Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 40

A trot, a drive and a thought.

I found my trot.

There it was, all the time, down the back of the sofa. The red mare, moving lightly within herself on a loose rein, as composed and collected as a 19th century marchioness doing the gavotte, twitched her ears in the Scottish air as if to say: yes, yes, I think this was the item you were looking for.

Then I went for a drive and looked at the blue land in the sunshine and felt lucky.

I did some other things as well, but it’s Friday, and I don’t want to bore the arse off you.

(Wrote book; made soda bread; ran errands; had long and soothing conversation about the human condition. Same old, same old.)

Felt particularly pleased that I captured an image of Stanley the Dog with the Scottish sky in his eyes. All the time he was posing he was itching to be off to the undergrowth, where he heard the rustle of tempting critters. But he goodly stayed, and I got my shot.

There have been some interesting pieces of wisdom floating around on the internet lately. I find these reassuring, as the news gets madder and badder. (Greece; Putin; Libya; chaos and sorrow and insoluble problems.) The small wisdoms restore some sense to the stretched mind. One of them was from a lovely man called Ira Glass, and it had at its heart: don’t give up. Keep trying, keep pushing through, and you may achieve the beautiful thing you wish to make.

When I get frustrated with my bumbling horsemanship, I have to remind myself that I was off a horse for almost thirty years. I sat on a pony before I could construct a sentence, but that long gap meant that old, good instincts and muscle memory had atrophied and even disappeared altogether. The people I admire and wish to emulate have been doing it, every day, for those thirty years. They can do things without thought on which I have to concentrate very, very hard.

I can write a sentence which pleases me because I have been practising with words for those thirty years I was off a horse and at my desk. I knew a lot of the theory when I was in my twenties, because I read all the books and I had an avid mind. I went to all the great ones for example and advice. But I could not quite yet get my ducks in a row, because the knowing is one thing, and the doing is another. The fine doing comes only from the years and years of practice. Do your scales; play your arpeggios. Don’t give up. Embrace your mistakes, because without them you learn nothing.

I can write a sentence because I worked at it. I’d still like to write a better sentence, so I’ll go on working whilst I have a brain that functions and fingers that type. I’ll go on striving to be the horsewoman that my mare deserves until they have to hoist me into the saddle with ropes. It’s never finished.

Don’t give up. Keep trying. Stretch your sinews to the sky.

That, slightly to my surprise, is my thought for the day.

 

Today’s pictures:

Every day, in every way, I love that face a little bit more. I should not have thought such a thing were possible. I did not know one small human heart had so much love in it. It’s sort of crazy that it’s a horse who has unlocked this bounty, but I do not look gift mares in the mouth. (Except of course when her teeth need doing.) Love is love, wherever it might be found.

A day.

Sunshine. Cook breakfast eggs for The Mother. Groundwork. Riding. (I have lost my trot. It is tense and rushed where it should be smooth and collected. It takes me some time to find it, a process which cannot be hurried, so I am late to the rest of the day.) Members of the extended family are visiting; a lot of sweetness. HorseBack: photographs, notes, many discussions. Talk to my friend The Marine about the time he rounded up cattle in Colorado. Two hundred foot vertical drops up on the narrow mountain trails. I blanch. I am ashamed to say I make girlish shrieks.

Back to the desk, still at least an hour behind. Important emails and telephone calls. A wonderful plan is hatched. Errands.

Work, work, work, work, work.

Forget lunch. Abruptly remember that I have forgotten lunch. Feel suddenly very weak. Attempt to cram all the food groups into one very late tea-time snack. Still quite weak. Where is the iron tonic?

Back two winners at Huntingdon. The second, in particular, is a delightful gentleman of a horse, flowing neatly and enthusiastically over his fences with his ears pricked, occasionally throwing in a mighty, soaring leap just to show he is no mere workman. He is a Venetia Williams horse, and a lot of them are like this: honest and charming as the day is long.

Take huge amounts of stuff to the charity shop. The saintly glow of having a clear-out is slightly marred because the nice paper bags in which the things were neatly packed have been ripped apart by Stanley the Dog when he was in the back of the car this morning. I suppose he was looking for RATS.

Attempt to upload a HorseBack video to YouTube. Fail. ‘There was an error uploading your video.’ Have burst of First World rage. Swear at the computer, fruitlessly. Buggery YouTube will not have me.

Watch the sun change colour over the trees. Give Stanley the Dog a treat to tell him he is forgiven. (He had not even noticed he was in disgrace, and the ladies in the charity shop were very understanding. ‘I have spaniels,’ said one, darkly.)

Think about work done and work still undone. Find myself reading an article about To Do lists, and how they are never finished.

Feel rueful.

Wonder if I should check my emails again.

Think I’ll go and give the duchess her tea instead. There I can breathe and stand still and feel the air on my face and the love in my heart and see the snowdrops and think of spring.

 

Today’s pictures:

Happy girls in the lovely morning light:

Step-sister, step-niece, red mare and me, taken by the Lovely Stepfather. I appear to be having a very, very bad hair day. I try not to mind:

A chicken, for the Dear Reader who likes chickens:

The Marine, with Brook the ex-sprinter who now works with veterans at HorseBack UK. Who says that ex-racehorses have no useful purpose once their race is run? Quite a lot of idiotish people, is the answer. This fella does a very, very useful job indeed:

I know I bang on a little about the prejudices faced by ex-racehorses in particular and thoroughbreds in general. But really, you should read what the ignorant say on the internet. Don’t even get me started on the superstitions about chestnut mares….

Love.

Very tired today, so this really is just pictures of sweetness rather than any words. I did get one of the loveliest emails this morning, from the old friends, full of compliments for my mighty mare. It makes me smile still.

Here are the only words I have today: I love my horse. Love her, love her, love her, love her. I need new words for love. The love bursts out of my heart and goes crazy in the feed shed and I wave my arms about like windmills and say to my friend who owns the Paint: ‘I don’t know what to do with the love. I can hardly even express the love.’ I am quite cross about this, and may have started shouting. All the time the red mare is standing in the doorway, most unimpressed, her ears akimbo, a quizzical and faintly resigned expression on her dear face. My friend looks at her. ‘Yes,’ she says, dry as a bone. ‘I think what she’s saying is that the love is all very well but where is breakfast?’

I shout with laughter, doubling over, slapping my thigh like a friend of the Prince Regent who is about to go and visit him at the Brighton Pavilion for a game of faro. I walk over and give the duchess a good scratch on her neck. She regards me with fatalism. Yes, she is thinking, WHAT SHE SAID. The thing about breakfast.

By that time I am so full of love and laughter I can hardly make the breakfast. The mare observes me sternly, making sure I am putting in enough seaweed and rosehips for her hooves.

I think then, I think now, I’ll go on thinking for the rest of the day – love, love, love, love, love, love.

That is all.

 

Today’s pictures:

Some more of yesterday’s sweetness:

As if all that goodness yesterday were not enough, she did some magnificent Spanish Riding School of Vienna snorty trots whilst I was free-schooling her on the ground this morning, and threw in some rodeo bucks just to show that the clever Paint is not the only one with that skill set. Then, having got the twinkles out of her toes and sternly reminded me that she is descended from lines of heroic champions, she settled down to her dowager duchess collection, changing direction from a mere point of my finger. When I got on, she gave me an easy canter in the Western manner, a real proper lope, on a loose rein. Yes, she seemed to be saying, I really can do any damn thing.

Ha, I said, out loud; did the dressage squirrels come in the night?

Yes, she said, with dignity. They most certainly did.

Joy. Or, old friends and good horses.

Oh, oh, the old friends. The ease, the laughter, the fondness, the absolute lack of need to explain oneself in any way.

These particular friends are like the Radletts in Don’t Tell Alfred. (Oh, Fanny, not Fuller’s cake.) There is a lot of exclaiming – is that a new book, look at your pictures, this lunch is completely delicious, HOW HANDSOME STANLEY IS. All the good things are noticed and delighted in, and none of the bad ones even register.

I love it that we have almost thirty years of history together and that I remember their daughter from the day she was born. She is now a very charming and composed and entrancing young lady, radiating goodness and brightness and enthusiasm.

She is not a rider, although she’s been up on a few Welsh ponies. But I offered her a ride, all the same. She was thrilled by the idea. We went down to the field in the Scottish sun, and I quickly worked the red mare on the ground, partly to show them what she can do, and partly to check her state of mind before I put up such an important passenger. The wind was up, and the mare had come haring up the field to meet me at full canter with her tail in the air, so it was vital to bring her back down to earth.

Foot-perfect. I was flushed with pride. I got on, just to check further. Still as the rock of ages.

Up went the young person. I explained to her briefly about sitting straight and breathing to keep her body relaxed. I led them on a rope to start with. Safety first. But the two girls could not have been happier with each other, so I let them go. Round in a perfect circle went the thoroughbred mare and her youthful rider.

The mother, beaming, said: ‘You ride her like that, in a halter, without a bridle or a bit?’ I’m so used to it now that I hardly notice. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s how I’ve trained her. That’s what she understands.’

The Young Person’s smile was so wide that it was like a beacon, flashing its message of joy all the way to Inverness.

‘You know,’ I said conversationally, ‘there are some grown-ups who won’t get onto a thoroughbred. And there you are, riding her like you’ve been on a horse your whole life.’

Stanley the Dog was prancing around, doing antic things with tree branches. The dear Paint filly, quite recovered from her illness, decided to show off her championship breeding, and did a little reining pattern of her own out in the field, and some ventre à terre galloping. The red mare, conscious of her precious cargo, took no notice, but walked gently with perfect composure. The human joy, unconfined, flew up into the bright air.

I work this mare using the horsemanship I use for many reasons. It is a compliment to her, since it takes into account her equine self, her evolutionary biology, her status as a prey animal, her herd instincts. I do it because it makes her feel happy and safe. I do it because it is practical, and makes every single thing, from putting on a rug in a gale to loading her onto a trailer, very, very easy. I do it because it reduces the risk of these creaking middle-ages bones getting broken. I do it because it interests me intellectually, as I watch the species barrier come as close as it can to being crossed. I do it because it is sheer, visceral pleasure, an earthed and physical thing. I do it because it builds the bond between us, and that makes my heart sing.

But sometimes I think I do it because it gives me a horse I can trust so much that I may offer a happy young person a moment of pure pleasure. I need have no fret or worry. The red mare is not the fiery ex-racehorse of myth, the hot-blooded thoroughbred of stereotype. She is a horse at home with herself who will carry a raw beginner kindly and with care. That is worth more than rubies.

 

Today’s pictures:

One picture.

I have guests coming again, all the way from the south, so obviously this means more domestic reorganisation (I love the hopeful re there, as if anything had been organised in the first place). Obviously this also means no time for a blog. So sorry about that.

As I was rummaging through the second spare room, which is essentially a tiny box room with a single bed in it on which everything gets dumped, sweeping up piles of papers and old laundry bags, I found this picture. It is of my friend The Expatriate. She and I met in our first term at Christ Church and we’ve been best friends ever since. She’s been through it a bit, one way and another, but you can see from her smile that she has a fighting spirit. Even though she now lives in Santa Monica, she is a countrywoman to her bones, and she has the strength of the good earth in her.

I remember that day. We’d gone to Hay on Wye, and a wonderful man called Roger Deakin had come to talk about his book on swimming Britain’s wild waters. Roger was so stitched into the earth that I need a new word for countryman. His house in Suffolk looked as if it had grown naturally out of the land it stood on, and was at one with the trees around it. There was wood everywhere, I remember, and he welcomed in all small woodland creatures with a gentle delight. (No reorganisation for guests for him.) After the talk on his book, he invited everyone to come for a swim in the river. Some brave brawny fellows stripped off and leapt in, with quite a lot of macho display, and then a chorus of ahs at the sudden cold, and that is why my lovely friend is laughing her lovely laugh.

This is photographed from the original, which is why the quality is not that good, but you can see the loveliness.

Roger Deakin died a few years ago, but I think of him often, even though he was not an intimate, but the friend of a great friend. He is one of those remarkable people who stay vivid in the mind. His book on swimming is wonderful, but if you want the full enchantment, his book on trees is his masterpiece.

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wildwood-A-Journey-Through-Trees/dp/0141010010

No blog today.

The party went with a swing and everyone was at their most delightful and I was very, very pleased. The soda bread in particular was much admired. (Admire my soda bread and I am yours for life.)

I came down to earth with a bit of a bump this morning when the poor little Paint filly suddenly developed a severe case of choke. Choke can manifest itself in many different ways, and this one looked at first like impaction colic, which was pretty alarming. The poor body was wracked with terrible spasms, awful noises issued from deep within, and her eyes were black with pain. We walked her round, pretending outer calm, until the vet arrived, but by that time the tough girl had got rid of the worst herself. It’s her American blood, I expect. She has the frontier spirit.

She was checked over and pronounced on the mend and given a painkiller to ease her woes. All this time, the ruthless red mare was making hay in the set-aside, ignoring her poor friend. When the vet pulled up, the duchess trotted towards us with a questing look, then realised that it was nothing to do with her and buggered off again. Then, to add injury to insult, she very, very slowly and luxuriously ate her own breakfast whilst the poor filly was allowed none. There is a flinty streak in that sweet red head.

After all the drama, and exhausted from entertaining, I now have what Nina in Vile Bodies would call ‘such a pain’ (actually a mild stomach ache) so I’m going to have an old lady rest and be quite ruthless myself and not give you a blog. The main thing is that this lovely person is all right:

Goodness, she gave us a fright. It wrung my heart, seeing her in such distress. But she has gumption, and she rallied. Her sire is a great champion, and she has inherited his fighting spirit.

Dinner.

I am having the family to dinner. I hardly ever have people in the house and getting ready has taken me all day. I managed to fit in a quick ride and my HorseBack work and then that was it. The rest of the day was spent in cooking, polishing, plumping, decanting, primping, and the arranging of flowers. Because I’m self-employed, I can work on Sunday to make up for it, but really. How do those of you who do it, do it? I am in awe and wonder. And it’s only Irish stew and chocolate pots. It’s not as if I’m making Coquilles St Jacques and Boeuf en Croute. Absurd.

Today’s pictures:

Big ears:

That face is after the ride, watching me make breakfast in the shed. Slightly beady look is saying: now, make sure you mix it up right and don’t forget the Seabuckthorn and the rosehips. As if I would.

Ready house:

Happiness.

One of the things I try not to do is universalise the particular. There was a very famous and very wise feminist whose great weakness was to extrapolate wide truths from her own subjective experience. I get a bit crazy in the head whenever I hear the Universal We. The We can apply to almost anything – women, scientists, Ordinary Decent Britons, the entire human race. I once heard it used on an erudite programme on Radio Four, where the speaker was a doctor. Her use of the universal We was perplexing, since it seemed to veer between the medical profession, women in general, and the entire human race. At any one moment, it was impossible to infer which one she meant. I was very, very cross about that.

I also try not to take things for granted, or to make assumptions.

Sadly, the flesh is weak, and I often fall into the elephant traps I try so hard to avoid.

I lately read about a survey which said that 64% of people were not happy, and believed that happiness was harder to attain now than it has ever been. It was one of those maddening vague snippets – it did not say who these people were, where the survey was done and by whom, how big the study was. It could have been forty-seven people in Portsmouth questioned by a biscuit company, for all I know. I’ve looked on the Google and can’t find anything with that number on it. I also can’t remember where I read it. So the whole thing is entirely unscientific. But the shocking percentage stuck in my mind. Even if it is half true, it’s quite disturbing.

I think about happiness quite a lot. I think about the myriad of different ways it may be described, or felt. Is happiness a cumulative number of joyful moments, or that bone-deep feeling of contentment? Is it wild, flinging excitement, or the gentle sense of being at ease in one’s own skin? Is it, for people who live in free democracies with water coming out of the tap and no religious police knocking on the door, almost a duty? (I quite often feel that it is. How dare I be miserable, when the women of the Congo have to face daily horrors?) Is it something worth striving for, when almost every serious academic study on the subject says that the more you search for it, the more elusive it becomes. The idea of the academy is that it is generally a by-product, a notion that is closely related to the famous idea of flow.

The 64% made me realise that I may not be representative, and that I had slightly assumed I was. I think of myself as an ordinary person of a certain age, and two of my most precious words are ‘me too’. I get quite a lot of me too on this blog, when I write something I fear is a little goofy or absurd, and the Dear Readers rush in and tell me that I am not alone. I believe that there is much more that stitches human hearts together than cleaves them apart.

I am prey to occasional night terrors, moments of catastrophising, some extremely cross internal critics who drink too much gin and tell me I could do better, moments of unguarded perfectionism, and a fairly consistent struggle with mortality. I feel a bit of an idiot about the last one, because everyone is going to die and worrying about it really will not help the thing. I can get cranky and grumpy and disorganised. I wish I could write better and faster and I rue my lack of time management. I still miss my dad. In other words, I live with all the expected slings and arrows that a woman of my age might reasonably face.

But I am quite happy, quite a lot of the time. I do practise at this, like a musician practises scales in the morning. I remind myself to appreciate the present moment and not long for something else. I am acutely wary of the danger of high expectations. I notice the small things. Yesterday, I stood for ten minutes like a loon listening to birdsong. I have developed a good bit of muscle memory for talking myself off the ceiling. I have learned to accept that I can’t control what other people think of me. I don’t compare myself to impossible role models – I do not wish that I were a stick-thin film icon or a literary giant or a storied saver of the world. I accept my limitations, sometimes even with good grace. (Although when I bump up against them, I must admit I do sometimes do the Muttley muttering.) I have enthusiasms.

I think of this in the same way I think of working with my mare. I do a lot of slow steps with her, working on the very basic things until they are just right. Every day, we work quietly and steadily on the foundations. I have, at last, learnt not to run before I can walk, building up slowly, slowly, brick by brick, so that I may find myself in a wide Scottish field as I did this morning, trotting a half-ton thoroughbred with my arms in the air, hands flung into the light, keeping the beautiful, steady rhythm only with my seat. (The independent seat is the holy grail of riding, and the expression always makes me laugh. That seat will not be bamboozled or corralled or fooled into following the herd mind. No, no, it is independent.)

I used to think I could solve the meaning of life by grand gestures, by huge application of the intellect, by reading the highest philosophers, by trying really, really hard. Now I think finding a daily crock of gold lies in the smallest and most humdrum of things, which have nothing to do with book learning or great mental effort. I think they are things of the heart, not the head. I think they lie in steady practice, so that they too can trot on a loose rein.

Oh, dear, I am mixing my metaphors now, which means I should stop. I hope the 64% is wrong, and does not make me a freak. I wanted very much to be extraordinary when I was young and foolish and ambitious. Now, I rather long to be ordinary, at one with my cohort, marching in step. I like finding connections rather than searching for otherness. No man is an island, and no woman, either.

Although I do admit that, apart from my soigné friend in Paris, not everyone is quite as excited as I am about moss.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from the last two days, since I’ve been too busy to take out the lovely little camera:

Very often, the duchess is so dozy and relaxed that she does her donkey ears for the camera. Which is wonderful in its own way, since it proves to me that all the work is paying off and she is easy in herself. But sometimes I do yearn for the show pony face, and here it is. There are many things I love about this picture, but today the thing I love the most is that her nostrils and her ears are like little apostrophes:

Lost thoughts.

Quite often, I wake up in the morning and write the blog in my head as I brush my teeth. I cannot tell you the dazzling nature of my thoughts at this point in the day. I grow excited, thinking: ah, at last, I have something really quite wonderful for the Dear Readers. There will be existential musings, and the human condition, and darting arrows flying out of the left field. How happy everyone will be.

Then, life happens. I cook breakfast for The Mother and the lovely Stepfather. I walk the dog. I feed the horse, work the horse, ride the horse, settle the horse back in her field with everything she needs for the day. Quite often, when I think I am finished, I go back and have a quick chat with the horse, usually about how much I love her.

Then I canter off to HorseBack and take some pictures and talk about all the things I need to know about. Today, there were two enchanting visitors there, so I talked to them. I come back, edit the pictures, try to keep the archive in some kind of order, decide what posts I need to write, write them, select appropriate photographs to go with them, and put them up on the Facebook. As I am doing this, I try hard to avoid getting distracted by the latest story about Stephen Fry, or a collage of baby pandas.

I have a quick look at the racing, in case I want to have a bet in the 2.45 at Ayr. Luckily, today I did not want to.

Then I write a book. Because, you know.

By this stage, I remember that I have forgotten to have lunch. On tragic days, I make a quick ham sandwich. Today, I am being a proper person and throwing together a little chicken stew with leeks and celery and potatoes. (It was half done last night, and now I’m just finishing it off. I do feel really quite domestic godessy as the homespun smell wafts through the house.)

Then, I decide that all the stupid admin which is waiting reproachfully for me will have to wait another day.

Then I gallop down to the field to give the mare her tea, put out the hay, make a rugging decision, tell her once more about the deep, deep love, give her a good rub, check her legs, and generally make sure she is happy for the night to come. My friend who shares the paddock will be there, and we may discuss weather, water troughs, herd behaviour, or life. Mostly life, these days.

At this stage, I wish I had taken more iron tonic. The brain is beginning to fizzle and crack as if its circuits are starting to short. I review my work, make a resolution to do more cutting tomorrow, sometimes make a plan for another chapter, which is very naughty since at this stage I am supposed to be slaying darlings, not writing more of the damn things.

The morning seems a long, long way away. The dazzling thoughts are quite, quite lost. Did they really dazzle? Were they even thoughts? I decide, dolefully, that I’ll just give you some nice pictures instead, and hope you will not notice the thought deficit. I wonder if I should tell you about the moment, under the glancing Scottish sunshine, when the red mare not only came to a perfect halt off my seat, with no rein at all, but then, from a very slight movement of my legs, took four delicate steps backwards. Backing without reins. Should I tell you that I burst into shouting laughter of joy, and whooped into the bright air, and then fell to laughing again, and flung myself on her neck and told her that she was the best and dearest and most clever and brilliant?

No, I think, don’t tell them that. Poor Dear Readers, they have enough to put up with. They have to hear about that horse every absurd day of the week. This is supposed to be for them, after all, a tiny divertissement in a hard week. Give them a nice photograph of a hill or something, because not everyone has a hill.

Then I read myself a small lecture on the perils of perfectionism, press publish, and give Stanley the Dog a biscuit. Because it is the least he deserves.

 

Today’s pictures:

I went for a quick drive after HorseBack, a little loop to the north, and this is what I saw:

This one is called Queen’s View, because Queen Victoria loved it:

That is why I get a little hysterical about Scotland, and the blue hills, and the beauty. That is six miles from my front door. That is why I can never, ever get over my good fortune.

Posy Posington from yesterday morning:

And the amazing flying ear of Captain Handsome:

Love.

I was going to write you a really meaty blog today about abandonment issues. I was thinking of it as I put the mare to rights after our ride and listened to the birds sing. I was going to lay myself bare. Vulnerability, I thought, is a most excellent thing to learn in middle age. The defended state is no damn good. One must throw open the gates of the castle keep.

Then I got home and looked at the pictures I had taken of the dear red duchess, of the gatepost and the tree bark and the lichen and the sweet little Paint, of Stanley the Dog doing his Captain Handsome face.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I thought. Write about love instead.

Valentine’s Day exists on the very edge of my consciousness. I am dimly aware that the media has been creating about it for a few days now, and shall ramp up the pressure as we motor towards the 14th. Luckily, it has nothing to do with me. My only thought about it was that I might send the Beloved Cousin some flowers, because that day in February should not just be about done-to-death old romantic love, but about all the enduring loves.

I’m not a huge fan of romantic love. I think that is because I was really, really bad at it, and then rather gave up, with a gusty sigh of relief. I know that people love it and some people are really good at it. I think it’s a talent like any other. It turns out my talent bends towards the other kinds of love. I have love of place, love of beauty, love of food, love of words, love of books, love of friends, love of laughter, love of family, love of thinking thoughts, love of thoroughbreds, love of Stan the Man and Red the Mare. I love Scotland, and moss, and trees. I love big, abstract things like kindness and generosity of spirit, and prosaic, specific things, like good manners. I love writing.

If I had one of the Young People in front of me, asking for advice about life, and I were to put on my wise old aunt hat and tell them something true, I would say: find something you really, really love and do it. I would say: don’t confine yourself to one love. Open your heart to all the loves, especially the very small ones, which will bring you joy every single day. You do not need a string section. You do not have to wait for the grand sweep. Find the love in the unexpected places, the ordinary places. Dig for love like a pig digs for truffles.

There was an awful lot of love in the field this morning, as the regal Scottish light poured down on us like wine. It’s there in every single one of these pictures. It’s not a bad way to start the week.

 

Today’s pictures: