Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 62

Choices.

I have an inchoate feeling of a corner being turned, of a new beginning, of possibilities opening up. I cannot quite pin it down but I feel it moving in me like an energy.

I spoke to someone today who is very young, and very wise. She spoke of having her perspective changed, and learning to see the positive instead of the negative. Her glass used to be half empty; now it is half full.

I think that this is a conscious choice. People have a tendency to see their characters as fixed. I am stubborn, they say, or optimistic, or sceptical, or kind. There is a temptation to take one label and slap it on and be done with it.

I think that most people are many things, all at the same time. I think also that character traits are not carved in stone. One can choose. Choices are important. Habits of mind can be changed. New neuronal pathways can be built, since it turns out the brain is much more plastic than was previously thought.

My glass too tends to be half full. I generally choose to see the best. Sometimes I feel slightly embarrassed by this, as if it were proof that I am naive or unsophisticated. The clever people are often cynics, after all. I am reading one clever person now, who serves up his cynicism about the human race in a brilliant and funny way. It is horribly persuasive. He has any number of proofs. My hello clouds, hello sky self wants to say: no, no, stop, wait, LOOK THERE IS THE SUN COMING OUT.

Is the choice, and I insist it is a choice, to see the best wilful folly, or a generally good thing? I can’t decide. I like digging for the good stuff, like a hound snuffling for truffles. When I find it, I feel a sense of joy and triumph and vindication. Silver linings glimmer about me.

Today, a man arrived at HorseBack who, on his last tour, was shot through the head. He comes to us quite a lot, and I like him very much, and am always glad to see him back. Getting shot in the head could shake one’s faith in life. It’s a bloody awful thing to happen. He could complain about his ghastly fate and the unfairness of things. (Why me? Why my damn head?) Instead, he chooses to see himself as lucky. He could have died. He should have died, really, all the medical people said so. Not many people survive a bullet to the brain. But he did survive, and he chooses not to complain, but to celebrate the fact that he is still here.

That’s what I mean by seeing the best in things. That’s my finest example, my daily reminder, right up there with What Would AP Do? It is, I think, a good choice. I put it in my heart and carry it with me like an amulet. The best is there, I think, even if sometimes I have to squint very hard to see it. It is worth looking for.

 

No pictures today; the weather is too awful. Just the two Beloveds, from lighter days:

How can one not look for the best in things, when one has those two beautiful creatures to gaze on every day? That’s crazy, wild, impossible luck, right there.

The two brains have a little chat. Or, do the thing.

I am very much taken with the You are Not Alone theme which developed on the blog last week. How the Dear Readers rise magnificently to the occasion. My only slight dread is that one day I might admit to something and you will all turn round and go ‘huh?’ It is a risk I must take.

Today, my idiot brain and my adult brain had the following conversation.

Idiot Brain: I can’t.

Adult Brain: Yes, you can.

Idiot Brain: I will feel stupid and frightened, and I will be right, because I have made a massive cock-up and shall have to go into the garden to eat worms.

Adult Brain, kindly, sanely: You will almost certainly feel frightened and stupid. There is a real possibility that you will have been stupid and so shall be quite correct in feeling so. But these are only uncomfortable feelings. You have not had your legs blown off or lost your sight. You have not done something cruel and unusual. You have just screwed up a bit, and you may have to sit with that. It’s not the worst thing in the world.

Idiot Brain: IT IS. I shall disappear into a shameful puddle of my own inadequacy.

Adult Brain: No, you won’t. Let me just run you through the worst that can happen again.

Idiot Brain: I might feel frightened and stupid?

Adult Brain: Yes.

Idiot Brain: And that is all?

Adult Brain: Yes.

Idiot Brain mutters something that only dogs can hear.

This conversation (and I screw up my face in embarrassment as I write this) took place because I’ve been worrying about cash and have been quite stupid about it and not planned for contingencies. Contingencies have happened. (Yes, shouts the Know It All Brain, because this is life.) I went into a defensive crouch for a few days and could not face looking at my bank account, because I felt so idiotic and wrong and childish. I did not want to see proof of my lack of budgeting and past profligacy. I was convinced everything would be screaming at me in red and I would have to live off beans for the next year.

Finally, the adult brain won. The idiot brain went and hid itself in the cupboard of doom, and I opened up the computer and squinted at the screen.

It’s not anything like as bad as I feared. I shall still have to keep listening to the adult brain, and my belt shall remain tight, but I’m finding a small pride in saving money and a curious liberation in not buying stuff. The only things I buy now are the odd rug for the red mare, and some supplements to keep her dear hooves hard. (She cannot do without rosehips and seaweed.)

I do still feel a bit stupid, because I did not look far enough down the track, and I let things get away from me. But as the good old adult brain pointed out so truly: feeling stupid is not the end of the world.

I have a real terror of stupidity, and my next private project is to try and work out where that comes from. It’s such an odd thing to be frightened of. I mean, all humans are capable of stupidity, and it’s such a small vice, so tiny compared to cruelty or prejudice or dishonesty. I’ve known people who are utterly brilliant in one sphere be perfect icons of folly in another. Cleverness can be a wonderful and generous thing, but it can also be hard and almost ruthless. My absurd fear of being stupid, a fear so crashing that it can paralyse me and actually stop me doing things, is the next existential tangle which I must unpick.

In the meantime, I feel a streaming relief that the thing was not nearly so terrifying as I had thought. The anticipation and assumptions were perfect carnivals of mortification and fear; the reality turned out to be something which can be managed, with a little stern application.

I think: I must get to work on my tendency to catastrophise. I’m not sure that I can say categorically that things are never as bad as one thinks, because there must be times when they are. But most often, as the fool mind conjures up lurid images of disaster and destitution, as the lizard brain insists that everything shall crash and people will sneer and mock, the actuality is nowhere near as catastrophic. I know I should know this. I have seen Hamlet enough times, after all. I know that nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Do the thing, is my mantra for the day. Just listen to the adult brain, and do the damn thing. Even if you might end up feeling a little bit stupid.

 

Today’s pictures:

The light this morning at HorseBack:

The light of my silly old life:

The light turns Stanley the Dog into a gleaming streak of red:

And, first thing, turns the hill into something magical and mysterious:

It’s all about the light, really, literally and metaphorically.

As is so often the case, this was not what I meant to write at all.

Ah, I was going to go back to the most excellent discussion on anger, but time has beaten me. Time is beating me quite a lot lately, but I don’t mind this too much. There is a goodness in having many things to do. Imagine a life in which the hours stretched out like acres, with nothing to fill them.

The good part of this week was that things got done. I read interesting books. I wrote 6179 words. I fulfilled my responsibilities at HorseBack. I spent time with my family. I walked the dog, and the horse too. (We rode a little this week, but she has a slight muscle strain in her off hind, probably from scooting about in the muddy field, and so we are gently walking it off. Since I adore walking her in hand, and she loves it too, this is not much hardship.) I cooked a good casserole and even managed some rudimentary domestic tasks. The blog stuttered and tottered a little, as it got squeezed into the smallest available space, but at least it still exists, chugging along on three wheels, held together with binder twine. I even backed a couple of winners, and had a very nice treble.

I thought quite a lot of my late father. I shall never stop missing him, but I have a sense that some corner in the road has been turned. One of the paradoxes I found about losing a parent was that even though it is the most normal and expected of things, it turned normality on its head. The world became oddly strange to me, without him in it. Although an old man dying could not be more natural, everything felt shocking and unreal and unnatural. I think that this was where the mare came in, anchoring me in the earth, in the animal, in the fundamental. Horses are all about the fundamental, in a practical as well as philosophical sense.

I found it hard to get back to ordinary routines. For a very long time after my dad died, so long that I was ashamed of it, I found my sleep patterns disrupted and small usual tasks difficult. I could write a book. I could school a horse. I could make conversation and crack jokes. But I battled to eat or sleep at regular hours. I kept missing lunch, or staying up all night working. For a short, rather terrifying time, I became afraid of the dark. I also feared silence, and sometimes went to sleep with the wireless on, so that I would surf in and out of forgotten dreams to the sounds of the World Service.

I hoped, secretly, that this was a thing, something common and known, and not just me going nuts in the head. I assumed it was the mortality attack. It’s not just losing a person, missing a beloved human, remembering well a formative influence, it’s a crash course in the reality which until then had been more of an intellectual exercise than anything else. Of course I knew about mortality, but I had not yet been beaten round the head with it.

I felt slightly stupid that I was not dealing with it better. Oddly, I did the grieving part pretty well. I did not stuff it down or deny it or belittle it. I cling always to stoicism, since I find those people who turn every set-back into a three-act opera tiring. But I knew the thing must be marked. It was in the mazy paths of readjusting to this new reality that I lost my bearings.

For whatever reason, perhaps just time doing its clever thing, the routines have at last reasserted themselves. Despite the fact that at half past midnight last night I was in a field, with a horse, staring at the moon and the stars in case the Aurora Borealis should pass by, most of the time I now go to bed at a reasonable hour. The domestic tasks do not seem to baffle me in quite the way they did. A small sense of agency and a glimmer of organisation return, lifting their heads like snowdrops seeking spring. I feel passionately grateful for this change, and tread delicately on the new, firmer ground.

How funny this medium is. As I started to write, the burden of my song was that I had no time to say what I wanted to say. Then I said something quite else, which I had not intended at all. In the spirit of this blog, which is all about authenticity and what the hell and buggering on and seeing what comes, I shall let it stand. I suspect that the Dear Readers know some of this only too well. I suspect, I hope, that I am not alone.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are not from today. Today, the murk and gloom returned. But earlier in the week, oh what light we had:

The Dear Readers excel themselves.

What I loved about yesterday is that you came to talk not about me, or the dear dog, or the red mare, or the small things of daily life which I often put here, but of a good and interesting subject.

On anger, it turns out, the Dear Readers have wisdom and philosophy and jokes. I would very much like to unpack this, as Melvyn Bragg says each Thursday morning. Today there is no time. Today, the sun is dancing like a crazy thing and I want to get out again into the air and look at the hills.

I think a lot about choices. There is no perfect life; always one must sacrifice one thing to gain another. Today, I ruthlessly sacrifice the blog. (The racing has already been cancelled.) Today, I can do my work and go into the amber light and have a lunchtime ride on my horse, or I can write something serious here and watch the 2.05 at Catterick. I cannot do them all. Admitting this feels stupidly adult. There is still a giddy child in me which believes I can do everything. Now, I stare down the straight gunbarrel of reality and I find that I don’t mind that at all. It’s oddly reassuring.

More on the subject of rage tomorrow, because you all said such interesting things.

 

In the meantime, here are two pictures:

The morning sun at HorseBack UK:

And dear Polly the Cob, who lives there:

I never knew a cob in my life. I freely admit, I was never much for heavier horses.  But this girl is a treat. I grow very fond of her, and she has a beauty all her own.

I have a thought.

Ha. Today I have a THOUGHT for you.

It concerns rage.

After yesterday’s blah, I discovered today that I was suffering from fury. It crept up on me early, as I listened to a gentleman on Thought for the Day (which makes me pretty cross most mornings) talk about having a ‘vegetarian lifestyle’. The very word lifestyle makes me spit, but a vegetarian one makes my head spin off. What can it mean?

Then, as I was having a most uncharacteristic argument with the red mare, who decided she did not want to move from her nice friend and her nice field and her nice breakfast, I found another pocket of fury. This one was to do with a certain human not behaving in a way I would like that human to behave. This is not a pretty reflection on my character. I like to think I am all each to each, and NOT CONTROLLING AT ALL, and perfectly shimmering with tolerance and liberalism and laissez-faire. In fact, I quite often think, horridly, that this person should do this, or that person bloody well could do that. Then I have to read myself lectures in my head about the horrors of judgement and I feel very small and rather less than the person I would wish to be.

The mare finally consented to move, and as I walked out with her, I attempted to get all this into some kind of order in my head. As I contemplated the particular human who had made me so cross, I told myself that A. getting furious about the perceived lack of doing what I wanted had no utility and B. that it was a lowering reflection on all the things I like to believe I hold dear. It was also rank hypocrisy, since I loathe it when people tell me how I should be living or behaving or functioning in the world.

On the other hand, rage must go somewhere. The human had done something careless and mildly hurtful, as humans often do. It was not big enough to warrant major confrontation, but it had lacerated my spirits. The problem was that the resentment at the slight hurt had ballooned into a general anger at half that poor person’s choices in life. (Could do this; should do that. That was the really ugly and uncalled-for part.)

My question is, my thought is: where does one put these sudden squalls of fury, the ones that don’t really do you or anyone else any good? I think that anger is a correct response in some situations – in the face of bigotry, hatred, idiot politicians, avaricious bankers, dangerous drivers, out of control regimes – but a lot of the time it is not appropriate and mostly to do with one. Sometimes, when I get cross it is warranted. Sometimes, it is all about my own self and not about the other person at all.

But one can’t simply stuff it down into the internal cupboard of doom or one gets ulcers and drinks too much.

Where is the correct place for it?

My rider is: I think anger is especially hard for women. Even now, in the age of the power female and the ladette, or whatever the Daily Fail calls them now, there is still a whiff of sugar and spice and all things nice. We ladies are not really supposed to be cross. Gentleman can parlay rage into entire careers – Peter Hitchens and Jeremy Clarkson are paid to be livid. I’m not sure there is an equivalent female version. (Actually, Melanie Phillips is absolutely furious, almost all of the time, but I do not think she would ever be offered a gig on Top Gear.)

I do often have a sense of failure when I fly into rages, as if I am undermining my own biological imperative, even though I don’t really believe in a biological imperative, which makes me even crosser and more confused. I find anger uncomfortable and sometimes frightening. I want to think the best of things and of people and to be at ease in the world. So when the snapping monster of ire uncurls itself within me, my instinct is to run away.

Today, I’m sitting with it. I’m breathing. I’m sharing with the group.

Too much?

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from today:

Skies over HorseBack:

Sweetly muddy and furry foal, especially for my friend The Television Producer, who always cheers me up, even from five hundred miles away:

Herself, on our morning walk, looking as if she never had a mulish moment in her whole wide life. (The Dear Readers now know the sorry truth. But then, nobody’s perfect, not even my old duchess.):

Some trees:

Not a single interesting thought.

Be careful what you promise. Fewer pictures, I said, but there shall be prose. Ah, the prose; the language of Shakespeare and Milton. That is what I am supposed to be good at. Occasionally, I assumed, I may have an interesting thought, which I could happily offer to you. After all this living and all the books I have read and all the conundrums I have pondered, you might imagine that the odd not-dull thought could flit across my brain, like a swallow flying south for winter.

I seem to remember, very vaguely, that I contemplated some antic notion about life and the human condition only this morning which might provoke and stimulate. Now, it is gone. There is, I am ashamed to say, only dullness left behind.

I am bashing on with my work. That is getting done, but slowly and with struggle. There are marvellous, shining days when the words are ready to be written. Out they come, all brushed up, like children on their way to a party. On other days, they must be chiselled and pummelled from the recalcitrant brain, as if I am mining rare emeralds from a sea of silt.

I am, doggedly, getting things done. But there is not enough brain left for an interesting blog. I feel obscurely ashamed.

I wonder, as I write this, whether this is the point of the internet. Is it a good thing to admit to blah days? Not catastrophic days, or mornings filled with grief and despair, or days when everything goes wrong and you might as well go into the garden and eat worms. But those not much cop days. The ones that are usually not written about, that do not feature in shiny magazine articles, the ones that make no headlines. The days when everything is flat and dulled and the wits are not firing and you are just trudging through the hours in a foggy determination to achieve one small thing. Perhaps it is obscurely important to confess to those.

I wonder this because I have an enduring faith in shared experience. Two of the words I love most in the English language are: me too. The sigh of relief when someone else admits to muddliness and crappiness and general messiness comes gusting out of me, so that I want to give the person kisses and flowers. Ah, I think, with passionate gratitude, I am not the only one.

I know also that the desire to be a consistently shiny, capable, organised, admirable person is an idiotic impossibility. My rational mind understands very well that nobody can scale those heights every single day. On some days, everyone will feel a bit scuffed and bashed and not very shiny at all. But the irrational mind shouts – come on, sharpen up, try harder, be glossier. Say something interesting, damn you, says the irrational mind, or people will WANT THEIR MONEY BACK. (They will also judge you, says the irrational mind, which has a mean streak; they will possibly sneer and point.)

So, that is where I am today. Neither good nor bad, just untidy and blah and a little bit dull. I said it would be getting personal.

As I finish this, I have two thoughts. They are: this too will pass. And: I can’t remember what the other one is. Which just about sums it up.

 

No time for the camera today. Here are two reassuring pictures of the Beloveds from the archive:

PS. You know that I no longer have time to reply directly to comments, although I read and love them all. But one of the Dear Readers did ask for details of the new riding. I shall describe it later in the week. (Not at too great length, for those of you who are not in the horse camp, so don’t panic.) And one or two of you asked about the new opportunity. I’ll tell you that too, once it is all set in stone. I like to think that I am mostly rational, but I cannot tempt fate. Too risky.

A most surprising day.

It was a cold, dirty, wet, windy day. The slip and squelch of mud could be heard three fields away. The sky was the colour of doleful pigeons. Yet two astonishing and rather unexpected things happened, which brought out the internal sunshine in a mighty blaze.

I was offered a new and thrilling opportunity which I had not foreseen at all, and which will transform my daily life.

And I learnt a new way of riding the red mare.

I haven’t been doing riding lessons for a while. The mare and I have just been mooching about, having fun, being a pair of old cowgirls, growing in harmony and confidence and joy together. But a horsewoman I know had been learning a new way of teaching and needed a guinea pig. I offered myself at once.

It was fascinating. It is a sort of melange of old classical and new theory. It’s very English, but it’s got a dash of Western in it. It is technical and delicate and very accurate, but it is also wide and philosophical. It is physical and cerebral. It made me think so much my head almost fell off.

It was good, serious teaching. I found it hard, and I adored it. I was concentrating so much that I forgot the weather, the time, the place, everything but my own body and this generous horse.

I feared the red mare might object. I feared she might roll her eyes and say: What are all these new questions you are asking me? It is very intense and requires a lot from the horse’s mind.

Instead of baulking, she pricked her ears and said: ah, yes, I see. This is new. Like this? And this? And this? I could almost feel her thinking: well, that is interesting. She was very happy afterwards, and gently pleased with herself.

I love her cleverness. But perhaps I love her willingness more. Offered a radically different way of doing things, she walked forward into the open spaces of novelty, without taking a beat. I was so proud of her that I whooped into the dirty air.

So, as the Christmas season comes to its close and real life obtains again, instead of scrabbling about to get organised, instead of sighing at my hopeless time management, instead of panicking at all the things which must be done, I was smiling in the face of two lovely things. An opportunity, which, in the way it was offered, is in itself an act of faith. And a reminder of how amazingly, gloriously, dazzlingly great my horse is. I don’t know how I ended up with such a mighty mare, but on that ordinary spring day when I first saw her face, the equine gods were smiling indeed.

 

No pictures today. Too gloomy. But this was the sight which greeted me yesterday morning, when the frost was glittering and the light was singing, and the girls were happy as clams:

As the new year kicks back into gear, and I have now more work than ever, there will be changes to the blog. I adore doing it, as you know, and I love most the responses from the Dear Readers. I cannot do without those, they cheer me so. But my nose shall be to the grindstone, with new projects and new demands. My plan is that the prose shall stay, but there will be fewer pictures. I can write at 75 words a minute, but choosing and editing the photographs is a long, slow process. I’m afraid also that it shall probably become more personal than ever, since I won’t have time to address the big things happening in the world. It will reduce to snapshots of an ordinary life. It has already been moving in this direction. I know well that I risk dancing with the wilder fringes of self-indulgence in this, but I hope very much that you will stick with me, and forgive.

Not what I meant to write at all.

It is a horrid, dirty, rainy day in Scotland, although we are very lucky in not getting the gales which are battering the rest of the country. I quietly contemplate the new secret projects which are growing in my head like saplings, and take one last day off as the Christmas season rolls to its close. I am now at the stage where I have had enough old lady early nights and days of thinking of nothing but my beautiful red mare and walks and laughter with my dear family to restore me to agency. I look forward to getting galvanised again, and pummelling my brain back into action.

I’ve been reading all my Christmas books (very well-chosen this year by kind relations) and playing about on the internet, where there is a lot of sweetness and funniness, and watching the racing. I’ve even had time for cooking.

As I was wandering about on Facebook this morning, I saw yet another doleful story about someone having to put up with ill-mannered and ill-bred remarks about thoroughbreds. At once, I wrote a furious defence in my head. I was about to post it here. It was going to be very long, excessively detailed, based on empirical evidence, and shatteringly comprehensive.

Then I thought: bugger it. Stupid people will think stupid thoughts and say stupid things. Almost all prejudice comes from ignorance and fear. I’m not sure that anything I can write will counter it.

I think: living well is the best revenge, and the best refutation too. Each morning, I get to stand with my beautiful, kind, clever mare, and admire her. I never get tired of admiring her. She is my great professor. She has taught me about the fine virtues of consistency and patience and kindness. She brings out my best self. I am slightly ashamed to admit that I probably behave better with her than I do with humans, because she can’t speak English, so I can’t explain myself to her.

I have to show her, every single day, that I may be relied on, through actions. You can’t say to a horse: I’m so sorry, but…

You cannot wave your hands in the air and relate how you would have done this if only you had the time, or you forgot that because you had a deadline, or you really did mean to do the other but were prevented by circumstance. You have to damn well DO THE THING. Day in, day out; whatever the weather, whatever your mood, whatever demons have you in their crocodile jaws.

And she teaches me that if I can do that, she will reward me with a sweetness and loyalty that has no end.

It’s not just that thoroughbreds have strength and courage and speed and beauty. It’s not only that they are intelligent and willing and generous. It’s not merely that they have unheralded comedic skills. They turn out to have a PhD in life too.

When I got a horse again, after so many years, I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be good for me to be physical, to get fit, to be rousted from my desk. I knew dimly, although I could hardly admit this, that it was a way of staying close to my darling old dad, because he was a horseman to his boots. It held strong memories of the best parts of my childhood. Thoroughbreds are what I grew up with, and when I sit on Red, I feel as if I have come home. What I did not expect was that it would make me a better human being.

A single mare cannot wipe away all my flaws and frailties. I’m still disorganised. I still procrastinate horribly. I am still flaky. My time management is rotten. I still get myself all jangled up and fall prey to horrid imaginings and crashing angst. I still do really, really stupid things.

But this remarkable horse has taught me about the things which are really important, and they are not the shiny, glittering, headline things. They are the good honest quiet things, which come from the earth, and from the heart. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank her enough for that.

PS. I had not actually intended to write this. I was just going to tell you it was a rainy day and that I was not doing much and that I would be back to full blogging strength on Monday. This all came flying out, rather unexpectedly, from the depths. I think perhaps the love has to go somewhere, and sometimes it is too vast to be contained in my puny chest. It has to soar into words, as if I am laying down a marker, offering proofs, or, perhaps even more importantly, recruiting witnesses. You are my witnesses.

I imagine that you all have sentient beings, animal and human, who make you feel this way. I imagine also, especially if you are British, that you might be a little shy about expressing that feeling. It is not what Ordinary Decent Britons are trained in, here in funny old Blighty. One must be ironic and self-deprecating and restrained. Gushing really is a bit of a cardinal sin. But as the Dear Readers know, I sometimes think one has to SAY THE THING.

I am also keenly aware that I have written versions of this before. I fall into the wicked pit of repetition. But when something is so true, I think, I hope, it can bear a little repetition. I like to remind myself of it. I like to have it written, so that I can take down this book, and slowly read, as Yeats said.

Thank you for listening. You are so very patient and good. I feel better now I’ve got all that off my chest.

Oh, and since you have got this far, here is a little reward. I suddenly think: I’ll give you the full Yeats. It’s one of my very favourites, and one of the few poems I can recite by heart:

 

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

There is a man who knew all about the power of repetition.

More happy walking.

Another delightful family walk. The Older Niece sets off south first thing tomorrow, so it was our last walk with her, which is always a sadness. The Older Brother was not with us since he has gone off to run the ten kilometre race at Lumphanan. It’s the kind of thing he does. But his Best Beloved came with, and I gave The Sister charge of the red mare, and all the dogs were going crazy playing stick games, and it was very, very sweet.

The taking of the horses for a walk is considered a rather eccentric thing, although it seems perfectly natural to me. The Horse Talker and I started it when one or other of the mares was off riding from a muscle strain or a stone bruise. We took them out in hand to stretch their legs with no weight on their backs. The horses seemed to find it amazingly calming and relaxing, and we loved it too, so often now we just do it for fun.

Afterwards, I got up on Red and had a bit of a pipe-opener, and then a very dear contemporary of The Younger Niece came to have a ride on her. They went beautifully together and it gives me a huge amount of pleasure that I can offer this good horse to someone else to enjoy. So my lovely red girl gave an awful lot of delight all round today.

I’m giving myself another couple of festive days off, but small shoots of new ideas are growing, growing, in my head. Another secret project may be on the verge of arrival. I find myself rather excited at the thought.

 

Today’s pictures:

Wild stick action:

The special walk:

I sometimes think she does actually pose for the camera:

Here is The Visiting Rider. The very touching thing is that we have all known this rider since she was a tiny girl, on account of her being childhood friends with The Younger Niece. Now she is all grown-up, and wonderful to watch on a horse. She and the red mare had a lot of fun:

New Year’s Day.

The whole family went for a walk. It was lovely.

Sometimes, we were chatting so hard we actually had to stop to do the conversation justice. The red mare took the opportunity for a little kip. She finds the sound of human voices wonderfully soothing:

Nobody actually knows why my brother was wearing this outfit. He is a super-athlete, so it may be something to do with aerodynamics:

First hill of 2014:

First absolutely enormous stick of 2014: