Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 37

The more you give, the more you get.

Everyone says, looking at the sky, British stoicism in their voices: ‘The snow is coming.’ It’s hard to believe as I stand in the warm field with my dozy mare. The sun on her back has sent her into a dream of pleasure and everything about her is soft and relaxed. All is good in her world.

I run up to HorseBack to do my work there. One of the lovely things it has taught me is not to be afraid of people with damaged bodies. I used to have an embarrassed terror of what I once called disability. I didn’t know where to look or how to act. I tried so hard to be normal that I fell into a high-voiced phoniness, overcompensating to beat the band. Now I’m so used to it that I genuinely don’t notice it. The prosthetic is registered, and after that I just see the person. There is no voice in my head shouting, at crazed Basil Fawlty pitch: ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T MENTION THE LEG.’

Volunteering for a charity can sound terribly pious and po-faced. Oh, oh, look at me, doing good. In fact, I think it’s one of the most selfish things I’ve ever done. I do get the gift of feeling I’m putting some tiny thing into the world, but the gift is much, much more than that. My mind, which I had not even realised was closed, has been cranked wide open. I have listened to stories and heard perspectives and seen attitudes which I would never have known otherwise. I may now converse with any human missing any part of the anatomy without falling into a sinkhole of terror that I shall say the wrong thing. These people turned me authentic where I was once artificial. That is one of the greatest presents you can give to a human being.

I think a lot about language. Language is one of my great loves, my enduring delights. I never lose my awe and wonder at what words can do. They are worm-holers, time-travellers, scene-setters. Tiny black scratches on a page can take you to 19th century Russia or 25th century Mars. They may transport the reader into other minds and other worlds. Those scratches may cause water to come out of human eyes, or provoke laughter to make the stomach ache. They can enlighten, soothe, galvanise, reassure. The act of writing itself can release anger, cure angst, calm a harried mind. Write it down, write it down, sing my better angels. These little words I play with every day make a record of my love for my dear red mare, so that when she is only a memory I shall still have her with me. She will always exist, in the language of Shakespeare and Milton.

Because of going to HorseBack every week, I don’t use the word disability. It’s not out of some mealy-mouthed political correctness. It’s because I have come to realise that it is not the right word. Language matters. These men and women are the least disabled people I have ever met. They might have been blown to smithereens by roadside bombs, but they can still climb Ben Nevis in the rain and the murk. They work with horses and make unrepeatable jokes and carry themselves with no trace of self-pity. They do bear scars in their bodies and in their minds which mean that they may struggle with things which other people might take for granted. Just because I do not focus on their wounds does not mean that I do not appreciate the challenges they face. But disability is not the word. I prefer to describe the thing as it is. There is a limb missing; the fingers are gone; the Post-Traumatic Stress includes hyper-vigilance and agoraphobia. I don’t think that one word, that single label, is insulting or demeaning or belittling; it just doesn’t tell the thing like it is. The choice is my own, and it means something to me. It’s a decision, not a judgement.

Oddly enough, as I was writing this the telephone rang. It was a nice man called Pete from Action Aid. Apparently I have been supporting Action Aid for twenty-two years. Pete, who sounded as if he was not born when I set up my first direct debit, had amazement in his voice. (I had a rueful moment of thinking the astonishment was that anyone could be that old.)

I remember the impulse as if it were yesterday. All my life, I have carried the hum of First World guilt in my ears. I shall never quite understand why I had the luck to be born in a liberal democracy with running water and a temperate climate and a roof over my head. In a shameless manner, I thought that if I whacked some money each month to a good cause then I might ease that guilt. It was not the most salutary reason in the world, but, anyway, Pete seemed pleased.

He was ringing to tell me about disaster prevention and told me of a family in Vietman who had spent three days on the roof of their house as the flood waters rose. Could I spare another two pounds a month so that they could have an early warning system? Yes, I could. How can I say no to two pounds when I am about to shell out fifty times that for some hay for my horse?

HorseBack, however, has nothing to do with assuaging guilt. There is no consciousness of others not having the fortune I have. It’s part of my life. It’s hard work. Far from feeling saintly, I sometimes get scratchy and manic and even grumpy about the demands on my time, even though it’s entirely my own choice to do it. It’s an eye-opener, a mind-expander, a weekly perspective police. I don’t feel like a good person when I am there; I am far too busy being interested and laughing my head off and listening to things I should never hear anywhere else. I canter about and make bad jokes (‘Are we playing innuendo bingo?’ I hollered, at one point this morning) and frown as I try to get a good angle with the camera and give my favourite horses a good scratch and catch up with the returning veterans.

I suppose I sometimes feel useful, part of something bigger than my own small self, but mostly I feel galvanised. There is a reason that people say there is a paradox in volunteering. The paradox is this: the more you give, the more you get. It’s that damn simple. And I love it.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack UK course, this morning. All these veterans have gone through life-changing injury, physical and mental. They have seen things no human eye should see. Until they came here, most of them had never even met a horse. And here they are:

At one point, I started faffing around with angles, trying to get arty. These pictures are not technical successes, because the focus is all wrong, but I rather love them anyway:

Back in her quiet, sunny field, the duchess is enjoying her Thunderbrook’s. This is a top-quality feed which I have shipped in at vast expense, by couriers who believe I live in the Highlands, however often I tell them I don’t, so that they can charge me an extra premium. I don’t care. Only the best is good enough for the red mare:

The peace is coming off her in waves. She is my own little Zen mistress and she was at her most Zennish today:

Meanwhile, Stan the Man is HUNTING. Again, not the best picture I ever took but I like it because you can see the determination. He is a very busy dog. Some days, he can’t even stop to say hello because he has jobs to finish:

Ground Elder.

In a book whose name I cannot recall, Miss Marple puts her wise old head on one side and says: ‘When you get ground elder really badly in a border, there is nothing to do but dig the whole thing up and start again.’

She was using ground elder as a metaphor for some kind of fiendish crime of course, but I have always worried about literal ground elder. My dear little garden is plagued by it, and I am too much of an old hippy to allow it to be sprayed. I once had to stop a tall gentleman with a fanatical gleam in his eye from dousing it with Agent Orange. (I didn’t even know that was legal.) He had the hazmat suit on and everything. ‘No, no,’ I cried, hanging on his arm like a 19th century damsel. I practically added: ‘Pray, sir, do not,’ in swooning accents.

So, every year, I pull out the mean little elders with my bare hands. I never win the battle, but my battalions keep marching on.

This morning, I saw to my horror that the things had gone crazy. Spring-time ground elders every damn where. I fell to my knees and started digging them up with my fingers. Stanley the Dog thought it a very poor sort of a game.

I uncovered some enchanting little vincas and some tiny box plants and rescued a lovely peony from despair. I am not digging up my bed and starting again. I’m going to go on battling.

I thought, as I crouched low with determination, my hands in the good Scottish earth, that I have ground elder of the mind. I don’t think I can ever dig up that mental bed up and start again. I think I have to keep pulling the stuff up by the roots, every day.

I think it is a lot to do with people leaving. My dad left, when I was seven, and I think that is one of the defining features of my life. I adored my father, and I missed him. He came to see us and I went to stay with him, but it was not the same. I missed him then and I miss him still.

Even though my rational mind knows that all humans are different individuals, with different lives and different thoughts and different loves, I have a magical part of my brain which really does suspect that everyone is just like me. (You can see this as horrid narcissism, or being a hopeful citizen of the world. I can’t decide.) I think that somewhere in the most nutty corridor of my mind I sort of believe that everyone has a red mare and is a politics geek and knows by heart the poems of Yeats. I don’t refine on my father leaving, because that part of me secretly believes that all fathers go. But they really don’t. Lots and lots and lots of fathers stay. Of course, some are dead bores and some are workaholics and some are emotionally absent, but some are not. They are there, at the breakfast table, entwined in their children’s lives. They know the small things, they get the private jokes, they understand the heartaches.

I believe in stoicism, and I’m not going to make a three-act opera of something that happened forty years ago. But it did happen, and I think one must mark it. The ground elder that springs from that leaving has to be pulled up, or it will choke the whole. It’s not a sorrow or a pity, so much, it’s just a thing. It is there. The beloved was beloved, and then he was gone.

That’s my thought for the day. It’s about balance, I think. I think one has to acknowledge the griefs of life, the ones that leave little scars and tics and scratches in the mind. One not need be defined by them, or sunk by them, or unhinged by them, but one must know they are there. And then, you just pull the buggers up, one by one.

Or something like that.

 

Today’s pictures:

The little Paint filly and Stanley the Manly this morning. Stan is helpfully eating up all the hoof parings from the farrier’s recent visit. They are like gourmet treats for him:

The duchess stopped doing her donkey ears for three minutes and put on her show pony face. I’d put my camera onto a new setting by mistake, so she’s come out rather more amber than usual, and I quite like the effect. It’s got an old school feeling to it:

And the same again here. It’s like we’ve gone back to 1962:

A new page.

Even though I indulge myself too often in endless horse stories, I am aware that not all the Dear Readers are quite as entranced by the red mare as I am. (Nobody could be as entranced by the red mare as I am.) So I am starting a small experiment. I’m giving her her very own Facebook page, where I can bang on to my heart’s content, secure in the knowledge that the audience will be kindly self-selecting.

She is so precious to me, and the work she does makes me so proud, and the lessons she teaches me are so profound that I have wanted always to keep a record of her. I am keenly aware that she will not always be with me. I hope to keep her into a delightful old age, but any sudden colic, random field accident or unexpected illness could rip her from me, at any time. Everyone who keeps horses knows that if you have livestock, you will also have deadstock. I try to take a leaf from the equine book, and be flinty and unsentimental about this. Horses deal with life and death much better than do humans. But of course, when she goes, I shall be undone. That is when I shall need to take down this book, and slowly read. I shall want to remember her moments of glad grace.

I start to think that the correct place for this is not here. I cannot banish her from these pages entirely, as she runs through my life and my heart like Brighton through a stick of rock. She is stitched into my very being. She makes me a better human and causes the wings of my better angels to flap. But when I need to elaborate on some training exercise, or wax madly on a moment of love, or gallop off on a tangent about the life lessons my red professor teaches me, I can now put all that into a discrete chapter.

I quite often start experiments like this and do not maintain them. It’s one more thing to do in a busy life, and eventually I decide that there is not enough time and thought and space. It may take. We shall see. But if you want to find her, she is, for the time being, here: https://www.facebook.com/RedTheMare?fref=photo

 

A glimpse of normality.

 

I’ve been a bit stuck for the last week and today, as the sun shone and dazzled and danced over this green land, I found myself released.

I like to think I have a faint graps on The Human Condition. I once had an awfully good shrink. I’ve read a bit of Jung and Adler and the very brilliant Dorothy Rowe. I try to practice sense and sanity each day as I would practice arpeggios. I have that red mare, my best professor, who teaches me valuable life lessons every single day.

And yet, there are the elephant traps, and there am I, falling into them.

The stuckness was to do with difficult emotions and a big family change and, humming away in the background, fretfulness over the manuscript which is still with the agent, still awaiting its marks out of ten, still not yet grown-up enough to be sold into the world as a book.

It manifested as a series of odd refusals. I would not follow the election campaign, even though I am a politics geek. I would not cook nice food, even though I love cooking and am quite good at it, but existed on ham sandwiches and quite often skipped lunch altogether. I would certainly not tidy the house or keep my office looking professional. I would not reply to that urgent email or this vital telephone message.

I was doing the bare minimum, and I hate doing the minimum.

Then, something shifted, and I was off to the races again. It’s more of a relief than I like to admit. There are still frets and scratches and murmuring worries in my mind, but I glimpse a small patch of normality. Today, I did my HorseBack work and had a long conversation with my friend The Marine. I went back to the other book I am writing, and set out on the sixth draft. Once that is done, I can send that one off too, and see if someone might like to buy it. I edited forty good pages and felt quite pleased. I had a glorious ride and did some useful work on the ground with the red mare and watched her learn something new, and teach me something new, because she teaches me every day. Tonight, I shall cook something proper for my supper. Tidying the office may still have to wait for another day, but now there is movement where there was paralysis and that feels like one great leap forward.

 

Today’s pictures:

This was the smiling face that greeted me as I arrived at HorseBack this morning. He is one of our regular veterans, and it’s always lovely to see him back with us, and to watch him reunite with dear Rodney, his old mucker:

Not my best pictures ever, because I’ve cut off her ears and there is a car tyre in the background. But you can see the dearness and the softness, and that’s all I care about:

Old friends, red mares, dark woods.

It’s been a long and odd week. I’ve been rather grumpy and scratchy, only finding moments of calm and bliss when I’m with the red mare, who made it her business to be at her most charming and enchanting and antic and interesting and clever on every single sunny morning. I can’t take any emotional nonsense down to her, so the hours I spend with her are like daily meditation.

All the same, I knew something was going on, but I was not sure what. It’s tiredness and anti-climax, I thought, vaguely. I was at full stretch at Aintree last week, physically and emotionally, involved in the HorseBack work which meant so much to us all. I’d been travelling, which always exhausts me. I’ve got a lot of work to do and am still waiting for the agent to get back to me. I need to get this damn book sold. When I found myself weeping at the thought of AP McCoy retiring, because I’m going to miss The Champ so much, I suspected that there was a little glitch in my emotional wiring. But you know, it’s just life, and all its demands.

This morning, an old friend called. She’s one of those ones who has been there for over twenty years. We have so much shared history and old jokes and mutual affection and understanding. We exclaimed and bantered and shouted with laughter.

And then, she told me exactly what it was that was going on. I’d hardly said two sentences when she cut at once to the heart of the matter. ‘Oh,’ I said, amazed, ‘of course that is what it is.’ She then teased me about it for five minutes whilst I actually slapped the walls with hilarity and merriment. And relief, too. At last, I knew, and knowledge is power.

The mare has done glorious things this week. I’ve asked her many more questions than I usually ask, and although she has expressed moments of doubt and astonishment, once she realised that I was serious and steady she gave the good answers. We’ve found the most lovely trot, and she is learning to bend her body and drop her head and go from left to right like a dressage diva. But, oddly enough, the thing of which I am most proud is her newly intrepid spirit.

We start each ride with an offering. I give her the reins and ask where she would like to go. She has the whole set-aside to play in, and generally she describes a known circuit, from the feed shed to the top gate to the bottom gate to the far paddock and back again. About a month ago, she delighted me by striking out to the scary woods, where the treeline starts and shadows and rough ground are found.

Today, she went to the even more scary woods, which run to the south and go up a sharp hill. When she first arrived and I took her there, she wigged out entirely, rearing and reversing downhill like a crazy horse. I didn’t blame her. The trees are thick and the shadows deep and the going treacherous and I won’t walk far into those woods myself, for all my rational cast of mind, because who knows what sprites are hiding in the dark.

To get to that place where Here Be Dragons, she had to walk all the way around the main paddock railings, along a fairly narrow path, taking two sharp right-hand turns. It’s not an obvious route. And the really funny thing was that I was on the telephone at the time. (Children, do not try this at home. It’s very, very naughty and I should not do it.) Because I was chatting away and had no hand on the rein, I did not really realise where we were until I suddenly looked up and found that we were about to fall off the edge of the world.

As I did so, I heard the sound of rattling hooves. The little Paint filly, obviously believing that we were about to strike off into the unknown and leave her alone, was remembering her barrel racing ancestry and was charging down the field at full gallop.

‘Hold on,’ I said to the person on the telephone, ‘it’s all kicking off here. I had better concentrate.’

It’s spring, and I was out in a strange part of the field, and the red mare’s friend was going loco. That should have been a light the touchpaper and then retire moment. I fully expected the mare to want to gallop too. Instead, she regarded her charge with tolerant eyes, and did not move a muscle. I put my hands on the reins, certain an explosion would come. Nothing happened. The Paint, as if also expecting at least some reaction, and quite miffed that her glorious display produced no more than a sceptical eyebrow, did a perfect sliding stop in front of us and then put on a small rodeo display, as if she were in the Calgary Stampede. She wheeled, did twisting bronco leaps, bucked, snorted, and danced in a circle.

The red mare sighed.

‘Well,’ I said into the telephone. ‘I think we are all right.’

Then I turned the mare’s head towards home and walked back on the buckle.

I write all that because I want to illustrate how far she has come. That moment was far more impressive, in a way, than the delightful bending trot. But all the same, I have had a suspicion for some time that I have not quite got to the bottom of her. I think I’ve excavated about 90% of her, but there is a lurking 10% of old emotion, trapped feelings, subterranean worry, that lies at her core like black old silt. If I can dig that out and bring it into the light, then we shall be all glory.

They say that horses are the mirror of their humans. I think that I too have a layer of silt, difficult or shameful or stupid feelings which I don’t want to look at too closely. That is what has been going on this week. That was what my dazzling friend saw at once. She cast daylight on the mystery, and at once it had no more power to paralyse me.

This particular friend has faced things in the last two or three years which would have sunk a lesser woman. She has stared straight down the gun-barrel, unflinching. There is no frailty or self-pity in her voice. She is exactly the same as she always was: incisive, clever, idiosyncratic, funny, absolutely her own self. As we talk, and she makes me laugh so much that I can hardly breathe, I silently take all my hats off to her. I don’t say that. I wonder if she knows. For all that I pride myself on Saying the Thing, I am still British, and do irony and jokes better than earnest sincerity.

As we finish our conversation, she says, another teasing note in her bright voice, ‘Well, at least you have that horse.’

‘YES!!!!’ I bellow. ‘I have the horse.’

I have the old friends; I have Stan the Man; I have the red mare; I have this place, these hills. I have love and trees. I’ll be all right.

 

Today’s pictures:

Far too much going on to take out the camera, so these are from the week:

You can see the start of the scary woods in the background. To the right, out of shot, is the place where they get really dense and alarming. That was where my brave girl went:

Mr Know It All. Or, the mote in my own eye.

I heard a Know It All on the wireless today. It was not my normal time for listening and I turned on a programme by chance, and there he was, Mr Know It All.

My hands, I must confess, were clenched in fists of rage.

Mr Know It All got more and more knowing. There was a tone in his voice I could not quite identify, so maddening that I wanted to punch someone in the nose. There was an underlying of course to everything he said, and a faint plaintiveness. I could not quite work out what that was about. Was it because nobody could really understand what it was, to know everything? The heavy burden, the heaving brain. There was something else that was driving me nuts. I finally understood was it was.

It was pity.

I loathe pity in all its forms. I find it ersatz and patronising and bogus. Empathy, even sympathy, yes, but pity, no. Pity is a distancing device, and has superiority running beside it like a prancing carriage dog.

There is a subset of Know It All which does the pity voice like no other. These are the conspiracy theorists, who are the worst snobs in nature. They look down loftily on the rest of us, the drones, the rubes, the sheeple, who believe what the Establishment says, who do not see the hidden hand of the Bilderbergs or the Freemasons or the Black Ops, or whoever it is that week who is running the world. Mr Know It All had a little tinge of conspiracy to go with his facts. But it was percentages and reports and statistics which really set his boat crossing the stormy sea. He reeled them off, giddy with self-importance, until I felt battered into submission.

In the middle of my crossness, I stopped myself. For heaven’s sake, I said. Why should not the poor fellow know things? Knowing things is good. I adore knowing things. When I was young, I gathered facts like amulets, as if they could keep me safe in an unreliable world. I still feel like that.

I did not go to Hampstead for ten years for nothing. I turned at once to the most likely culprit, which was projection. There is a classic psychological device which suggests that the things you criticise most severely in others are in fact the things of which you are guilty. This does not always obtain. I get very cross about bigots, and I do not think I am prone to bigotry. But if the criticism and crossness are disproportionate, then it is often well to look to oneself.

I don’t do the pity voice and I don’t look down on people who did not have the schooling I did, but I am, I am afraid, a tiny bit of a Know It All myself. I was a girly swot, and I had to become the class clown to divert attention from those top marks in tests. I still, at almost fifty, can be tempted to tell people at parties about the Repeal of the Corn Laws. I drop all kinds of classical and historical and literary references into what I write. This is partly because I love references. I find them beautiful and soothing and as familiar as old friends. But it is partly a remnant of that little girl who used to get up and tap dance, saying Look at me, look at me.

I don’t scold myself for this, but I must think it, on a subconscious level, a little bit vulgar. Otherwise I should just have laughed at Mr Know It All, and let him pass on his way. I love people who wear their knowledge lightly, and perhaps that is what I would like to learn to do myself. There do not always have to be proofs, and brags, and prizes.

I think of this all the time with my red mare. I was working her today, hard and well. We upped the ante and had some breakthroughs and even broke out of our customary pootle to some serious schooling. I felt very proud of her, and I learnt a lot. As we rode back to the shed, on the buckle, I immediately started to put it into words. I would write it here or post it on one of the horse forums I love. I had to tell everyone about those serpentines in the lovely dowager duchess trot she has been achieving lately.

Then the Sensible Voice made its pitch. Why not just write it privately, said the Sensible Voice. You don’t always have to boast. You don’t have to prove a point. Write it down for yourself, so you can look back and smile at the progress. Nobody else need know. It is what it is, between you and this strong, ravishing, sentient creature, in your hidden field. It does not have to be on display.

The hubris demons, very flappy and disconcerted, did not like this at all. They wanted everyone to know how high we were flying. They wanted to describe the close glimpse of the sun. Are you mad? they shrieked at the Sensible Voice. Everyone must know; the thing must be marked.

And then I went in and heard Mr Know It All and wanted to punch his silly nose.

All writing has an element of Look at Me in it. All prose is a bit of a tap dance. I suspect that I need that drive to show myself and prove myself and stretch myself, otherwise I would never write a book at all. But perhaps that little moment was sent along to remind me that I don’t need to do the dance all the time. Sometimes, I can just write the thing for my own private record, and not beg the crowd for its approval. I can know something, or a little, or a part, or even nothing at all, and that is quite perfectly fine. I do not need to Know It All, and, most especially, I do not need to attempt to prove this on the wide prairies of the internet. Sometimes, it really can just be me and a sweet horse, in that hidden field. Literally, and figuratively.

 

Today’s pictures:

The sweetness in the hidden field:

My two sweethearts, browsing in the set-aside. I love it when they are both grazing together:

The duchess is at last losing her winter woolliness, so that I can see her again. She’s come through the winds and the weather wonderfully well. I’m very lucky because she is what my old dad would call a good doer. She is always well in herself and eats up like clockwork, and I never take that for granted:

An ordinary life.

Quite often I think: I must give them something.

The ‘them’ means you, the Dear Readers. I am sending something out, for you.

We make a grand bargain, you and I: you give me your time, and I give you some prose. I try and make the prose good, because that’s sort of the point of me. Sometimes, as you know, I indulge myself a little, when I am overwhelmed with one of my loves or enthusiasms. I feel an odd combination of guilt and defiance about this. The guilt is that I may be boring you; the defiance says it is my place and it’s free and nobody has to read it. The guilt usually wins. (Be more interesting, damn you, shout the critical voices, who have been drinking Negronis and are getting punchy.)

Today, after my morning mediation in the green field with my red mare, I suddenly thought: sending out is the wrong idea. By which I think I mean: it should not be a presentation. Here, have this, on a nice silver tray. I suddenly thought that the whole wonder of the internet is that it gives snapshots of other voices, other rooms. Not so very long ago, people who lived in the country hardly knew anyone beyond the next village. Even now, I know a gentleman who, until a year ago, had never travelled beyond Stonehaven. (About forty miles south, on the coast.) The internet lifted the curtain on a huge, gaudy play. I think that is its special gift.

I like the news. I like that I can watch Rachel Maddow and understand the intricacies of American politics. I like the pictures from NASA and the reports from my favourite training stables and the rolling updates from the BBC. I adore the photographs of the Household Cavalry and the beautiful landscape shots of Scotland’s hidden islands. But perhaps what I love the most are the small bulletins from the ordinary humans, living ordinary lives. An artist here is teaching old people to draw; a gardener there has spotted the first snowdrops; an amateur photographer here has captured a tiny owl on a stone wall.

I like seeing the world through other eyes. I take my own eyes for granted. The things I think, the things I value, the things I love are grained so deep in me that they feel natural and obvious. I am aware of my goofinesses and oddities; I know that not everyone is obsessed with red mares and lichen. I understand that I plough a fairly lonely furrow with my one-woman battle against the dangling modifier and my adoration of the semi-colon. But generally, I secretly believe my feelings and beliefs are fairly universal. (I think this springs from my great hope that there is more that unites the human heart than divides it.)

In fact, I am a creature of a very specific set of cultural markers. I am British; I grew up in a farm and a stable; I was given books to read from my earliest childhood; my first serious school believed in Shakespeare and poetry; my father was one of nature’s gentlemen and my mother insisted on good manners at all times. All those laid down foundational imperatives that run through me like Brighton through a stick of rock. I think I was born with innate optimism and cussedness, and those produce a confirmation bias of which I am hardly aware, even though I try to avoid confirmation bias like the plague.

The internet reminds me that although there are universal human truths and unities, there are millions of individuals who have very different cultures, very different perspectives, very different priorities. They are not just interesting, these other lives,  they are salutary too. They stop me falling into tribalism or fear of the other or complacency. They open me up, rather than closing me down.

All of which is a very long way of saying that perhaps the point of all this is that it is one of those glimpses. Here is an ordinary woman, living in an ordinary country, making an ordinary life, holding ordinary hopes and fears and dreams. Just like you, and yet completely different, all at the same time.

I realise as I write this that it is mildly absurd. Why does there even need to be a point? But my mind is like the questing vole in the plashy fen; it likes answers. It is not very good at letting things just be. (This is why the mare is so good for me, because when I am with her that questing mind falls still, and I am in my most elemental, physical, present self, feeling the Scottish air on my face and the powerful animal under me, searching only for harmony and communion and softness. I ask why later, when I think about her and how her mind works. But when I am with her there are no questions, only the moment which has the two of us in it. She is like a miracle physicist, who can stop the space time continuum with her bare hooves.) If I can work out the point, then I am happy. Today, I have decided that a snapshot of an ordinary life is enough. Tomorrow, no doubt, I shall have lighted on something quite else.

 

Today’s pictures:

More from the road. There really are rather a lot. I fear I may be posting them until every last cow has come home.

This adorable blinky person not only did the perfect collected trot with the bend in it again today, she did it in both directions. Yeah, yeah, she was saying, whistling a little tune under her breath, I can do it this way, and I can do it that way, and would you like me to do it the other way? BECAUSE I CAN. I did not think that I could love her any more than I already did, because the love is already turned up to eleven, but it turns out that I could. Ha. There is always, always room for more love:

I also love that the sweet Paint filly has her show pony face on, as if to say we can’t all be blinking our eyes and wibbling our lips; some of us have to be ready at all times for our close-up.

One perfect moment.

Author’s note: I did of course have wonderful plans for the first post back. I’ve been out in the world, and I was going to tell you about that. I had stories to tell. I’d been thinking many, many thoughts on the long drive back. I was going to be like the Ferrero Rocher ambassador, and spoil you. Then the red mare did something so lovely that I could only write of that, because I could only think of that. (There really is not enough room in my mazy brain for more than one thing at a time.) So I’m afraid this is very, very horsey, even more horsey than usual. I’ve put in some extra Scotland photographs at the end, in a tragic attempt to make up for it.

 

Back after a very busy, very wonderful and very emotional week at Aintree. I was at full stretch, doing all my HorseBack work, and now have hit the wall and need to sit quietly in my room for a while.

As I drove home through the snowy mountains, I thought of my dear red mare. She is the thing that pulls me home. I may have been seeing some of my most beloved racing stars, some of the most elegant, beautiful and elite athletes on the planet, but the face I miss is that of a muddy, woolly duchess, who never won a prize in her life.

I got on her back this morning after not having sat on her for six days. The popular wisdom is that in springtime, with the new grass and the twinkles in the toes, thoroughbreds should not really be leapt on like that. I did about ten minutes of groundwork first, just to check her state of mind and remind her that her good leader had returned, and then, off we went.

Because I’ve been learning a completely new way of working with horses, we haven’t done any advanced or technical riding. I’m still trying to figure out how to do everything correctly on the ground, to get her and me to the place we both need to be. My version of schooling in the saddle consists of two daily exercises, both unbelievably basic.

The first is called Where do you want to go? I get on the mare, let out the reins, and allow her to go where she will. If she gets stuck anywhere, like the gate or the feed shed, I work her there, and then let her go again. It’s a fabulous exercise and it fixes about eight different things and I love it and it makes me laugh. But it’s not exactly technical. It mostly consists of me waving my arms in the air or scratching her withers whilst asking: where do you want to go? I’m always curious to see where she chooses, and wonder what is going on in her dear head whilst she makes those navigational decisions.

Then we move on to the Left Right exercise, which is about balance and straightness and light steering. If the horse goes left, you steer it right, and vice verse. It’s really that simple. So you see, we are not exactly doing collection or flying changes.

We were working on these today, doing our ABCs, and she was a little tense and tentative and I was bringing her down until she relaxed. We were looking for softness, which is our holy grail. And then, suddenly, in a ravishing collected trot, she started going in perfect circles, with the most beautiful bend in her body, using every inch of that duchessy thoroughbred self. She used to be quite stiff, and she would drop her shoulder, and she would lean on me, and her body would go out of alignment. I have not worked on any of that specifically. I’ve just done this wonderfully basic work on the ground and under the saddle, trying to teach myself as much as her, concentrating on getting each small step right, sometimes feeling like a fool because I am still muddling about in the foothills when everyone else is galloping over the mountain peaks.

But there, out of the blue, she described a balletic, poised, perfect circle, with everything in the right place. When that happens, you can feel it, like someone has thrown a switch and the whole world has changed. And the really lovely thing is that I was not doing anything. She was doing it by herself. That’s the point of all this work, to give her the confidence to carry herself. I simply point the way, ask the question, and then let her alone. There is no nagging or correction.

I was so amazed that I dropped the reins and let her go, simply moving my body with hers. And she kept right on going, in her delirious dressage diva circuit, everything in harmony. Every inch of her body, every muscle and every sinew, was working in time, each moving part going smoothly with the other. I’m not sure I ever felt anything like it.

In a daze of delight, I said whoa, and she stopped on a sixpence and I leapt off and covered her in strokes and rubs and kisses, wishing I could express to her the brilliance of what she had just done. She stood like a statue, with her head low, her ears in their dozy donkey position, her lower lip wibbling in the suspicion of an equine smile.

Did she know? I hope she knew.

She made me cry actual tears of joy and gratitude.

There is something sometimes frustrating about putting myself back to school, about having to learn humility and patience and rigour, about having to go over and over and over and over the very, very small things, until I have them right. I’m quite a slow learner, and sometimes I think: oh, bugger it, let’s just gallop off into the middle distance and forget all this. But what it does mean is that I appreciate the smallest things as if they are dazzling diamonds. I shouldn’t think many other horsewomen burst into tears today because they did a slow sitting trot in a circle in a green field. They’d probably think: right, that’s done, let’s move on to transitions. But for me, it was like winning that damn Grand National.

The older I get, the more I believe in the small things, in all areas of life. The red mare teaches me so many life lessons, and returns me to earth when I become idiotic or hubristic, and shows me the value of the plain virtues. She is the Empress of Small Things, and I can never thank her enough.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from yesterday. The road home:

And the faces that greeted me:

Quite often, when I get back, she’s not that bothered. There’s a bit of – yeah, right, whatever. But this time she came straight over for love, and then followed me round the field when I went to leave. I do fight anthropomorphism every single day, but I swear this face is saying: where have you been?:

Meanwhile, Stan the Man was very happy to be back in the feed shed, hunting for RATS:

Away.

Going away for a few days. Back on the blog next week.

This is the sight that greeted me when I arrived at the gate this morning. This is the sight I shall miss:

An Easter present from the red mare.

It’s a Bank Holiday Monday and the place is as quiet as a cathedral. The sun shines down and I decide to take a day off.

I don’t always take off weekends and national holidays. That’s the thing about writing; it expands to fit the space available. And I like to write every day, even if it’s only ten lines.

But still, to take a day off when the rest of the nation takes one makes me feel stitched into the social contract, which is a feeling I like very much.

Down in the quiet field, in the sunshine, the horses show their spring fever. The Paint drops her belly to the ground and gallops, ventre à terre, as if she is hearing her ancestral voices from the wild frontier. The red mare, much more upright, as poised as a ballet dancer, tail flying like flags, snorting like a steam train, gallops beside her.

The beauty is so elemental that I stand and stare, rooted to the good Scottish earth.

Then we do some work. The mare forgets her snorting and her Spanish Riding School of Vienna and her spring fever, and drops into her soft place, all her attention on me.

For the last few weeks we have been losing the trot. It’s there, and then it’s gone. Her stride breaks up, ragged and uncoordinated, she puts her head in the air and begins to rush. In the old days, I would have thought this perfectly normal for a thoroughbred ex-racehorse. I would have sat tight and kicked on. Now, if I do not have a soft horse, I have nothing. So I’ve been searching and searching for that softness, endlessly going back to the beginning, looking for the places where I have made a mistake.

It’s a practical thing – bending to a stop, doing lateral flexion, working up through the walk – but it’s a mental thing too. If I do not always have that good, true starting point with me, I am lost. This kind of horsemanship, so new to me, is all about rigour. If I have one stride that is too snatched, too quick, too tense, then the whole thing will fall apart. If I do not correct that stride but let it go, then I shall have trouble later on. No detail is too small to be ignored.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about time. It’s taken two years, learning this new approach, and I’m still working on the trot. Sometimes I get cross at my slowness. My great mentors, Warwick Schiller and Robert Gonzales, could fix that trot in a morning. TWO YEARS. What have I been doing?

The answer is: I have been making mistakes. Unlike those two mighty horsemen, I do not have the work of a lifetime locked away in my muscle memory. If I did not make the mistakes, I could not learn anything. There’s still a part of me which is livid that I could not just get it, and gallop off into the horizon. But learning is not a matter of furious will and snapping of fingers. One can understand something in one’s head, but still find it has not quite percolated down into the gut. Over and over again, every day, I have to practice, getting it right, getting it wrong, until it becomes second nature.

I learnt to write because I did it every day. I learnt to write by being really, really bad at writing. My first books were so rotten that I still feel embarrassed when I remember them. But if I had not been rotten, I would never have got good, because I would not have had to try.

Today, in the silent sunshine, there was the lost trot. We had found it. I’m not quite sure how. I’d been breaking things down into their constituent parts, going back and checking that every small thing was good. If the yielding of the hindquarters was even a little off, I went in until that great, powerful body was at the exact angle I had asked for. There is a sternness to this way of thinking that I like. This is no place for the slapdash. It’s for the exact same reason that I shall go back through a tenth draft, and remove a single semi-colon. It’s a tiny thing, but it makes a difference.

And through all that rigour, all that attention to detail, all those small steps, comes absolute freedom. When we found that beautiful, contained, easy trot, we were set free. I did not have to worry about anything, or ask her anything, or tell her anything. She was doing it all on her own, and I went with her, and we were part of the moving world, shimmering in harmony. We were going as slowly as two old dowager duchesses, but inside we were flying.

 

Today’s pictures:

Happy Easter -

After the ride, she had a little doze. This is the same mare that an hour before was hoolying around the field like a crazy horse:

It has taken a long time, and I do castigate myself for being slow and stupid, but in that long time we have built something very precious. We may not be doing flying changes, but we are a partnership. I am the senior partner, because that kind horse needs a good leader so that she may feel safe. But we are, truly, in it together. It has taken a long time, but perhaps it needed to take a long time. Perhaps it should take a long time. It’s not, as I remind myself every day, magic beans. It’s building something enduring and true, and the foundations must be dug deep and each brick put on the one before. That does not happen overnight.