Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 49

Where the heart is.

The Dear Readers will know that one of my great rules in life is: if at all possible, avoid ad hominem. This is a cool, rational position. Usually, rather like with Godwin’s Law, the first one to go personal has clearly lost the argument. It is also a very slightly weedy thing of the sentiment. I can’t stand confrontation and I hate needless hurling of insults and invective. It is also ruthlessly pragmatic. No mind has ever been changed by attacking the human, not the ball.

From the beginning of this mighty Scottish debate, I have never attacked the side of Yes. This is partly because of my rule, but it is also because I see the argument. I see the passion with which it is held. I see the keen desire and the burning hope. I understand that, because I have my own passion, in the other direction.

I do have a private difficulty with Mr Salmond as a politician. I have never been able to think of him in the same way since he used twenty thousand pounds of taxpayers’ money to fight a court case to keep information away from the public. This goes against every inch of his cherished persona as an open, plain-speaking fellow, unlike the weaselly shower in Westminster. He also, in a way, failed my waiter test. There is a famous story of him picking on a junior reporter in front of the press pack, which I can’t get out of my mind. On the other hand, I do like and admire Mr Darling. I think he is a steady gentleman of some integrity. But I have been very strict about not making all this about two different men. It must be about the arguments. This is too momentous a decision. It is not about two individuals, but about the future of a great nation.

As my head clears, I try to take a step backward, and see the thing objectively. There is some fascinating psychology going on, a perfect Freudian example of projection. (I know that all the penis envy side of Freud is entirely mad, but he was right about projection, and I think of it almost every day.) There are people on the Yes side who accuse the Unionists of being negative, of scaremongering, of seeing only the chasm, not the great leap forward. In the same breath, those very same people accuse those on the other side of being traitors and Quislings, cravenly unpatriotic, with no faith in the Scottish people. This could not be more negative. It is not countering the argument. It is not saying if you disagree with me I think you are wrong; it is saying I think you are bad.

The other oddness is that many of those who long for Yes talk of the democratic deficit. All democracies, as Churchill mordantly pointed out, have a deficit. This is even more true today than when he spoke of democracy being the worst of all systems until you look at the others. Globalisation, international markets, geo-politics, the European Union, even the structure of the civil service and the dear old Sir Humphreys – all mean that no politician in the world is quite as in charge as they would like to be. It is why manifesto promises are so often broken. They are made in the wide prairies of opposition, where everything is possible. The hopeful candidates famously campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Realpolitik is a cruel mistress. Even if the electorate gets the party it votes for, it often does not get the results for which it yearns.

But more ironical still is that if separation were achieved, a huge democratic deficit would yawn, bigger than any which obtains after an ordinary election. Half the population would be deprived of their dearest wish. They would have to stand by, powerless, as the country in which they believe is broken up. It is not a deficit of a few years, but of generations.

The head part of me does see what might be called the negative, although I think of it as unacceptable risk. I do fret about capital and intellectual flight. I watch with trepidation as the pound falls and fund managers warn against investing in the United Kingdom and the billion and a half pounds slides away from British companies. To me that translates into real lives and real jobs and real people paying the heating bills. I worry about the currency. I wake at night thinking of the enormous expenses which are not even mentioned. Who will pay for the cost of setting up new embassies and legations around the world? I think about the things very close to my heart – the military towns which will be left filled with tumbleweed as the non-Scottish regiments go south, the racecourses which will be bereft of the Levy and so face closure. To me, it is too high a price to pay.

The positive of all this is that I hope there will be more devolution, which is devoutly to be wished, and that Scotland has the best of all worlds. It gets to be both Scottish and British. Two great identities for the price of one.

But for all the rational, cautious head, it is my heart which wins. My heart is English and Scottish and Irish and Welsh; that is my history and my ancestry. To have to choose one would be like cutting off a limb. I want the old neighbours to stay together, to capitalise on all their mutual strengths, in everything from research and invention, to the arts and the shared sense of humour. I don’t want the cultural ties that run between us to be brutally severed.

There are people who sneer at the heart arguments. I am not among them. The great psychologist Alfred Adler said there were three vital aspects of human happiness. A sense of loving and being loved, a sense of satisfaction and meaning in work, and a sense of belonging. Place, community, comradeship, being dug in – these were so important to him that he included them in his definitive trifecta. My heart argument is all about belonging.

This morning, I went down to the village to get a Racing Post, so I could read about Estimate, the Queen’s sweet filly who is running today at Doncaster. I adore Estimate, because she is a battler. She is a slip of a girl, lightly built, delicately constructed, but she has a huge fighting heart. I saw my friend George, a man of proud Scottish lineage, standing in his shop, arranging the shelves to his satisfaction. He loves racing as much as I, and usually we discuss the intricacies of the 3.30. Today, without being asked, he said, loudly, proudly: ‘I’m no, me.’ He gestured in a southerly direction. ‘I’d feel naked without them,’ he said.

This is instinct, heart, viscera. It does not make it any less important. It has no figures or statistics or financial forecasts to go with it. Humans cannot live on dry as dust numbers alone. The rational is important, but so are the more nebulous things which touch the soul.

My heart, like George’s, cries for union, fellowship, for the ties that bind. If Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland were to unstitch themselves I would be forlorn, diminished, bereft. For me, these island nations are a family, and I say, like lovely Al Green: let’s stay together.

 

Today’s pictures:

My beloved Scotland, from the archive:

Almost normal.

1422 new words written, and I feel almost human again. Now all I need is for the monkey mind to stop monkeying around, and things shall settle back into routine. The sun shines all day and people, near and far, are funny and kind. I eat proper food and contemplate getting more iron in my diet. I speak of Scotland and the future and the human condition and all those important things. I am pleased because I make the Mother and the lovely Stepfather laugh at breakfast. Then I watch the racing at Donny, and admire the beautiful, fleet thoroughbreds in the Yorkshire sunshine. Not quite normal yet, but heading towards the border.

The mare once again gets to have her adored wander about the set-aside. She loves the wild grass and the thistles. She is so absolutely herself, so sweet and funny and known to me, so at ease in her beautiful skin, that I think, for the time I am with her, that nothing else matters. The idiot mind may monkey about from branch to branch, but when I am with her everything is still and clear and real. She is my own Zen mistress, and I don’t know how I would get through a day without her. She is my best example. She knows what matters, and that is what exists now, in the moment. She is my meditation and my best professor. She is a salve to the heart.

A small and possibly not very coherent thought.

I’ve been under the weather all week, having had a relapse after my false perk over the weekend. Every ounce of weedy energy was directed at smashing my first deadline, which I triumphantly hit at 1.38pm, just in time to collapse in a heap and watch the first day of the Leger meeting. The main deadline is still two weeks away, so I shall have to butch up and bash on, but at least I was able to deliver on what I promised today.

The poor blog, shamefully neglected, sits in the corner, hoping someone might throw it a bone. But my brain has returned to its fugue state after putting on a thousand words this morning, and can summon no good prose.

I do have a thought, though. A thought for the day is better than a poke in the eye with a dull stick.

It is this.

Never, ever underestimate the power of the smallest act of kindness.

I know that people do talk about this. It is in quite a lot of books. It is supposed to be one of the secrets of well-being, performing small acts of kindness. It can sound wise, or it can sound corny as hell, depending on the state of your inner sceptic. It can sound a bit pointless.

Someone I do not know at all, a gentle stranger on my Twitter feed, took the time to make one of those small kind acts this afternoon. It was a gesture which spoke of great thoughtfulness, even though the thing itself was little and fleeting. But it took my battered old heart and expanded it like a glorious balloon.

It was an oddly pure thing. There was no side to it, no point to prove, no flag to fly. It was what it was: an offering of sheer pleasure. It made me smile and smile.

You know I always bang on about the small things, in so many different contexts. Sometimes I wonder whether I am talking arrant nonsense.

But there was the mighty power of the very, very small thing.

Take the time, I tell myself; think the thought. Do the small thing. Offer the offering.

All those tiny grains of sand add up to a mighty dune.

Friday

The universe is kind and breaks my fever just in time. I had got to the stage where I thought I would never feel well again, and perhaps this was not a bug but a life sentence. There was that thing of waking at three in the morning and trying to plan how to live with constant pain. I know people who do live with constant pain and I have no idea how they bear it. This dull virus contains the overwhelming luxury of going away. I never watched a tide ebb with such gratitude.

One of the oldest of the old friends is coming tomorrow for lunch. We have known each other since childhood and I never see him and I miss him. I could not have stood the idea of chucking, although I did at one point consider asking if he would mind it if I received him on a chaise longue, like something out of an Italian opera. (The awful thing is I do actually have a chaise longue.)

As it is, the beastly bug sods off at about four-thirty. I can feel it go. I like to think it was the spinach soup that beat it. I potter about in my pyjamas, weak as a baby panda, vaguely remembering what normal feels like, and attempting to tidy up a bit. This old friend lives a big life; he is one of the ones who has gone and done something in the world. For a moment, I panic. What will he think of the old piles of the Racing Post and the slightly dusty Edwardian glasses and my ridiculous collection of birds’ nests? I never got the whole House and Garden thing, and I am almost constitutionally incapable of throwing things away, so there are awful little hoarder’s piles everywhere you look. I could get up at six in the morning, I think, and redo the whole house.

Then I think: he really has not come for interior design. With any luck, he won’t notice. I’ll give him some lovely chicken and some green soup for strength and we’ll remember all the old jokes. What can it matter? My house is slightly odd, but it is mine, and I can’t suddenly fake a magazine front. I’ll never be one of the shiny people, and that is all she wrote.

 

And if the worst comes to the worst, there is always the red mare, and Stan the Man too. Who cares if there are holes in the sofa when there are these two?:

Rather bad pictures, but I’m still too swimmy to find and edit good ones. Still, I think this goes with my theme of not having to be all gleamy and perfect. A bit muddly and not quite in focus will do.

Vague thoughts from a swimmy head.

I had to say no to someone today.

It was a question to which the answer is always no, so there was no agonising over the decision. It was the way of saying it. The request came from a charming young woman, at the beginning of her career I guessed. I did not wish to sound aloof or squashing or even negative. I wanted to make it very clear that the thing was not personal.

I have spent half my adult life trying to polish the art of saying no. I remember my wild delight when I first managed to say no without adding an explanation. Not no but, or no because, no you see. Just – no.

Those of you who are not female or do not have a fatal tendency to try and please people will be scratching your heads at this stage. For God’s sake, you will be crying; sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no. What difference can it make?

But no can be profoundly scary. How much easier to say yes and be nice and compliant and have everyone think what a trooper you are. What if they do take the no the wrong way, and decide you are difficult and ungenerous? The carping voices in my head sharpen their painted nails and get scritching and bitching. They judge no meanly, and tell me that so shall everyone else.

After that, another more nuanced and complicated no had to be said. Not a definitive no, but a moving of goalposts. I am felled by a horrid low-grade virus, the kind I get about once a year, which makes me feel as if I have been kicked all over by a furious Shetland pony and that my eyeballs have been boiled in oil. My irrational mind sees illness as a weakness, as if some pathetic failure of will has let my immune system down, so I tend to stagger on, achieving nothing, until I hit the wall and admit defeat. Today, I had to write to the agent to push back the deadline. Not a resounding no, but a not yet, which also feels like a sort of defeat.

Luckily there is the sensible voice. I really have no idea how on earth I have a sensible voice, since my family is not famed for any kind of sensibleness, but there she is, steady and sure, and really very grown-up. She is the one who says spit, spot, it’s not the end of the world. This is the voice which says: apologise, move on, go to bed, and have some chicken soup. It is a very, very good voice indeed, and I wish I could hear it all the time.

Today’s pictures:

Just one shot for you. Despite my viral load, I stumped up to HorseBack. There are veterans who go there who have to deal with daily pain which I can hardly imagine, so the least I could do was stir my sorry self. It was absolutely worth it, as I watched people up against it do excellent work with the horses.

These were the first faces I saw, two of my very favourites of the mighty herd – Mikey on the left who is sweet and soft and will do anything for love, and Red on the right, who is bright and alert and gentle and good.

Oh, and down in the field is a very, very happy red mare. Some horses are busy and active and really want a job. But this one would be delighted if she could just mooch her days away with nothing to do. She adores stillness. So she is exceptionally pleased to have a day off:

No, thank you.

Because I am a goofball, I forgot to send in my electoral registration. Today, there was a wild panic, as the deadline charged down the track like a brakeless freight train. The only answer was a lot of downloading, scanning, filling in and emailing, all things that I am really, really bad at. Luckily, I have a kind friend who is organised, and she helped me with it.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I cried. ‘I may now take part in the democratic process. This is what Mrs Pankhurst chained herself to the railings for.’

My kind friend laughed, kindly.

I love Scotland. I fell in love with these hills as you might fall in love with a person, and moved five hundred miles north to live in them. I left my old life and my old friends behind in the south. I still miss the old friends sorely; it is the only sadness of this northern life. I wish for a Tardis, and wormholes. But the hills won.

When I cross the border to Scotland, after a trip to the south, I cry actual tears of homecoming. This place is home to me in a way which is stitched into the deepest reaches of my heart. I love the beauty, the people, the wild spaces. Those spaces amaze me still, they are so improbable in this small, crowded island nation.

I do have Scottish blood. ‘Quite a lot of Scottish blood,’ says my mother, staunchly, at breakfast. I also have Irish blood, English blood, and Welsh blood.

Sometimes I think nationality means nothing. It is a human construct, after all. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and nations are often no more than random lines drawn on a map, or recent inventions, cobbled together out of territorial ambition, political compromise and contingency. Italy and Germany were only unified in the late 19th century; they are band-box new. Before that, an inhabitant of the duchy of Savoy was a foreigner to an inhabitant of the Kingdom of Sicily.

All that is intellectually true. It is not emotionally true. The feeling of culture and history and ancestry does mean something. Nationality may be intellectually indefensible, but it is viscerally meaningful.

In the year when the great sprinting mare, Black Caviar, came to Ascot, I went to the Royal Meeting for the first time in years. The place was teeming with Australians, many of whom had never been abroad before, who were following their mighty heroine. I made friends with many of them, at the pre-parade ring and in the stands. I took on, absurdly, the role of ambassador, apologising for the weather, making jokes about the oddness of the British way.

Late on the first afternoon, after spending much time laughing and joking with the great Aussie contingent, I found myself upsides a very British gentleman, one of those old racing types I remember from my childhood. We also laughed and joked, but in a very different way. I suddenly realised I had been very literal with the Australians, because we did not share a culture. With my old racing gent, we fell into the language of our own tribe, dry and ironic, reading between the lines, understanding cultural references without having to amplify. It was not that one was better and one was worse, it was just that with those different nationalities I spoke a different language, even though it was all English. The old gent and I knew each other, even though we had never been introduced in our lives.

I love Britishness, I can’t help it. I love the idiotic obsession with failure, the hatred of showing off, the pragmatism and stoicism, the instinctive saying of sorry when someone bumps into you in the street. I love the queuing and the tea and the understatement. I love the Queen, even though I could give you eight good arguments against a hereditary monarchy. I love the bosky hedgerows and the wild moors, the lakes and tors, the Norman churches and the stately piles. I love the hill farmers and the farriers and the dry-stone-wallers. I love the sucking of the teeth and the shaking of the head. I love that most Britons, when asked how they are, will not answer ‘marvellously well’, but just mutter ‘not too bad’.

I love my Scottish and Irish and Welsh and English blood. I don’t want to have to choose. I could mount a serious, empirical argument for the Union. I could draw on all that history I learnt. I could even break out a bit of economics and geo-politics. But my decision is entirely one of the heart. I want to remain an Ordinary Decent Briton. I do not want to have to carve a slice of myself off. Being British is stamped on my heart.

And that is why, with the utmost respect for those of opposing views, with quiet politeness and reserve, I shall be voting No, thank you.

 

Thoughts about advice.

I’ve been thinking about advice this week. I’ve been thinking about the good advice I have been given in my life, and the advice I would give to a young person if I were asked, and the advice I would give now to my twenty-one year old self.

The two best pieces of advice I ever heard came twenty-five years apart.

The first was from an older and much wiser friend. I was twenty-two, painfully in love with the wrong person, and flailing. She looked at me, very gently, and said: ‘Would you rather be proud? Or would you rather be happy?’

One could parse this and unpick it and examine it from all angles. One could put nuances on it and argue with it. But at the time, it made immediate and profound sense to me and I think of it still, every single week of my life.

What I think it meant was: misplaced pride will only make you miserable. Pretending you are untouchable when you are not, or able to do something without help, or doing fine when you are falling to pieces, will not bring you peace or joy. Humility and vulnerability might seem like hard and painful things, but in the end, being humble and vulnerable will make you a much happier human than being proud ever could.

The second piece of stellar advice came from one of my best beloveds, one who goes back all the way. We have been friends since we were eighteen, and I can’t imagine my life without her. Only last year, she introduced me to a new theory she had carved out. It was, whenever faced with a confusion or a difficult decision or just sheer raw pain or fear, think of what is the worst that can happen in that specific scenario. The answer often comes very quickly, rising from the subconscious like a trout to a fly. It often goes something like: I will fail, people will laugh, I will be left alone, I will be heartbroken. Then, you ask yourself if you can deal with it. Most often, the answer is yes. It will be hard, but the worst will not sink you. This makes taking the decision or facing the fearful thing much, much easier.

I also think you need a really good friend to go through this with. I remember mapping out one such disastrous scene with the very beloved who invented the theory. We were riding together. Over our heads, there was a bright spring sky; under us, the good horses were moving easily and kindly. In my head, all was darkness and bafflement.

‘What is the worst that can happen? she asked.

I told her.

I faced it. I contemplated it. I examined the worst from all angles. I thought I could weather it. She thought so too.

And you know the funny thing? The worst did happen, in that particular play. The final curtain did not ring down on triumph, but on messy failure.

It was difficult. It did hurt. The ramifications rippled on for months afterwards. (They can catch me still, on a bad day.) But because of that ride with that good friend, because of contemplating the crash with another sympathetic human heart, I damn well did get through it.

I think now, what would I tell someone of the Younger Niece’s generation, if they should ask for some of my aunt-ish advice? What is the most important thing I have learnt in these forty-seven years?

I have nothing very pithy. I think I might say something like: don’t disdain the unshowy virtues. Brilliance and wit and talent are all very well, but what really gets you through are the quiet virtues, like reliability, and gentleness, and dogged determination, and consistency, and patience. I would recommend my old friends, kindness and stoicism.

I think I would say: not everything is about you. Don’t make it all about you.

I may add: the things you think are the end of the world almost always are not.

There are the very obvious ones – don’t be afraid to fail; don’t be frightened of being wrong; risk falling flat on your face and be the first to laugh at yourself if you do.

I would say: empathy is an awful word, but a lovely thing to be able to do.

I would obviously tell them never to dangle their modifiers.

I would insist that human beings have much more that unites them than divides them, and that most divisions are mere constructs, hardly more than flickering shadows on the cave wall.

Something like that. I admit it needs a little work.

Everything I know comes from somebody or somewhere else: from humans I have loved, books I have read, unexpected voices on the radio, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Yeats and TS. I think the only original idea about existence that I ever came up with is not really original at all, it is just that I thought it for myself rather than pinching it. It is quite recent, and I like it.

It is: are you living a life or proving a point?

I suspect this says more about my own flaws than revealing any great wisdom, but still, it is useful in my own mazy mind. I think I may have spent quite a lot of time trying to prove a point. Look at me, with my step ball change and my jazz hands. Now, I don’t want to prove anything. I am too old for that, too chipped around the edges. I want to live a quiet Scottish life, a life that is useful in some small way, a life that adds rather than subtracts, with these trees and these blue hills and this red mare and this lurcher dog and this good earth.

 

Will you tell me yours? The best advice you ever got, the best you ever gave, the best you give yourself?

Only if you have time, of course.

 

As I finished this, I went next door. The kind Sister has given me a delightful chair. It is upholstered in very pale colours, and since I live a life of animals and mud, I put a blanket to protect it, in case the dog sat on it. The dog, it turns out, is sitting on it. I think Stan the Man has found his new favourite place.

It’s not for everyone, but some of my best advice ever would be, of course: get a dog.

Noble face:

Comedy face:

Hills and earth and sky:

Grass and heather:

Every morning she greets me:

I love this one, even though she had come too close and I was all out of focus. It makes me think of Stubbs, for some odd reason. And sometimes I like including my mistakes:

PS. Wrote 2445 words today and edited the manuscript to the end. Tomorrow, I start the third draft. So, even though I hate excuses, I must confess that my eyes are squinting and my brain has gone. Which means: THERE WILL BE TYPOS. Forgive me.

No blog today.

So sorry. Too much work and an airport run.

Just time for a picture of my two beloveds:

I am becoming very hippy-ish in my old age. Soon I shall wear flowers in my hair. Today, I thought: really the answer to everything is love. Love, and be kind, but mostly love.

And not to be loved, although that is enchanting, but to love. Not in a cheap, ersatz, sentimental way. In a tough, robust, getting on with it sort of way. More actions than words; more reality than flowers.

I’m not sure where this thought came from, but it seemed very certain and sure.

Tomorrow, I expect I shall have changed my mind.

But for today: it is love.

The ice bucket challenge.

I did the ice bucket challenge this morning.

Since it went viral, there has been the inevitable backlash. Oh, say the doubters, surely giving to charity should be a quiet, private thing. It should not involve show-offs prancing about on the internet. A very thoughtful and rather charming Australian news anchor politely declined to nominate any individuals, and instead challenged everyone to make the world a slightly better place. He added that the whole shooting match could be seen as a waste of water, and that one might be better donating to Water Aid instead.

I absolutely see the intellectual point of these arguments. They are all true. Besides, I did not much fancy a bucket of water over my head. So I kept quiet, and vaguely hoped the thing would pass me by.

Then my friend Jay Hare nominated me. He is a Royal Marine, and as I remarked in my video, you don’t say no to the Marines. The intellectual arguments went out of the window, and the instinctive took over. I could of course just donate, and skip the whole look at me with my bucket aspect. But I had the strong and immediate feeling that it would be curmudgeonly to refuse. Part of the whole experience is the element of fun and idiocy and sharing with the group. I don’t think it is showing off; I think it is being stitched in to the collective, and that is one of the great strengths of this internet age. I was galvanised, even if there would be cross people who tutted at one more damn bucket video.

Someone I loved very much died from Motor Neurone Disease. It is a brutal thing, and if a nutty viral trend is getting it more money and more awareness, that surely can only be for the good.

I was also suddenly excited about the possibility of involving the red mare. This was fairly high risk. I pride myself on the desensitising work I’ve done with her, but what if she freaked out, for all to see? She is a thoroughbred, after all. Still, there was no question that I should do it without her. She would be the Debbie McGee to my Paul Daniels. (Very lucky that the red duchess does not read English; I’m not sure how pleased she would be with that comparison. She almost certainly sees herself more as a cross between the Duchess of Devonshire and Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. If she had eyebrows, she would raise them.)

I had only twenty-four hours to organise the thing, and I had no video equipment. A faint sense of panic nipped in.

All the stars aligned. My sweet family was available, at the shortest notice. The Younger Niece and The Sister swung into action. My sister does not go on the internet much, and had not heard of the challenge. ‘You want me to pour a bucket of water over your head?’ she said, at first, entirely baffled.

‘That is correct,’ I said.

‘Oh well,’ she said, with equanimity. ‘I suppose I can do that.’

The red mare was more than ready for her close-up, even though she was slightly surprised to find that instead of slow work and breakfast she was being made into an internet queen.

My mother, when told of the thing, looked at the grubby coat I wear to do the horses and said, in a very dry voice, ‘Well, that jacket does need a wash.’

The water was a blinding shock, but afterwards I felt wildly energised. My sister ran me a nice bath so that I could warm up, and we reminisced about our old dad, who used to turn the water in his early morning shower from boiling to freezing before he went out to ride first lot. He would bellow as the cold hit him, but it set him up for the rest of the day. We wondered whether we should follow his example.

The whole thing was enchanting, from the brilliance of my clever horse, to the sweetness of my dear sister, to the lovely laughter of my niece, who was holding the video camera. It was one of my beloved Small Things. Of such small things is the good life made.

And it taught me something else. I shall never, ever again carp at television presenters. Speaking to camera is really difficult. I wanted to say a few words before the water hit, and my arms appeared to have a life of their own, waving about as if they were channelling Sir Patrick Moore. I also seemed to have developed an odd swaying motion. I wished for a moment afterwards that I had not waved the arms about so much, and that I was not having such a rotten hair day, but then I realised that this is not about me at all. It really was not the time for vanity. The mad waving and the bad hair made it all the better, in a way. I was not some polished public person, but a very ordinary woman, in a field, with a horse.

The horse, of course, was not ordinary at all. If she does not get a television gig after this, I shall eat my hat.

There was no camera on hand, so here is a screenshot from the video. The amazing mare did not MOVE A HOOF:

It’s a hopeless picture, but it gives you the sense of the brilliance of that red girl.

As I finish writing this, my video has finally gone up on Facebook. The absurd thing was that the planning and filming took about fifteen minutes, whilst managing to download the video clip, locate it on my computer, make it compatible with Facebook, and get it up there has taken three hours. Every avenue I tried contained a furious error message. It was the wrong type of file; Facebook would not recognise it; it downloaded from the niece’s camera to the most obscure part of my computer which refused to share it with anything else. At one point it disappeared altogether and I had to spend ages ransacking my entire hard disk. When I finally worked out that I could share it from Microsoft Movie Maker, that horrid application would only allow me to post it with an advertisement for itself, rather than the words I wanted to write. When I tried to edit the words, it simply deleted the entire video, which had already taken forty minutes to load. I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

I went into gritted-teeth tech rage. Only the most bloody-minded refusal to be beaten got me through. Somehow, this feels quite appropriate. The thing itself was quite easy. Getting wet is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Donating money was easy; the lovely MND Association make it as straightforward as falling off a log. Getting the video out nearly made my ears fall off. But there should have been some element of sacrifice, even if it was only time and a bit of fury.

All the arguments against this kind of thing are perfectly logical. But, my darlings, it was a riot. It felt like an unalloyed Good Thing, on so many levels. If you are nominated, go for it. If you can find a red mare to star in your challenge, all the better.

A day in brief.

1637 words of book written. Twenty pages edited.

Hats in the air work with the red mare. Important trailer practice. She self-loaded. (She is so clever that I need new words for clever.) Then: a canter out in the hayfields of perfect lightness and containment, as if she were channelling her inner dressage diva. And to finish: a sweet slow ride with her little Paint friend. My heart filled to overflowing.

Try not to think of the awful shoutiness of last night’s debate on Scottish independence. You know that I have a strict rule on this blog about ad hominem. But the tutting old great-aunt in me said: that Mr Salmond really should learn some manners. (Am clearly in a minority in this, since everyone else said he won, hands down. Cross aunt says: by yelling?)

HorseBack UK work. Quite pleased with the pictures from Blair.

A dream of more time. Always, always, more time.

But Stanley the Dog is sweet and funny and makes my mother smile at breakfast, which is always a shining and good thing.

Wonder where to buy jump-leads.

Think of books I have to read and things I must look up.

Faint sense of relief that it is very average racing today, so I do not need to have a bet. The memory of dear Beacon Lady from yesterday sustains me.

Feel faintly guilty that this blog is written in cheap and intermittent telegraphese. Have I no deep thoughts for you?

Must make soup.

Sometimes I think the story of my life is: must make soup.

Suppose it could be a worse story.

 

No time for the camera today, so here is a quick blue hill and a beautiful red girl: