each other fall in and out of love with entirely unsuitable gentlemen. I would drive down to Brighton to see her in rep, in her acting days, and she would be by my side at each book launch. We’ve stayed up till dawn and watched the sun rise, and now, in our middle-age, we put on our slippers and have a glass of the good claret and take grateful old lady early nights.

We’ve spent Christmases and Easters and New Years together. We’ve shouted them past the post at Ascot and roared them up the hill at Cheltenham. Our eyes have met in speaking understanding across dinner tables filled with crashing bores (and crashing boors). I saw the very first smile of her second daughter, at three weeks old, and to this day, we all say, in unison: ‘It was not wind.’ On the night of my father’s funeral, it was she who took me in. Three weeks later, I drove her the two hundred miles home from her brother’s funeral.

In those thirty years, I think we’ve had one falling out. It lasted for about two hours, and once we talked over the misunderstanding and almost wept with relief, we never did it again.

Our lives are stupidly busy, and our schedules are quite different, and we spend a lot of time thinking we should ring and then not ringing because it’s not the right moment, so when we spoke this morning we had not heard each other’s voices for a few weeks. Within four minutes, we were laughing so much we could not breathe or talk. We were laughing at two memories, ranging back over many years, because we’ve got so much history together, so many stories, so many disasters and heartbreaks and muddles and absurdities. The amazing thing is that even the heartbreaks make us laugh now.

When I was very young, I suspected that someone, somewhere, had made a bit of a category error. Into the category of indispensible things, of defining fulfilments, that someone had put romantic love. It also went very much into the Woman category. That was the thing that the ladies could not do without. Men, the swaggery adventurers that they were, could probably live quite well without a love of their life, but the tender-hearted females would be lost without it. I remember getting really quite cross about this. I thought the love that mattered, the love that endured, the love that one could not survive without was friend love. In all my early novels, the true love is that of friendship.

Thirty years on, I think that I was right. I was wrong about pretty much everything in my youth, except possibly my views on the Repeal of the Corn Laws. I had that arrogance of too much education, and could not yet tell the difference between book learning and life learning. But I think I got that part right. Apart, obviously, from having a red mare, the greatest joy in life is a true friend.

I smile as I write this. I think: why is she such a good friend? Why do I love her so? Let me count the ways. She is funny, and clever, and kind, and wise, and literal, and unexpected. She knows a lot about a lot of things, and she is very modest about it, hiding her light under a bushel. She’s stoical; she damn well gets on with it. I admire her, because she’s made one of the best and happiest and most interesting families I’ve ever seen. Her house is a happy house.

She’s an enthusiast. She does not make a three act opera of everything and she knows very well that not everything is about her. She is a good listener. She’s an incredible amount of fun to be around, but she also has something earthed in her, steady and rooted. She always makes me feel better than I am. She gets every single thing I say, so I never have to explain myself. She is generous and thoughtful. In thirty years, she has never bored me for a single second.

All that is true, and yet that is not all of it. She’s got that indefinable extra thing, that little sprinkle of stardust, that something special, that cannot go into easy words or blithe adjectives.

British people tend not to tell their friends how absolutely bloody marvellous they are. We Britons are brought up to read between the lines, rely entirely on understatement, take refuge in irony. It’s quite terrifyingly embarrassing to use a simple declarative sentence or make a direct expression of love. Even paying a compliment can feel alien and vulgar and must at once be followed by a joke. The real truth will generally only come out after copious amounts of strong liquor. (This may be why dear old Blighty is an island of drinkers.) But sometimes, I say to myself sternly, one must Say The Thing. If one has such a friend, it is worth more than rubies. From time to time, the thing must be marked. Respect is due. And gratitude, too.

 

Today’s pictures:

I love this one of the BC, not just because of the idiosyncratic rock and roll sunglasses, but because you can see me reflected in the left hand lens. There we are, together, at the click of a shutter:

With her girls:

And a little random collection of pictures from the last few days:

A surprisingly good day.

Today was a very lovely day. This was unexpected, since I was up all night worrying about twenty-seven different things. The specific worry was a stupid one: the red mare is a little bit sore on her near fore, and the weather had gone loco, and I lay in bed, stiff as a board, listening to the ruthless gales and horrid rain, and thinking of her dolefully limping over to her favourite tree. This then led to the twenty-six other worries, which are a filthy melange of existential fears, family stuff, work frets, and general self-reproaches. I tried doing my good sanity test. I said to myself: you can sit up all night worrying about things you cannot change, or you can go to sleep like a sensible person. But even this did not work.

So I went madly down to the field this morning, bereft of sleep and feeling distrait, only to find the mare as happy and relaxed as a bug, and a kind friend there ready to listen to every single one of my lunatic night terrors. I had not necessarily meant to share with the group, but that was how the conversation went. We walked our horses and talked in the sunshine, and out it all came, and there was perspective, sympathy and laughter.

Afterwards, I remembered my great maxim, which I know by heart yet still manage to forget: vulnerability is at the heart of confidence.

I like this because it is true, but also because it sounds like a paradox. The moment I lay myself bare, put down my stupid defences, permit myself to be vulnerable, the better and stronger and more at home in the world I feel. I have a constitutional dislike of asking for help, of seeming to be needy, of not being seen to be entirely independent. This is not a good character trait. Everybody needs a helping hand sometimes. Doing everything on one’s own is not a sign of strength or brilliance. The kind friend helped. She did not point or mock at my idiotish fears and human flaws. She listened and spoke some wise words and, as always, sunlight, literal and metaphorical, sanitised the dark and twisty parts of this human’s condition.

The funny thing is that the red mare taught me this lesson well, and it still amazes me that I should forget it. I had to ask for help with her, and I got it, and it transformed everything. She was glorious this morning, and her glory exists because I did not try to do everything by myself. I stretched out for other humans who know more than I, and found teachers and mentors, and that is part of the reason every day with her is a joy.

My next step is to make sure that all those mighty life lessons she teaches me can be applied to humans as well as horses.

I wish that I could bridge the gap between the known and the applied. I really do know quite a lot. It’s just that too often I forget to do the things I know.

 

 

Sweet picture of the dozy red mare and her beautiful Paint friend taken by the very kind Colette Faichnie.

I give up.

The internet has been off again all day, and something terrible has happened to Windows Live Writer, which now refuses to recognise that I or this blog exist, so I’ve given up. Even now, the light is trembling and the whole thing is glitching at me in a most threatening manner. I’m hoping that by Monday everyone shall have finished whatever fiendish work it is they are doing. I do hope it is the upgrading work, and that I am not now in the same basket as the people of Somerset, some of whom don't seem to get the internet at all. I'm so used to super-whizzy broadband that I find it most disconcerting to be without it.

In the meantime, I leave you with some very stately sheep:

Glitches

Despite having enjoyed myself vastly when I took time out from the internet, this week I really, really wanted to use it. Laughing at me, it turned itself off. Apparently our local connection is being upgraded, or some such thing, which meant that there was no internet at all for two whole days, and then, when it would come tauntingly back on, it would either go all glitchy and scratchy, so nothing useful could get done, or hold firm for about ten minutes before running off again to join the circus.

It’s driving me mad.

That is why there has been no blogging. Forgive me. I’m hoping now we are back in business and that normal service shall be resumed.


In the meantime, the weather is fine and the red mare is keeping me sane by doing work of such delicacy, beauty, composure and softness that I am almost starting to believe that the dressage squirrels which exist as a joke in my mind are in fact real, and have been coming in the night. Actual whoops of joy may be heard daily echoing off the dear Scottish hills, and she gets a sweet, secret look of satisfaction on her face, as if she is thinking to herself that she knew this brilliance all along, and was just waiting until I was ready for it.

A vote for love.

Today, the people of Ireland are voting for love. Or, at least, that is how it has become in my mind.

I’ve never really understood the terror of equal marriage. Britain did it, and the sky did not fall. Big Ben still stands, and the Queen is still the Queen, and there is honey still for tea. The only difference is that there are now many, many people who are no longer told, by the state, that they are less than.

Because that is what it is. You, well, we’ll put up with you, with your show tunes and your comfortable shoes and your Noel Coward records, as long as you stand in the corner and don’t make a fuss. You are not quite up to cake and confetti and a list at Peter Jones, like the straights are.

It’s absurd, if one thinks about it for more than two minutes. Love is love, and should be celebrated in all its forms. There are enough natural sadnesses – droughts, disasters, earthquakes – without adding a quite unnecessary human one. It’s not as if heterosexuals are intrinsically fitted for marriage, after all. Lots of them make an absolute pig’s ear of it, having affairs and being workaholics and neglecting their children and getting into messy divorces. The odd idea that it is history that shows the way – man and woman being the superior model – is fatally flawed. I’m reading a lot of eighteenth century history at the moment, and even in the marriages where love was involved, rather than land and money, the husbands almost always had a bit of muslin on the side, or a thing with a serving wench, or a nice arrangement with an actress. The fifth Duke of Devonshire brought his illegitimate child to live with his wife, and then settled down to a curious ménage with his mistress and his wife and a further daughter born out of wedlock. All this in an age of supposed strict propriety.

If a man loves a man and a woman loves a woman, and they want to make that commitment for life in front of their best beloveds, surely that must be a matter for joy, not condemnation? Poor old marriage, which needs all the help it can get, should be delighted to be desired by a new constituency. It’s not often that lawmakers get the chance to add, directly and without hindrance, to the sum total of human happiness. Fairness in marriage is one of those delightful opportunities.

Equality is perhaps a vain pursuit. Just as nature is not a feminist, she is not a democrat. People are born with absurdly unfair advantages – wit, charm, cleverness, a musical ear, a feel for languages, ravishing cheekbones, a happy disposition. Some people merely have to walk into a room to light it up; others skulk in the shadows, shy and taciturn and self-conscious. Some people have talents, others have none. The idea of levelling the playing field may be fool’s gold, but putting up artificial inequalities where there need be none is a silliness too far.

Changing the laws of marriage is not just a discrete good, so that a long devotion may be publicly marked, it is a wider statement of intent. It is a way of society saying, to ta fearful seventeen-year-old in a lonely room, struggling with his sexuality, searching for her role models, you are all right. You are not other, or different, or below the salt. You are not, almost literally in this case, beyond the Pale. This great central societal ritual is not reserved for those who pass Go and collect £200; it is for everyone. Come in, the water’s fine.

It is an act of kindness, generosity, rightness, fairness, and, I think more and more as I get older and more auntish, simple good manners.

I hope very much for yes. Even as I write this, people are flying in from the Irish diaspora, to vote their hearts. There is a sense of hope and joy. I hope it is a mighty, resounding affirmative, a lovely, expansive thing, a cross in the box for love.

 

No time for pictures, as I have stupid amounts of work to do. Just my dear red girl, who was all about the love today. They say that horses mirror their humans. Perhaps she sensed that my mind was filled with love, and reflected it back at me, because she was as sweet and soft and affectionate as I’ve ever known her:

Spring Fever.

Spring has really sprung. All the blossom is out and the colours are growing vivid and the birds are performing frankly unspeakable acts, sometimes on the wing. I wake in the night to hear the oystercatchers singing like drunken sailors out on a spree. The swifts are here although I have still not seen my swallows. We have a new visitor in the field, in addition to the pied wagtails and the swifts and our two robins and the usual dark complement of jackdaws. He is a proud and vocal chaffinch, and is very interested in the horses. At times, he almost seems to be singing his song to them.

I am so ignorant of birds that I had to look the chaffinch up. It is known, rather distressingly, as the Common Chaffinch, on account of being the second most common breeding bird in Britain. I pucker up at this, furious on my fellow’s behalf. There is nothing common about him. His plumage is as rich and exotic as that of a Chinese emperor. He has a little blue cap and a breast the colour of old roses and singing white flashes on his black wings. He is splendid and remarkable in every way. Common, indeed.

Time is such an odd thing. As I grow older, it races past me in a hurling blur. I quite often get the days of the week wrong, and for most of this month have been captioning my photographs as April rather than May. And yet it seems years since it was spring. The Scottish winter goes on much longer than the English one, and there is no bosky transition period. We do not have the nodding cow parsley in the lanes and the tumbling hedgerows and the sense of burgeoning that comes to England. Scottish nature is much more austere and reticent. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, until it seems that the world will remain brown and bleak forever, and then, almost overnight – spring. It is as if some capricious giant has waved a wand and everything comes out – there are tiny leaves in stinging green and gaudy blossom in vulgar pink and unapologetic dandelions raising their yellow heads. Even the hills change colour, as if they have cast off their sensible winter clothing and gone to Paris for the new modes.

It is very, very exciting.

Horses, famously, go a bit wild on the spring grass, get spring fever, have spring twinkles in their toes. Perhaps humans have that too. My mind is working at eighty miles an hour. I can’t sleep because I am writing three books in my head at once. I have a new idea which I can’t possibly start, because I’m still editing two manuscripts, but this story won’t leave me alone, and I imagine convoluted dialogue in my head as I walk down to tend to the mare.

I do steady groundwork with her, to get the spring out of her. Someone needs to do some groundwork with me.

 

Today’s pictures:

I cannot capture my own chaffinch as he moves too fast, but I found this lovely picture on Wikimedia, available for public use, taken by a gentleman called Michael Maggs:

You see how not common.

No blog today.

The most interesting thing about my week off the internet is that I appear to have reset my brain back to the longform. The clever neurobiologists discovered, not that long ago, that the brain remains plastic even into advanced age. As I understand it, this means that one may develop new neural pathways at the drop of a hat. Or: one really can teach an old dog new tricks.

One of the things I have noticed in the last couple of years, as my love of the web grew stronger, was that my attention span became a little hazy. The internet is a starling place, filled with scattered, shiny jewels – look there, and then here, and then over there again. Even a short tabloid-ish article is full of links, inviting one to change the subject before the piece is even read. Sitting down to long, sustained reading became less attractive. I craved distraction. I would actually say to myself, when my work was finished: ‘Ah, now I can read the internet.’

Last night, I almost panicked because I could not find my book. (Stanley the Dog had hidden it under the bed.) When it was restored to me, I was in clover. All I wanted was to read five hundred pages about the politics of the 18th century. HURRAH.

So, today, I’ve finished my HorseBack work, and I’ve posted a little story about the red mare on her dedicated page, and I’ve had a quick look at Facebook, and my internet work is done. There is no mental momentum for the blog. I would normally apologise for this, but I’m so delighted with being restored to a good old habit that I won’t. I know you will understand anyway.

Instead, here is a link to what I did do on the internet today. It was a fine morning with fine people and I’m quite pleased with these pictures: https://www.facebook.com/HorseBackUK

 

In which I get back my mojo.

Today, I talked to an equine dentist and two shrinks. I was in heaven.

I love people who are clever and thoughtful and I love people who are good at their jobs. These three were at the crest and peak of both these scales. They were funny too, and told me stories, and took me to places I had never been. The dentist had worked in Kentucky and at the Keenland sales. He told me a grand tale about being asked to get a scruffy mare ready for one sale, at which the doubtful owner thought she might fetch nine grand, if he was lucky. She had good bloodlines and would go for a brood mare, but she did not look much. My dentist had six hours to get her ready. By the time she walked into the ring, she was gleaming with so much health and shine that the bidding shot up to seventy-five thousand dollars and stayed there. The stories of the Scottish horseman who could work miracles ran round the sales like fire, and suddenly tycoons were approaching him, offering silly money and visas and a car if he could do the same for their horses.

‘But I had a fiancée,’ said the dentist, smiling. ‘So I went home.’

The shrinks are trauma specialists, so we talked about the wilder shores of human experience, and how the mind deals with that. It’s one of the subjects that interests me most. I yelped and slapped my leg and at one point actually jumped up and down, I was so interested and delighted. I sometimes wonder what it must feel like to be self-contained. (I shall never know.)

In the quiet of the mare’s field, the swifts have arrived. I saw them for the first time today, swooping low over her dear back, with their quick grace. I felt as happy as if someone had sent them to me specially, as a present.

I have my mojo back. It went away and I was sadly dashed. I don’t really know what it was all about, although I’m trying to work it out. Life, I expect. I’ve had a bit of a psychological revelation, one of those things I should have worked out twenty years ago but didn’t. It’s a slight shift in reality and I’m just getting used to it and working out the ramifications and talking it through with the mare, who is an excellent listener. Stanley the Dog does not care, because he has tunnels to dig and rats to catch and is far too busy to plumb the mysteries of the human spirit. But the mare, who loves standing still and loves the sound of the human voice, will let me chat for hours. So we shall figure it out.

 

Today’s pictures:

The dentist, with dear Polly the Cob. It’s quite a lot to ask of a horse, to have that great bit of kit in their mouth, but she was very good and brave. People always talk about the hoof – without the hoof, you have nothing – but the teeth are as important. Good equine dentistry is worth more than emeralds:

Spring has sprung at last. This is the view from HorseBack, looking south over the Dee valley. Look at the blossom:

But at home, the doughty old oaks, as old as time, still refuse to put out one single leaf:

A week of living offline.

Author’s note: I’ve been off the internet for a week. I should have loved to come back with a bang, all pith and wit and to the point. How shiny and renewed I would seem. How happy the Dear Readers would be. Instead, you may have guessed, I have returned with seven days of pent-up writing, so this is my usual hotch-potch of tangents, fancies, absurd length, and quite possibly no point at all. Some things, it appears, do not change.

 

 

On Monday the 11th of May I decided, for a lot of dull and complicated reasons, to get offline.

I adore the internet. I believe it mostly uses its powers for good rather than evil. I think it still carries the imprint of its great inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, who gave it away for free. (I know that Berners-Lee did not really invent the internet. The American defence department did that with an assist from various universities, British and French scientists, and help from Hedy Lamarr. And Al Gore. Or something. But Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web which is what everyone uses and what is, in daily life, the de facto internet. If I am to thank one human, he is that human.) My fondness for the internet is such that when it goes mad and starts issuing death threats to women who want Jane Austen on a banknote, I feel that peculiar sorrow that you get when a dear old friend does something entirely out of character.

Of course, there is no such thing as ‘the internet’. Just as with other sweeping collective nouns, like the electorate or the government or parliament, it is made up of the various individuals who people it. Like those individuals, it is good and bad and funny and silly and angry and generous and rotten.

Mostly, I try to fight confirmation bias, but my confirmation bias is on red alert when I go online. I see the small human stories, the moments of politeness, the daily kindnesses, the generosity of spirit, the comical pandas, the engaged and informative debates, the wonderful gaudy spree of information. All those things I would never know and all those lives I would never witness are there for me, like a dazzling human play.

But I hit a bit of a wall and my mind was too stretched and I thought: switch the machine off.

On the first two days, I remained silent – no tweeting, no blogging, no Facebook posts - but still had the odd peek behind the curtain. There was a stupid man saying stupid things which went a tiny bit viral, and I felt cross about it but did not comment. There were two people asking for help on a horse forum I follow. I sort of knew the answer, but put my bossy boots away and let others, who had more knowledge than I, sort out the problem. On the radio, a woman with an amazingly irritating voice and a mealy mouth was being annoying; I refrained from tweeting about people who cannot call a spade a spade. Instead of waking up in the morning thinking thoughts that must be shared with the group, I just thought thoughts. I did not have to photograph my dog, my horse, my garden, my life, for public consumption.

Stopping the blog and the Facebook was a bit sad. I like putting things out in the world and getting the reaction from the Dear Readers. It has a touching community aspect which I enjoy. It has brought me into contact with people I would not otherwise know and it gives me a perspective on life. It is a pressure though. I want to do something good, write some decent prose, make people smile. Every day, I try to offer something. Now, I thought, I can just think the thoughts and live the life and stay still.

The third day was easy. On the second day, I read an article in the Guardian and half an article in the Speccie and then stopped, not because I was keeping to my rule, but because my normal what are people saying about the news engine was simply not firing. After that, I don’t think I thought about the online world at all for day three. I read a book instead. I suddenly thought: I won’t have to panic any more when the electricity goes down and I have no computer and I have to sit with nothing but candles and my library.

On the fourth day, I was sorely tested. There was an And Finally item on the news. And, finally, JOHNNY DEPP HAS YORKSHIRE TERRIERS. Actually, they did not  phrase it quite like that. It was a fluff piece about him trying to smuggle his dogs into Australia on his private jet. The funniest part was a stern Australian customs man who said: ‘I don’t care if you have been voted the Sexiest Man in the World twice, rules are rules.’ It was not a story about the coolest actor on the planet having toy dogs, but that was what struck me. Johnny Depp should have sleek, athletic Lab-Collie crosses, or Weimeraners, or German short-haired Pointers, or Vislas, or a lovely lurcher, or some kind of noble hunting dog. I could see him with beagles or Dalmatians or American Foxhounds. But Yorkshire Terriers????

On a normal day I would have blogged the hell out of this. I would have made jokes about all the road trips in the world with Hunter S Thompson not redeeming Depp’s shattered image. Did he tie bows in their hair and call them Fifi and Nou-Nou? I was on the floor with amazement and interest.

Instead, I thought those thoughts in my own head and went away to write a book. After that I would read a book. I was slightly sad I could not do my Depp riff, but then I might have made people who adore Yorkshire Terriers unhappy, so perhaps it was just as well. I had a suspicion that in about seven hours I would not think it that interesting anyway. The thing about living on the internet is that you are always hunting for hooks. This story, that picture, this unlikely juxtaposition, that hysterical joke – everything must be grist to the online mill. Now, my hazy scenting mind could just see a thing as it was, turn it over, and put it down again. It did not have to be exploited for some cheap reaction. I quite liked this. Day Four was perhaps not going to be as hard as I thought.

On the fifth day, I almost broke cover. I felt slightly out of touch with the world. Of course I still had the dear old BBC and Radio Four; I heard the news. But I realised how much I gathered daily from the internet – pieces of political gossip, sudden scandals in high places, excellent analysis from sophisticated brains. International news, in particular, breaks now on the internet, and the lumbering behemoths of television and print seem miles behind.

I missed the camaraderie too. It had been the Dante meeting at York and then a new rich raceday at Newbury, with some young dazzlers and some old friends running on the sun-beamed turf. I wanted my racing posse. I wanted to talk about the cool brilliance of Ryan Moore and what on earth he was going to do with his four new watches, and the dancing beauty of Telescope romping down the straight, and the sweet, determined face of Integral, and how she ran like a tiger in defeat. I wanted to share the wonder of American Pharoah (sic) powering through the dour slop of Belmont like a doughty old warrior to win the Preakness and keep his Triple Crown hopes alive.

But I resisted. I’m not sure whether this experiment really did rest my tired brain, although it did make me realise how much of my internet use was out of knee-jerk habit. For all that, I was cussedly determined to see it through. I did damn well read books and long magazine articles and managed perfectly well without any pictures of adorable pandas. I quite liked the fact that I realised I did not have to comment on every single thing that took my interest, that the online world really did not need my thoughts and opinions, but could trundle along perfectly happily without me. I had assumed that in the burly and hurly of the antic web nobody would notice, but, rather touchingly, they did. A few kind people, used to my racing yelps of delight, daily red mare adoration, winding blog tangents, sunny Scottish photographs, and Stanley the Dog tunnel-digging bulletins, did gently make sure that I was not dead in a ditch. I was rather astonished and very moved. One of them I knew in real life; the rest were pure online friends, the absolute shining epitome of the kindness of strangers. A community is a community, even if it is virtual. The sneeriness of those who denigrate the online world would fade like breath on glass faced with the generous reality.

One of those online friends is facing the kind of profound heartbreak for which, I always think, words are no good. I love words and believe in words and am daily astounded by the power of words, but there are times when they are paltry, and this is one of those times. Yet she said, stoical and encouraging, that she missed reading what I wrote. Good God, I thought, all my absurd musings, incoherent half-formed theories, idiotish obsessions actually mean something to someone I have never met, who is facing one of life’s cruellest fast balls. Such a thing should perhaps make one feel proud; it made me feel humble.

The internet is a place of huge world events, universally famous humans, dictators, disasters, conspiracy theories, and governments. The tectonic plates of geo-politics shift and grind. It is a wide prairie of important information which effects real humans. But it is also a place where one may find illuminating, touching, startling and inspiring slivers of ordinary lives. These lives will not go down in the history books. They will not have monuments built to them; they contain no levers which  may shift the world. But there, in little flashes of online reality, they exist, provoking a laugh, a cry, a frown of recognition. They mean something.

Those lives mean something whether they are written down or not. You do not have to do a tap dance on Facebook to prove your worth. But those glimpses, seen by unknown humans thousands of miles away, are, I think, benign little arrows which fly from one ordinary heart to another.

All of which is a very, very long way of saying: I’m glad to be back.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are from a sunny day at the end of last week: