Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 69

Two faces and a leaf.

Nothing left in my brain. So, instead, here are forty-seven pictures of a horse, rolling.

And...into the wall I crash. I forgot to get iron tonic, which was a big mistake. I did make soup, the honest vegetable kind which my mother calls Good Woman Soup. (As I make it, I wonder hopefully whether the very act of softening onions will turn me into a Good Woman. I do, after all, believe in the mystical properties of soup.) I did have some thoughts about National Poetry Day, and the Daily Mail, and the lunacy of the government shut-down which is happening in America, and the saving grace of Jon Stewart, whose videos I illicitly watch on the YouTube. (Sorry, not available in the UK, says the official Daily Show site, regretfully.)

But now: those thoughts are gone. It’s Friday. My work is done. The HorseBack stuff is dusted. Stanley the Dog is walked and Red the Mare is seen to. The circuits in my brain fizzle and fuse. There is not one ounce of energy left. I am going to sit very, very still in a silent room.

This morning, I had an unaccustomed spare half hour. I was actually ahead of schedule, which was so odd it went against muscle memory. The sun had come out for five minutes so I ran down to the field and stood in it with my horse.

I really, really like standing still with my horse. I love riding her and working her and teaching her new things, but mostly, I love standing still with her. She was in a mood of stillness too, so she nodded her head over the crook of my arm and went to sleep in the October warmth. I could feel her growing heavy and she made happy little sighing noises. I made happy little sighing noises. We sighed at each other for about ten minutes. I shut my eyes, and felt the world.

I did not attempt coherent thought. I have never been able to meditate but it was the nearest to meditation I’ve ever come. I felt some profound shift, almost in the viscera, as if all those particles of exploded stars which make up the atoms of my body were reconfiguring themselves. (I can never quite get over the fact that humans really are, as Joni Mitchell once scientifically sang, made of stardust.)

Then Red gave a great snort and I let her go and she ambled off to have a glorious, indulgent, operatic, drama queen roll. And then she got up and shook herself and gazed at me for a bit, and then she Minnie-the-Mooched across to me for a bit more love. Which I gave her.

And then I went and did all my work and used up all my brain and now all I have for you is about forty-seven pictures of a horse rolling.

But what a horse.

And what a roll.

Happy Friday.

What Red the Mare sees from her paddock:

Interesting new member of the herd. Stanley the Dog clearly now believes he is a horse:

Happy red girl with her small friend:

Do not anthropomorphise, say the stern voices in my head. But I can’t help thinking that is the closest an equine comes to a smile:

And now – for the ROLLING:

I love this face. Do you see what I just did?:

And then she does her best Minnie the Moocher, as she comes across for one more minute of love:

Readers’ questions, on an equine theme.

Busy day. HorseBack work; 703 words of book; a lot of canine and equine sweetness in the quiet of my lovely field. Also: laughter.

A lot of sweetness too yesterday from the Dear Readers, who were staunch and magnificent, as always.

Oddly, I did write a rather long and serious blog today about events beyond the mazy confines of my own goofy brain. But I rather lost my nerve. The problem with writing about politics and people in the public eye and grave matters under general discussion is that one invites what Mrs Merton called a heated debate. Sometimes I love a heated debate. Sometimes I think: I need to go gently and slowly. So I’ve shelved it and I’ll give it to you when I’m having a butch day.

Actually, although not quite butch, I was productive today, and that is the most important thing. I even did some errands and made a Vital Telephone Call.

Just time now, at the end of a very long day, for a reader question:

A couple of the Dear Readers have asked about methods of horsemanship; one yesterday, one a while ago. I feel I ought to resurrect the old Sunday tradition of answering these questions, but in the meantime, as quickly as I can, since I’m all out of things to write, I’ll answer now –

I grew up in the old school of horsemanship, and have only come to the newer version since I got Red the Mare. In my mind, it is all based on studying herd behaviour, so going with the natural equine instincts rather than against them, and, oddly, manners. I like the idea of asking a horse, rather than telling a horse. I think it is a profound distinction.

The word leadership can be misleading, and has nothing to do with dominance. I think a horse does need a good leader, but that position must be earned, through patience, consistency, attention, gentleness and kindness. I learnt all that I have learnt from a variety of sources, and then extrapolated in my own goofy little mind, and I stick to no one method. I am very suspicious of those new schools which admit only their own ideas and seem to do a lot of marketing.

I’ve read very useful books by Mark Rashid and Monty Roberts. (Roberts is controversial, in certain circles, but I like many of his ideas.) I loved the film about Buck Brannaman, who has a glorious attitude to horses. There is a no-nonsense Australian called Warwick Schiller who has a lot of amazingly useful and practical video clips on YouTube. I’ve also read some delightful articles by Carolyn Resnick. There’s an enchanting page on Facebook called Enlightened Horsemanship, which has rather philosophical musings about the relationship between human and equine which I enjoy very much.

I look for new thoughts and good information wherever I can find it, and think of the two of us as embarking on a long, roaming, learning journey. Really, I suppose my answer is that the Google is your friend. That was how I started. I’m slightly abashed to admit that after Red first arrived, and I suddenly realised I had not actually been responsible for an equine for thirty years, I used to sit up at night, madly typing HOW TO HAVE A HAPPY HORSE into the humming search engine. That was how I found a lot of the things I have found. I took what spoke to me, and left the rest.

This morning, there was a gate incident. I arrived to find the paddock gate wide open, and the three girls merrily grazing out in the set-aside. (It is another equine mystery; we have a horrible suspicion they might have opened it themselves, so padlocks are on order. Although I always do wonder about ROGUE RAMBLERS. No, only joking, I love the good ramblers, roaming up the hill with their ordnance survey maps.) Anyway, the point is that the herd could have galloped off to Logie Coldstone, if they had wanted to. (Although it must be admitted that, unless startled, escaped horses generally do not stray too far.) Instead, they remained near home, calm as you like, and were so happy I let them mooch around as I made breakfast and then gently directed them back into the field for their food. The point was: something that could have been a drama had no drama in it at all.

Red set the example, as the boss mare, and part of the reason she is as gentle and calm and biddable as she is is the work we’ve done with her over the months, thanks to all these good teachers from whose writing I have learnt so much, and the remarkable trainer who comes each week to continue her education. It helps that she is a particularly delightful person, and she came from a brilliant horseman out of a great yard, but she was a racehorse and a polo pony, and this deep calm, this softness, this absolute biddability, is a new way of being which she has learnt.

I like the methods of what is generally referred to as natural horsemanship for many reasons, but one of the most important is that it makes everything I do with the mare easy. I can groom her, feed her, rug her and work her without having to tether her in any way. If she escapes from her field, I can gently guide her back in, and she goes quietly, without complaint. I can ride her in a halter. I trust her. She is happy.

And the lovely thing is that the methods are so wonderfully easy. A child of ten could follow them. I wish I could tell you that all this has come about from my own brilliance, but I can’t. It was just from following the simple steps of other people, who have spent their lives thinking about horses.

Very tired now, so just time for three pictures:

A tree:

A handsome dog:

Me and my girl:

Oh, and did I mention Love? That is of course your best guide. I think: don’t baby them, or coddle them, or wrap them in cotton wool, or turn them into little cute things. They are horses. They have thousands of years of nobility running through their veins. They consent to exist in the human world, and that is their great gift to us. The love can’t just be a vague, smooshy thing. It must be the good heart in action. So, I think: listen to them, attend to them, respect them, and be polite to them. Spend time with them. Learn from them, because always, in the end, they are your greatest professors.

The dark night of the soul

WARNING: written after low-grade virus and disturbed sleep patterns. Very real danger that it makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

 

I have spent two days lying crossly in bed whilst a low-level virus rampaged around my battered body. Apparently, there are at least four bugs at large in the village – a vomiting bug, a bog-standard cold, a sort of heady, achy flu-like virus, and a more general stomach/head/everything thing. I had the nausea with a general feeling of having walked into a heavy brick wall, whilst being kicked by the familiar, furious Shetland pony.

I slept for pretty much thirty-six hours straight, and then, after all that sleeping had messed about with my internal clock, last night found myself wide awake at four am, cataloguing every single thing that was wrong with me and my life.

I never quite know why the black hours of the night bring about this melancholy inventory. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, in The Crack-Up, ‘in a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning’, and he should know. Perhaps it is the sense of isolation, as one lies wakeful and restless whilst the rest of the world seems asleep and oblivious. The smallest things loom large, the tiniest glitch sputters into crazed unmanageability, and all the ghastly flaws troop out like some twisted Rocky Horror Show tribute act.

By four-thirty am, I had decided that:

My new book would be a catastrophic failure and everyone would laugh and scoff and point and I should have to go back to the wilderness years where I belonged.

I was no good at riding, nor ever should be.

My HorseBack work was shoddy and pathetic.

My inability to keep my office tidy or to open my post in a timely manner or to reply to outstanding emails was shocking and derelict and beyond belief in a female of advancing years.

And that, of course, I should die alone, unmourned and unmissed, and good riddance.

So that was a jolly half hour.

Then I read myself a lecture on not being so self-indulgent and stupid and went to sleep.

When I woke, rather jet-lagged, but with the viral load miraculously gone, the world seemed possible and ordinary again.

Yes, I would die, as everyone shall, but there’s no point dwelling on it. My office is a bit of a muddle and I am rather dilatory at admin, but this does not mean I am going out and conning old ladies out of their savings or writing cruel leader articles in The Daily Mail. (Leave poor old Mr Mili Senior alone, I cry.) The riding is fine. Red the Mare is happy as a nut and welcomed me back to the field after two days away with intense sweetness. Everyone at HorseBack seemed pleased to see me. It’s not the best Facebook page anyone ever wrote, and the numbers go up as well as down, but it’s something for a cause in which I believe and I shall get better at it.

The book is, as all books are, a crap shoot, and I can only do my word counts and think hard and bend my will to the task and do my best. If it fails, it fails. It won’t kill me. I’ve failed before. I’m still bruised from a career setback which was beyond my control. This is part of the human zoo; it is not the dear old Whig view of history, where the lovely curve of progress soars upwards in an irrepressible arc of glory. It is what happens. It is not the End of Everything.

What I did get a sense of, in that umbrous, searching half hour, was what real depression must feel like. In my ordinary weeks and months, I get intense sorrow, flashes of profound melancholy, sometimes a feeling of hanging on by my fingertips. I suspect this is standard issue. I do not barrel through life, unheeding and impervious, as I fondly imagine some sanguine people do, although I wonder if they only exist in my imagination. I think too much and fret too much and am too much struck by the sorrow and the pity, the unfairnesses and griefs to which so many of the six billion souls on this blue planet are heir.

The way I think of it is that you are doing all right if there are joys to match the melancholies. If you can watch the turning of the leaves or feel your heart flip when a certain red mare whickers in low delight or go crazy when a dear old familiar wins the 3.30 at Newmarket or laugh like a drain because a canine does nutty things with his ears: then, then – you are all right.

The true depressive loses joy. I know a few. I know someone who, on occasion, cannot physically leave her room for up to two weeks at a time. I know someone who once stared blindly at one of the most majestic glens in the whole of Scotland and turned to me with blank eyes and said: ‘I cannot see the beauty.’ I think: that is when the real dark night of the soul becomes immovable, when you cannot see the beauty. As long as the beauty can be seen, there is hope.

As I write this, I feel the usual frisson of terror that I have admitted weakness. There is a huge part of me which wants to do unicycle tricks for you. Bugger mortality and fear of failure and moments of crushing shame – surely what you really should have is trees and love and Stanley the Dog doing amusing things with sticks. (And today, he really did do very amusing things with sticks indeed.) But when I am at my most poncy, I like to think that the Human Condition is my special subject, and this is human condition, with bells and knobs and all manner of things on.

I write it partly because I like authenticity, and I like admission. I write it partly because I hope someone out there might sigh and sigh and say: me too. (The soothing balm of shared experience is one of the things I love most on the internet.) I write it to remind myself how lucky I am, because I get these crushers once in a while, in the night, when I am ill and assailed with weakness, but I do not have to drag through that black curtain every day, as some people do.

I write it because it is true.

And also – and this really is my final thought – I write it because this blog is a small place. When I started, I wanted to go viral. I wanted love and acclaim and applause and numbers. I never got them. At first, I was hurt and affronted by this. I made the huge mistake of taking it personally. Now, paradoxically, it is what saves me. Because this is a place of a few, select Dear Readers, I may feel safe, and admit all the absurdities, almost sure that nobody will laugh and point.

Oh, oh, and one more final final point, because I’m still feeling a bit peculiar and I clearly have no control over my fingers. I suddenly think: I’ve got it wrong about the laughing and pointing. People may easily laugh and point; they always have and they always shall. They may mock and raise their eyebrows and judge. It’s almost impossible not to judge. I try not to do it; I try to remember that line at the beginning of Gatsby; but judging is as human as gossip or bad jokes.

The secret is, I think, to get it into its correct category. (You know how I hate a category error.) And the correct category is that the pointing is almost always about the pointer, and not the pointee. Or, in more technical terms: it’s their stuff.

And now I really am going to stop.

 

Some quick pictures for you before I collapse in a heap:

Comical things with sticks:

These are not very good photographs. Stan the Man was moving too fast for efficient focus. But I wanted you to get a sense of the comedy, and the joy, and the beauty, and, even through the blurriness, I think you can:

Most beautiful and beloved face, taken a few days ago:

Where the hill should be. This was taken before lunchtime today, so you can see the autumn days are growing dark and dramatic:

Day in pictures

In terms of quality, these are not the best photographs I have ever taken, but there is a sort of sweetness and joy in them which is perfect for the end of a long week.

Stanley the Dog with his small friend:

Morning sheep:

Mist over the hill:

I don’t know what this was, but I rather like it; a little bit of abstract for you:

This one is slightly out of focus, but I love the nobility:

The red mare is still a bit tender in her shoulder, so we are taking her for gentle morning walks. I completely love it, as you can see from my delirious expression. In fact, The Horse Talker leads her own filly, and I take Red and Stanley, but here I am managing all three in order for the photograph to be taken. Quite a lot of complicated rope action:

More happiness:

What we walked past:

At this stage, she was posing for the camera:

This one is completely blurry, but I wanted to include it because it expresses well the joy in this simple morning exercise:

Also, how amazingly good and clever is Red, just standing on command like that, with her rope over her shoulder? It’s the kind of thing which makes me hysterically proud. Stand, stand, I say seriously, and move off about ten feet, and she DOES NOT MOVE A HOOF.

At this stage, there will be those of you who are saying enough with the red mare. I give you full permission to bash off and read something interesting about psephology or horticulture. It’s a Friday, and I can’t have enough of this beautiful face:

One final bit of sweetness. The Horse Talker is pointing to try and get Red to prick her ears and pose for the photograph. We have absolutely no idea what Autumn the Filly is doing, but it’s very funny:

Really am stopping now.

I’ve written THOUSANDS of words this week and my head is about to come off. I’m going to take the whole weekend for resting; no HorseBack, no blog, no book. I’m going to watch the racing at Newmarket and mooch about with my lovely girl and throw sticks for Stanley the Dog and let my mind go slack. At the moment, it is tight as a drum. I am going to take a big old breath and let everything settle.

In which it turns out I have angst. Or, an awful lot of nonsense.

I had a very long and very serious blog for you, all ready to go, and then I suddenly thought: oh, for goodness’ sake, they don’t want all that nonsense. I was up very late last night, writing many words of book. I am keeping student hours at the moment. This often happens when deadlines bear down on me like rattling freight trains. I get wild adrenaline bursts into the quiet midnight hours and think, oh sod it. This is not very responsible or grown-up or professional and I always feeling faintly guilty about it (there is a proper way to do things).

So I had a horrible suspicion that the long and serious blog might be misspelled and filled with ghastly grammatical errors and also mazily tangential. I admit that I often indulge myself here in the luxury of tangents, but there are limits.

So instead, my plan is: to give you get some soothing photographs.

Oh, actually, scratch that plan. A real-life thing has just happened and I shall share it with the group. Since that is obviously what the Dear Readers are there for.

I try at almost all times to be polite and kind and tactful. I’m very papery in the skin department, so I am keenly aware of the tender feelings of others. Just now, I said something stupid and it came out all wrong and the tone was just horrid. I could blame tiredness I suppose, or stress of work, or any old thing. It’s always lovely having something to blame. Except I have this other thing about trying to take responsibility for my actions. So I can’t really cast about for any helpful cause except for my own idiot, thoughtless self. And now I think the person is actually quite cross, but I dare not ask, so there shall be an atmosphere.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

You know how I wrote that long book about The Impossible Art of Being Female? In that book, I may have given the impression that I knew something about that art. Turns out there are days when I know absolute bugger all. I lose all idea how to conduct myself in a rational or adult manner and become confounded by the tiniest set-back. Angst squirrels about in my head as if it is storing nuts for winter. I get that awful curling feeling in my stomach and my shoulders go up about my ears and I can’t unscrew my face.

Ah well, I suppose that at least I am not presenting the shiny magazine self which some people do, and which makes me so doleful as I ruefully examine my own un-shiny life in comparison. I suppose at least there is some warts and all, which is very important for everyone’s peace of mind. (It’s not a competition, says my cross voice.) I find the Look at me with my perfect self and my perfect life and my perfectly calibrated emotional reactions rather lowering. On the other hand, an endless stream of wailing is equally tiring in the other direction.

I suppose everyone says stupid things and does not always live up to their best self. One of the things I like about my horse is that she brings out my best self. I actually said this to her last night in the field, even though she does not speak English and has no idea what I am on about. She is very polite about standing and listening when I am rambling on. (She, at least, is one member of the family with perfect manners, as would be expected from someone who clearly takes the Duchess of Devonshire as her model.) I actually thanked her for bringing out my best self. Now I just have to work on doing that with actual humans.

Report card says: could do better.

Really, really could do so much better.

After all that sharing, there is now only time for one picture, of my glorious beauty, who always thinks I say the right thing, with her dear friend Stanley the Dog, who only cares about chasing sticks and pigeons and has no time for angst.

A rather wonderful new arrival.

When I do my stuff for HorseBack UK, sometimes it is quite straightforward. An obvious photograph presents itself; the words that go with it spring easily to mind. Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of concentration and may not be dashed off in moments. It requires a frown and a wrangle and a squaring of the shoulders. It takes time. Today was such a day.

There is a new project afoot, and it is one that is close to my heart. HorseBack has got together with Retraining of Racehorses and taken on an ex-racehorse. Two of the brilliant women who steer the great ship that is RoR, Di Arbuthnot and Emma Balding, came to Scotland a while ago, and discussed the slightly outré notion, and, good as their word, found a candidate. He is a glorious fella called Peopleton Brook, and he was a sprinter. He won nine races, and when he came to the end of his racing life, there was not an obvious place for him to go. That was when Retraining of Racehorses stepped in. Brook was to come to Scotland, for a very new life indeed.

There is so much prejudice against thoroughbreds and racehorses, and even more against sprinters, who are often considered the nuttiest and most untameable of all. So to take one and introduce him to the HorseBack way of working, including Western saddle and riding in a rope halter, might be considered quite a stretch.

He loves it. He was pretty speedy when he put on his sprinting shoes. Now he is learning to take things very, very slowly, and you can see the surprised delight on his face.

I think he will make a course horse. He would not do for a double amputee who had never sat on an equine before, but there are veterans from the Household Cavalry with PTSD who would benefit mightily from such a Rolls-Royce of a ride. I love the idea that like those veterans who find a renewed sense of purpose when they come to HorseBack, so may dear Brook discover a meaningful role in life. He already has a new look of happy purpose in his eyes, and he is quick and willing to learn.

In my own little field, my lovely red girl is a bit sore after pulling a shoulder muscle. The wind was up and she was charging about the field as if back to her own racing days, and her cornering skills are not what they used to be. So I’m taking her for gentle daily walks in hand, until the slight stiffness passes.

I think of how all the ex-racehorses are called crazy and good for nothing. I think of the people who insist that thoroughbreds are impossible to handle. I think of Brook, up at HorseBack, in the wild hills, cleverly learning an entire new way of life, with all his intelligence and fineness. I look at Red, as we amble through the oaks and the beeches and the Wellingtonias. Her eye is soft, her head is down, her ears are in their dozy donkey position which signals ultimate relaxation. She is bred for ultimate speed, yet she absolutely adores these gentle morning walks. We step out in perfect time. She is polite and biddable, at my shoulder, never pushing or barging.

My heart expands, as it often does. It’s not just her profound sweetness and beauty that make my idiot old heart rise like a balloon, it is the thought that she quietly disproves all that prejudice, all those assumptions, all that lazy thinking, by her daily being.

They’re not a very likely pair, Red and Brook. He was bloody fast and won nine races. She trailed round at the back, never troubling the judge, despite the clutch of Derby winners in her glittering pedigree. But there they both are, in these blue Scottish hills, proving all the doubters wrong.

 

No time for pictures today; the work is getting on top of me.

Just two quick Best Beloveds:

And, up the road, sweet Brookie has a very well-deserved and joyful roll, after all his hard work:

There are links here to many, many shots of the glorious Brook, for your viewing pleasure:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151893608995568.1073741916.197483570567&type=1

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151893592920568&set=a.269393705567.184638.197483570567&type=1&theater

A small story.

This morning, running errands in the village which is two villages along, I saw a pair of household names. Rather oddly, this part of Scotland quite often does have a household name roaming about in the wild. We could not be further from Claridge’s or The Groucho, and there are parts of the county where 1979 went to die, but still, sometimes a titanically famous person appears. In the village two villages along, people still remember when Robin Williams and Steve Martin bought some socks in the country store.

I did that thing you do. I did the understanding-the-nature-of-fame face. This is something I developed from long years of walking past celebrated actors coming out of looping studios in Soho. My theory went: if you should happen to catch their eye, you give a blinding but slightly innocent smile. The smile says: I know you are very famous, but I’m not going to make a thing of it. I’m just going to give you the lovely, merry grin that any nice person in the street would get. (I admit, I am slightly alone in this. It is not very British to smile at strangers in the street, but I do it all the time, and I get varying reactions, from simple friendliness to outright fear.) The smile also says: I am not going to invade your privacy, or shout your most famous line at you, or ask you for your autograph. It says: I loved your last film (or book or play or equivalent), but I’m going to let you go about your business as if you were an ordinary person, although I know you are not.

I’ve only broken this not-speaking rule once. I was at university, and the cast of White Mischief had arrived to shoot the courtroom scenes in the town hall. I was very poncy in those days, and it was high summer, and I used to waft around wearing a Panama hat. I thought it was the last word in chic. It was the eighties and I was eighteen; what can I tell you? Walking across the sloping cobbles of Oriel Square, I saw Ray McAnnally coming towards me. I broke out a blazing smile. He was one of the actors I adored the most at the time. As he reached me, he smiled back, rather quizzically, with a mischievous gleam in his dear old eye, and said: ‘I like your hat.’

I practically fell over.

‘I like your acting,’ I yelled, giddy with delight. I was in a hazy trance of pleasure for the rest of the day.

Anyway, there I was this morning, in the village with the two household names. I passed them on the street; they looked very nice and very happy and very normal. How lovely, I thought, that they can come to dear old Scotland and be left alone to take their ease. Nobody bothered them; nobody much even looked.

Ten minutes later, I was in a small shop. The car was parked just outside. I suddenly heard a volley of barking as Stanley the Dog took exception to a passing Westie.

‘Stanley,’ I called out, running to the motor to settle him. ‘Leave the small dogs alone.’

I walked back into the shop to pay for my things. ‘Sorry about that,’ I said to the man behind the counter. I turned, to find myself face to face with one of the household names. I did the nuanced nature-of-fame smile, with a little bit of welcome to my neighbourhood thrown in. I got a charming smile back, with, I suspected, a tiny trace of dog understanding; just a glimmer, but I was certain it was there. At that moment, I almost broke all the rules, and had to restrain myself from offering an introduction to my handsome canine.  

I went back home, rather foolishly bathed in reflected glory. I was idiotically pleased to have given the household name a welcoming smile, and I was glad I had been given such a good one in return. I was a perfect ambassadress for my locality, spreading good cheer.

Then I saw my reflection in the looking glass. I had a long brown smear all the way across my forehead.

Oh, no, I thought. The household name smile was not one of delight, but pity.

The HN must have thought I was one of those special people, some kind of community project, allowed out for a little shopping experiment. I had been feeding Red the Mare before I went on my errands. Her delicious daily breakfast is a sort of earthy mash; I usually mix it with my hands. Clearly, I had pushed my hair out of my eyes and left the tell-tale smear behind. So now, I thought, the household name will go back home and think not of the friendliness of the Scottish peoples, but of the most peculiar females one may encounter in small country shops.

And that, my darlings, is why I don’t get out much. Really, I’m not sure I am safe to leave the house.

 

Today’s pictures:

The leaves are really turning now:

And falling too:

I love sage:

The last leaves clinging to the little fruit tree:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack horses, who was working well this morning:

My perfect dozy girl:

EXTREME HANDSOMENESS ALERT:

I really should have introduced him to the Household Name. How could anyone resist Stan the Man?

We haven’t had a recipe in forever. So here is a little tangy salad of my own invention. Finely dice some cucumber and tomatoes. The dicing is important. Equally finely chop some parsley. This is a faux tabbouleh, without the bulgur wheat, so I think quite a lot of parsley. Chop some good black olives. Dress with a lot of good olive oil, more lemon juice than you might think, and a good dose of sea salt:

And eat it looking at a hill:

Only joking. The hill is optional.

Day in brief.

Good day; bad day. Good news; bad news. Equine sweetness, ravishing Scottish sun, comedy from Stan the Man, 1069 words of book. Faint frets about all the things I faintly fret about. My mother is not as well as I would like, and I wish I could magic her better. Idiotic bet on what I thought was a Sir Michael Stoute sure thing. The great racing knight would surely not send a horse all the way to Hamilton unless it was nailed on? He lost in a photograph and I felt absurdly stupid. A bit of cooking, a bit of reading; sudden, streaming deadline panic. Where do the days go? I have no longer any temporal understanding at all. The hours swish by my nose with derisive speed; they do not care that I never have enough of them. I feel the twang and stretch of my brain as I attempt to comprehend and order all the things I must do.

Write this, in haste. Think, as always: it will be better tomorrow.

 

Today’s pictures:

Happy horses in the glorious evening light:

The hill in full panorama:

And standing alone, in all her majesty:

One good sentence.

Sitting in the blinding sun this morning, as a warm, rushing wind hurled itself over the hill and the horses grazed quietly in the light, I said: ‘I’m very good at sentences. It’s a whole book I find difficult.’

This is true, although it is breaking all the rules to state it so baldly. In dear old Blighty, you are not supposed to say, out loud, that you are good at something. You may think it, very, very quietly, alone in your silent room, but you may not say it. Because that is boasting and bragging and not at all called for. (There is still, even now, the very faint implication that it is what They Do Abroad.)

And you know the even more awful thing? I’m really proud that I’m good at sentences. I love being good at sentences. The fear and loathing comes when I have to string them all together and think about pacing and narrative drive and plot and NOT GOING OFF ON TANGENTS. But a single sentence – ah, I can play with that, and make it mine, and make it sing. I can break all the rules and have pure fun. I may begin with a preposition or leave out the verb altogether or make free with adverbs, and it doesn’t matter, because I’m listening to the syncopated rhythms in my head.

The sentence fairy did not just pitch up over my crib and scatter magic syntax dust. My early sentences were awful: derivative and uncertain and filled with a yearning to be anyone but myself. (Mostly Evelyn Waugh and Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker.) The sentences grew strong because I worked at them over many, many years. Someone asked on the internet yesterday: if you were to give writing advice in six words, what would it be? I thought: I can do it in three words. Practice, practice, practice.

Almost immediately afterwards, I read an article in a national newspaper by a non-writer. This person was highly intelligent, very articulate, and was saying something profound and important. But the sentences lay lifeless on the page, flat and flaccid. They weren’t bad, and the informing mind behind them was good, but the words had no vitality, as if they had been bought in a job lot, second-hand, off the shelf.

I think of words as aerial things. I imagine throwing them up to the sky and watching them fall back to earth, wondering where they will land. Good writing takes immense discipline, but it starts in play. There must be something antic and vivid and child-like even, in the initial approach. It is the language of Shakespeare and Milton one is messing with, as I say to myself every morning, but at the same time, it is a living, shifting thing. Too many rules and mores make it turgid and po-faced, and that is when the tired phrases shrivel and die.

I wasn’t going to write anything here today. It’s a lovely, sunny Sunday, and I was going to have the entire day off. But then I started this train of thought, about sentences and why I love them. Even though I wrestle and wrangle with bashing through to the completed article of 100,000 words, and even though I am at the stage where the deadline looms and I am haunted by the fear of not being good enough, I can come back to the simple fact of the single sentence. I can do that.

When I talk about writing, I often say: I can carry a tune. What I mean by this is that I shall never be able to produce the dream book which lives in my head. I shall never be as good as my heroes. I don’t expect I shall ever overcome my narrative weakness, merely paper over the cracks. But I can write one good sentence, on a going day, when the light is coming from the right direction. And that is not nothing. And for some peculiar reason, I wanted to record that thought, because it seemed to me to be a little metaphor for life.
 
Today’s pictures:

Are in fact from the last couple of days, because I forgot to take my camera out this morning. But it is the same dazzling sunshine.











 

Even though this one is rather out of focus, I include it because it gives a sense of the light and the colours down in the field:







The dear old duchess has had a very good roll, and is covered in mud, but even despite that, her coat is still a glorious, blazing red:




I know there have been rather a lot of these free-grazing pictures lately, but it is one of the finest sights of my day. Each morning, I let the red mare out into the set-aside. It is not fenced. It’s about six acres of wild ground, with a treeline which forms a natural boundary around three sides. She could, if she really wanted to, trot off to Tarland. But she does not want to. She merely mooches about in absolute contentment in the long grass, and then, when it is time for breakfast, allows me to lead her gently back to her field. I love it because it gives her a sense of freedom, and when I watch her from a distance, I think she looks as if she is roaming over the prairies of Wyoming. (Too much My Friend Flicka at a formative age.) It is a daily pleasure of the heart, and of aesthetics too:



BASKING:



That’s the look which makes my heart flip in my chest:




The little pony is so white in the light that the camera hardly has enough pixels to capture her:


Of course, after all this, I laugh at my own absurdity. For all that I take pride in being able to string words together, the Dear Readers bring me gently down to earth – one of the most recent comments simply says ‘I always like the pictures the best’. Prose be damned. This makes me hoot with laughter. And probably is another good lesson for life, as well as being a fine corrective for any incipient swishiness.