Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 71
September 9, 2013
Mouse droppings in the brain.
I think I might once have had something interesting to say, but that was back in 1987.
That is sometimes what it feels like when I’ve done all my various work, and then sit down to contemplate the blog. I have a sense that there was something absolutely fascinating lurking in the back of my cerebellum, all ready to share with you, but I now have absolutely no idea what it was. I have some odd, faint notion that it was to do with elegance and grace. (Of behaviour, rather than dress.) Or it might have had something to do with Saying the Thing, one of the themes to which I return over and over.
I shake my poor old brain like a rattly box, upend it to see if anything falls out. There is only the mental equivalent of old newspapers and some mouse droppings. (In the actual house, the naughty mice are coming in for the autumn, and I have to make the horrid decision about whether to slaughter them or not. They are only dear little field mice, but oh, oh, oh, they do eat for Scotland and shit everywhere.)
So that is all rather a long way of saying: I have nothing for you. NOTHING.
But down in the field, this great beauty did suddenly remember her racing days, and for some reason it made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
If you had told me I would get a horse which brought me joy and set me challenges and galvanised me from what could easily have become a middle-aged mortality slump, I would have believed you. But if you had told me that I should have a mare in my field who made me laugh like a drain, I should have thought you frankly deluded. Yet, it turns out I have my very own comedienne. She is hysterical. Her Lady Bracknell face is worth the price of admission alone.
September 7, 2013
Why I love racing; or, the mystery of the thoroughbred.
Any shrink will tell you this is true. People will think what they will; often, you cannot persuade them out of their staunch opinions. If they sincerely believe you are a lunatic, no amount of empirical proofs of sanity will convince them otherwise. The only answer is to make your peace with it, and carry on your merry way.
I know this to be true. I think I’ve even written a version of it myself. Follow your own goofy star, I say, every other day.
And yet, for all that, I occasionally find I want to explain myself. I am faintly aware that my intemperate passions and wild enthusiasms and dogged obsessions are slightly odd, or may be perceived so. What I should say is: let the perception stand. Instead, there is an absurd part of me which wants to say: no, but look, look, this is why.
I was thinking today about the horse thing. It’s not just the mare, who excelled herself in about eight different ways this morning, so that I spent about ten minutes stroking her neck and saying ‘Clever girl, clever girl,’ over and over. All summer, I’ve been immersed in the racing. I wake on big race mornings and think, like a child at Christmas – it’s Sky Lantern day, or Estimate day, or Dawn Approach day. Or, in the case of this morning: it’s Al Kazeem day. Nothing else matters. By the time of the big race, I am in a state of swamping nerves, my hands literally trembling, my breath shallow, my heart banging like a timpani drum.
It’s not just the mighty Group One horses who stir my blood. I fall in love with doughty handicappers, or little baby maidens, who are just learning their craft (there is something very touching about a talented two-year-old running rather green, looking around as if to say What the hell is this all about?), or the old-timers who won’t give up. I love the dogged stayers who go through the mud, and the fleet sprinters who skim over the firm going.
It’s the beauty, of course. The thoroughbred is one of the most aesthetically pleasing creatures in the world. I love it that they come in all shapes and sizes. There is a horse today of whom I am very fond, called Montiridge. He’s a big, burly fella, deep through the girth, muscled in the neck, all power. A couple of weeks ago, I won money on the lovely Tiger Cliff, a completely different type – lengthy and athletic, built more like an old-fashioned chaser than something which wins on the flat at York. Lethal Force, another favourite who runs today, is a neat, compact sort, with a big, intelligent eye and a handsome head, whilst the Queen’s great filly Estimate is a much more lightly-furnished type, with a delicate, narrow face and an enduring sweetness about her.
But also, it is the mystery. In perhaps no other spectator sport, in no other gambling medium, are the imponderables so imponderable. Yesterday, a filly called Filia Regina looked nailed on. She is bred in the purple, well-named since her sire is a king among horses, and she had absolutely cantered up last time out. She was long odds-on. She tamely dropped away to finish ninth, whilst a 20-1 shot took the prize. The stewards were so astonished that they called in the connections for a stern word. It was reported in the paper that the trainer ‘had no explanation’.
It might have been the ground. The weather had turned nasty in the north, and the going had gone from good to firm to good to soft in a heartbeat. Everyone is wildly discussing the ground today for the big race at Leopardstown. Declaration of War prefers it firm; no, no, has won on soft in earlier days. Al Kazeem needs give in the ground; but then he has won four times on firm. Despite this, his trainer, Roger Charlton, is reported as ‘praying for rain’. Racing people are not a godly lot as a rule. The churches where I grew up, at Lambourn and East Garston, were full only at Christmas. Yet in stables all over the country, people will be scanning the skies and sending up little prayers for rain or shine.
The ground does matter, despite the theory that a really good horse will go on anything. But it’s not the only thing. Filia Regina might just not have had a going day. They are like that, thoroughbreds. They can get out of bed the wrong side, just like humans. No one really knows why some of them are much better going right-handed than left-handed, why one horse will be brilliant at York but ordinary at Ascot. Horses that start their careers needing to be held up at the back will suddenly develop into front-runners. There is the inexplicable ‘bounce’ factor. There is also the arcane equine-human alchemy. No matter how talented the jockey, some horses react better for one human than another. Some prefer a quiet rider who just sits and lets them get on with it; some need to be galvanised and bustled along.
I don’t know why the mystery enchants me so much, but it does. I feel that horses live in a parallel universe to humans. The worlds overlap, but are also discrete. In a faintly preposterous way, I feel that they graciously allow people to share their world, even as the human brain will never fully understand it. They are essentially wild flight animals, all instinct and power and heart. They step, delicately, beautifully, generously, into the human sphere, and consent to stay for a while. To me, there is a profound magic in that. And perhaps we all need a little sprinkle of magic to go with our daily reality.
Just time for one picture today, since I must get my bets on.
Talking of mystery, nobody knows why this mare, whose grandsire won the Derby and the Triple Crown, who can trace her bottom line to all three foundation sires, ended up trailing round the back of moderate fields in her racing days. And nobody knows why, with all that famously hot thoroughbred blood in her, she will follow me round the field like a dozy old donkey:
Except, of course, that she has the sweetest heart of any horse I ever met. But that’s a whole other story.
September 6, 2013
Quite a lot of nonsense.
There are several conversations that I love. One of them I have each morning, as the Horse Talker and I lean over the fence and observe the mares, and pretend we are discussing herd behaviour and horse husbandry and the human condition, when in fact we are inventively trying to find one hundred and forty-seven ways to express how wonderful our girls are.
There are the obsessive racing conversations. I adore those. I particularly like the ones I have with my mother, because she can remember Sea Bird and Arkle and Mill House and Mill Reef and Nijinsky and the mighty Brigadier. She was there, in her elegant hat, at those storied Derbies and Gold Cups and Legers and Arcs. She saw records being smashed and history being written. Sometimes, to give the thing an added piquancy, she was following the ambulance, as Dad fell at the fifth and had to be carted off to hospital.
And then there are the conversations where you know you can go anywhere, and the person you are talking to will follow. Usually, they will leap over you and arrive at the destination three steps ahead. Oddly, quite often, these are had with strangers. I had one this morning, with a man to whom I had just been introduced. He wears his cleverness modestly and diffidently, in the true British tradition, and it took me a moment to realise I had to bring my A game. Actually, I don’t think I even understood that consciously. It was only afterwards that I had the sense of shifting gear, only looking back on that exhilarating half hour of chat that I saw myself, retrospectively, going into turbo drive.
It was during my daily HorseBack visit. I went in for a perfectly ordinary discussion, about logistics and practical things and the plan for next week. I was introduced to the gentleman, and within two minutes we were off to the races. We talked of the nature of courage, of neuroscience, of evolutionary biology, of gender difference; of hippies, nature, the power and rarity of silence. We talked of the First World War, and societal expectations, and love.
I get so excited when I have these kind of conversations that I say absurd things. At one point, I heard myself saying, ‘Oh yes, authenticity is one of my favourite words.’ At one point, I actually spoke these sentences: ‘It fascinates me that in every society in the world, men are supposed not to cry. Of course, there are certain places in the Middle East where ulultations are acceptable, and there is Russia, with its tradition of melancholy. But even there a man is only allowed to cry if he has drunk half a bottle of vodka and is speaking of Puskin.’
What was I talking about? Do Russian men really sit about and drink vodka and speak of Puskin and weep? Where did I get such an outlandish notion? This is what happens when I get over-stimulated: I make rash extrapolations and wild generalisations. Still, I do stand by the oddities of the current Russian mores of masculinity, if Mr Putin is anything to go by. All that riding shirtless and posing with big guns. Although I suppose one cannot judge an entire people on its rather peculiar president. The fretful, discursive liberals of the Upper West Side would not have liked to be defined by the faux-Texan swagger of George W Bush, any more than the Tea Party Republicans would thank one for putting them in the same bracket as that ghastly commie, Barack Obama. (I love that people really do think Obama is a communist, or a socialist at the very least. ‘No, no,’ I shout at the screen; ‘he really does not want to nationalise the means of production.’)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, talking nonsense. But even when I make perfectly preposterous statements, I still find it entirely delightful to have such a gentleman to talk to. He was very polite and kind about the whole Puskin/vodka thing. He just carried on being quietly clever.
Cleverness is not very fashionable at the moment, in certain circles. I think it’s partly to do with the complicated derision for elites which has sprung up in the last decade. Besides, the British have always been suspicious of too much learning. ‘Too clever by half,’ is an ancient insult here. But the knee-jerk disdain for the ghastly Oxbridge elites who think they can run the country, but, crucially, have no idea how the real world works is a fairly novel political development.
Personally, I love an elite. I adore it when people are really, really good at things. When I watch Andy Murray play tennis, or Ryan Moore or Johnny Murtagh or Ruby Walsh ride a race, or Yo-Yo Ma play a cello, I am dazzled by their brilliance. They are absolutely elite, at the very crest and peak of their powers. I want the people who run things to be exceptionally intelligent and highly educated. I wish for the novelists and poets to be as elite as all get out, as they play with the language of Shakespeare and Milton.
Perhaps the confusion comes between the meaning of elite – best or most skilled – and elitism, which contains the idea that those at the top get special treatment or unfair privilege. It shades into snobbism and us and them; there is the idea of poncy people peering down their superior noses at the rest of us oiks. (I think there is a muddle too about games which have a zero sum. If someone is exceptional, it does not mean that everyone else is pointless, useless and feckless.) Cleverness, which is quite a separate thing, then gets conflated with the dark side of elitism, and before you know it, a good university degree means you are a horrid, out-of-touch posho, with a sneery disdain for the ordinary woman in the street.
I think this is a pity. Cleverness, lightly worn, is one of life’s great joys. I felt so exhilarated and galvanised by talking to the clever gentleman this morning, it was as if I had taken a double dose of iron tonic. I spend an awful lot of time contemplating the dearness of my mare, or what will win the 3.40 at Newcastle (today, I hope a lovely filly called Filia Regina). The book I am writing is a fairly simple story, very much a thing of first principles. I’m not galloping about over any intellectual prairies, which is probably lucky for my readers. So to engage in conversation where I had to stretch my brain to keep up felt like a rocket boost.
And now I’m going to go and drink some vodka and read Puskin and weep.
Today’s pictures:
Are not from today. Too dreich for the camera. An entirely random selection from the archive instead:
September 5, 2013
Random thoughts. Or, I have almost no idea what I am talking about.
My mind is filled with thinking. I have, variously, thoughts on: slowing down and the making of a stew, the Special Relationship, reliability, and the things one takes for granted. I wonder: shall I take one out and hold it up to the light, or shall I try and cram them all in?
Oh, cram them all in, shouts my competitive spirit. (Although I have no idea with whom I am competing.)
Slowing down:
Since taking on new responsibilities, I live my life in a rushing dash. I quite often find myself talking to people when I am standing up and they are sitting politely in a chair. It is as if I believe that even stopping to sit will slow me too much. Today, it is suddenly cold and driech. I decided to make a stew. You can’t rush a stew. So instead of the usual hurried ham sandwich in the kitchen, I stayed a while and chopped up carrots and celery and onion and browned the beef and thought about the alchemy of cooking. My midday kitchen moment stretched to almost an hour. Usually, I would regard this as a squandering of time. Today, I thought: it doesn’t really matter. I’ll make it up. It is good to remember about proper food and the care taken in making it. Rushing does not always mean everything is done faster. It just feels that way.
The Special Relationship:
All the pundits are convinced it is over. Crash, bash, shatter goes the historical link between London and Washington, as Mr Cameron loses his Commons vote on Syria. I think this is hyperbolic nonsense. I wonder whether, on a personal level, President Obama might feel more humanly tied to the Prime Minister now. At last, he might be thinking, David Cameron knows what I have to deal with, as recalcitrant congressman and senators filibuster and block and take stupid votes on repealing healthcare reforms. Their late-night chats might now be conducted man to man, rather than office to office. That is just my hunch.
On a wider level, America and Britain have always loved and hated each other. They are like courting teenagers: sudden moments of pash, interspersed with angst and sullen resentment. The right wing always likes to go misty-eyed over Thatcher and Reagan, but the President marched into Grenada with ruthless disregard for Mrs Thatch’s impotent fury. The linguistic and cultural ties run too deep for rupture. The two countries always forgive each other. As long as they send us Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, and we send them Hugh Laurie in House and Helen Mirren in anything, the love will endure.
Reliability:
I have a new theory on what makes a good horsewoman. I think about this a lot, you may be amazed to hear.
I come to the conclusion that perhaps the most important virtue is reliability. It’s not sexy or flashy or headline-grabbing. But if half of human life is showing up, then so is horse life. You’ve got to put in the hours, be there come rain come shine, make the steady routine. Horses like a good leader, but you’ve got to earn it, from the ground up. Respect and trust can’t be conjured into existence; they take hours and days and months.
Reliability too is not just the pitching up kind, it’s also the consistency of attitude. If they know that you will not shout, will not take out your own frustrations on them, will never ask them to do something they do not know how to do (and then get cross when they don’t do it), they may relax and be happy. They have a steady human on which they may rely. Equines have amazing memories, and they store everything away. So I like my little reliability theory. It will win no gleaming cups or fancy rosettes, but I get profound satisfaction from the idea that Red knows she has a human on whom she may depend.
The things one takes for granted:
Along with the small things, this is one of my themes. I return to themes over and over, like Mr Stanley with his big stick. I refine them and remind myself of them and turn them over in my mind.
Today, I spoke to a veteran who cannot hear the hissing of a bus door closing without wanting to take cover and scan the streets for possible threats. Sometimes he even drops to the ground before he can stop himself. Sudden noises of any kind can bring on a violent anxiety attack. Sound, for most people a given or even an enhancement of life, is for him a trigger and a barrage.
At the same time, my back is still very sore from idiotically falling off that broncing horse last week. (Not Red, for those just joining us; quite another mare.) Things I do easily, without thinking, like getting out of the car or putting on my socks, are suddenly painful and fraught with difficulty. I think: don’t take for granted that I can hear loud bangs with no reaction at all, and that, when I am not falling onto my arse, I can depend on my body to work. I know this sounds very chicken soup for the soul-ish, but I like to write these things down, so I don’t forget.
Today’s pictures:
Are also entirely random, from the last few days:
This is almost the face I love the most, although it is not the most beautiful. Donkey dozy face, and everything about her so relaxed she might fall over. This is when she brings stillness into a high art:
Hill:
I want to say Happy Friday. But in fact it is Thursday. It feels like a Friday, that is all. No idea why. Be happy anyway.
September 4, 2013
Remembering to stop.
I’ve been thinking lately about beauty. I talk about it and contemplate it and count the blessings which brought me to this place where there is so much of it. I harp on about the trees and the lichen and the small, lovely things. But sometimes, for all that, I think I forget to look.
I’m so busy, rushing about, trying to fit everything in, that my glance has become cursory. Oh yes, there are the glorious blue hills as I drive on my daily way to HorseBack; there are the delightful HorseBack horses; there is the handsome face of Stanley the Dog; there is the gaudy loveliness of Red the Mare. There is my hill; here are the trees. Yet my eyes skate on, as I add, inevitably: I am half an hour late; I must write this; I must remember that. Even with my sweet mare, who brings stillness to a high art, I am often thinking of all the things I shall do with her: teach her to jump, improve her transitions, sharpen up my own riding skills.
This afternoon, I just went and hung out with her. The Horse Talker and I lined our girls up and gave them a bit of a brush and a bit of a chat. We did not really do anything. We just appreciated them, in all their delightfulness, and thought how lucky we were.
Instead of my usual dash at HorseBack, where I run in, take pictures, discuss things which need to be discussed, and then tear away straight back to my desk to do the Facebook page for them, and any other necessaries, I stayed for half an hour and watched two of my favourite horses being free-schooled.
It was a most beautiful sight: the aesthetics of the horses cantering at liberty with the indigo hills in the background were off the scale.
I went into the garden just now and instead of thinking of all the weeding and tidying and trimming I have not been doing (not enough time, not enough time) I gazed happily at my three favourite Scots pines. I can’t even remember the last time I did that.
I suppose it’s the old thing of pausing to smell the roses. I think I do all that, but in fact I don’t. Not enough. There is time to stop and stare. There must be time. I would do well to remember that.
Today’s pictures:
Are two little photo essays of the equine beauty I let myself see today. Even if you have no interest at all in horses, I think you might like these for the sheer aesthetic hit.
Free-schooling:
And in my own field:
When I say we did absolutely nothing, we did in fact have a little play about, and Stanley the Dog came too.
We haven’t done a join-up for ages. I’ve never taught Red to do it properly, in a round pen. I just extemporised in a four acre field. The very fact that she chooses not to wander off into the green spaces still amazes me every time. Even more amazing, this afternoon, she hooked on straight away, and we did a little dance:
CLEVER GIRL:
One more delicate Jane Austen turn:
Oddly, I think of working my mare like a gavotte in a Jane Austen novel. Everything very polite, everything a gracious invitation, everything with its own, 19th century rhythm. I don’t know why I think these sort of nutty thoughts, but I do.
And what is so very lovely is how pleased with herself she looks when she has mastered all the steps so perfectly:
At her most profoundly settled and calm, with floppy old donkey ears, dozy eyes, wibbly lower lip:
And then I just gaze at her in awe and wonder. How on earth did I get so lucky as to end up with such a person?:
And then it was time for tea:
Aside from playing with the horses, Stanley the Dog very much likes a hard game of stick wrestle with the Horse Talker, his new favourite person:
And here is double beauty, from a couple of days ago:
And afterwards I went and actually did look at the flowers:
And my beloved troika of trees, which remind me of great old elephants’ feet:
The hill:
Rather tired as it’s been a long and packed day. I’m certain that there shall be typos. Possibly even grammatical howlers. Forgive.
September 3, 2013
A day in brief.
Sun shines like gangbusters. Bad mood fled for the hills. Red the Mare at her dearest, funniest, cleverest, most characterful best. HorseBack work done. 1104 words of book. Faint sense of optimism. Stanley the Dog in most exuberant, affectionate mood. (He suddenly decides that the Horse Talker is his new favourite person in the entire world and covers her in extravagant kisses, then sits staunchly upright by her side, looking incredibly pleased with himself. This is interesting, since he is reticent with his kisses. He is not a slobbery dog.) The lovely Laytown races are about to make their idiosyncratic annual appearance. A race meeting run on the sand with the sea in the background, so lovely that I could sing songs about it. That’s what I shall be watching for the rest of this sunny day.
Today’s pictures:
No time for camera, so a quick selection from the last few days:
HorseBack hills:
HorseBack foal:
The new friends:
Sheer handsomeness:
Rosemary:
Cotinus:
M the dear little P:
Rowan berries:
Adore seeing this girl taking her ease out in the trees:
The Older Brother’s best beloved just sent me this:
Hill:
Ha. As I write this, the lovely Captain May has just danced over the sands to give me a winner at Laytown. I never back winners there, since it is such an eccentric track and the results are unpredictable. That’s made me smile and smile. Now if only the equally lovely Drahem can do the same at Lingfield for the most excellent James Fanshawe, I shall be able to buy Red and Stanley a present.
(It’s usually at this stage that one of my family or friends clears their throats and suggests an ‘intervention’. I should look stern and talk about gambling responsibly. But my darling old dad taught me to gamble irresponsibly, and I can’t be Captain bloody Sensible all the damn time.)
September 2, 2013
A bad mood.
I started the day pretty well. Then, out of nowhere, a mood came and got me and snapped me in its crocodile jaws and threw me about the place. I had absolutely no defence against it. I wanted to shout and scratch and punch things in the nose. It was like a furious tight fist clutching at my insides.
I’m no good at moods. I can do emotions. I don’t enjoy being melancholy or sorrowful, but I know those; they are good, clean, proper emotions, with clear, explicable reasons behind them. I understand them. A random mood that comes out of the blue leaves me floundering. Also, there are things you can do with sorrow. A mood is so thick that you cannot cut through it. All my remedies are in vain. The small things can gain no purchase. Love and trees mean nothing. The dog, the mare, these Scottish hills, the great good fortune of living in a free democracy and having opposable thumbs do not work.
I crossly and grimly go to the shop. On the way back, I run into The World Traveller. For those just joining us, The World Traveller is my friend, relation by marriage and near neighbour. Her blog name is because she once rode on a horse from Turkmenistan to China. She is the only person I know who can say, without bluster or fanfare, ‘Oh yes, that’s very typical of the Turkmen horses’. (The horses of Turkmenistan are one of the most famous and idiosyncratic breeds in the world, the Akhal Teke – glossy, lithe, athletic, aristocratic, and amazingly tough.)
Anyway, The World Traveller says, with her beaming smile: ‘How are you?’
The correct British response to this is ‘Fine, thank you.’ If things are not fine, if your dog has just died or you’ve lost all your money in rash speculations, you may say: ‘Not too bad.’ If you are very drunk, you can say ‘bloody awful,’ but only if you are being ironical and then immediately make a joke out of it. Even now, in the era of the misery memoir and the so-called confession culture, the people of these islands are schooled not to make a fuss. I think this is because a fuss makes other people uncomfortable and causes embarrassment, and embarrassment is the great British disease. (Britons get embarrassed in a way that no French or Americans ever do.)
I gaze into the clever, open face of The World Traveller. When I first knew her, I was rather intimidated because she seemed to me like one of the perfect people. She is kind and funny and competent and good at things and unbelievably nice. Now I know her so well, I am reassured by the fact that for all her loveliness, she has human frailties just like I do.
‘I’m in a filthy mood,’ I say.
She bursts into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, yes,’ she says, merrily. ‘I know that. I shout at the children, shout at the dog, shout at everyone.’
(She is the least shouty person I know.)
The balm of shared experience falls on me, from the bright Scottish sky.
We discuss our moods for a while. I drive off, bolstered. I’m still mysteriously grumpy, but I’ll ride it out now, because I’m not alone.
I think how interesting it is that admitting the not pretty stuff is a tremendous bonding experience. I notice it here. If I’m having a lovely, shiny day, and I write about that, I get a couple of kind comments, mostly involving the handsomeness of Stanley the Dog, because there’s not much else to say. If I am sad or suffering, the response becomes quite a different animal. It comes fast and generous. I think it is the relief of Me Too. I think sometimes that all crazy, goofy, quirky humans want is to be understood, for someone to come along and say, oh yes, I know just what that feels like. It’s almost like a gentle giving of permission: you may have your shitty days for no reason, because I have those as well.
The funny thing is I used to be ashamed to admit to idiot moods or moments of cross bafflement. I wanted to say: Look Ma, no hands. I can ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time. Watch me gleam. A mood was a horrid admission of rank failure. Now I am older and more bashed about, I find a small, twisted comfort in being able to confess that every day really is not Doris Day.
Today’s pictures:
Very hard to know how I can ever be cross when I have these beautiful, delightful creatures in my life:
Funny how she photographs so differently in different lights. And yet, to my eyes, she is gloriously the same every day: sweet, still, real, kind, present:
Stanley the Dog is altogether a more antic person:
With his new best friend:
Playing their hilarious new game:
One more of the sheer loveliness:
The little HorseBack UK foal:
The dear old hill:
The funny thing is, I’ve suddenly realised that every time I have an inexplicable black mood, I write this exact same blog. I grump it out, and share with the group, sentence by identical sentence. I wheel out my Every day can’t be Doris Day line. I’m obviously very proud of that one. I have a habit of flogging old lines to absolute death.
Just as I was about to press Publish, I saw something about the funeral of Seamus Heaney. I love Heaney, and saw him years ago at a sunny, bucolic literary festival, where he entranced everybody. I was very sad to hear of his death. Another of the good old men gone.
The piece said that the very last thing he did before he died was send his wife a message. It was two words, in Latin. It said: Noli timere.
That means: don’t be afraid.
I find that almost impossibly wonderful, in ways I cannot express.
August 31, 2013
Edward and Stanley
Last week, the Mother and Stepfather took delivery of Edward the Puppy, a Norwich Terrier. You might have thought that Stanley the Dog would have been a bit disconcerted or jealous or growly or territorial. You might have thought tiny Edward would be freaked out by enormous, leaping Stanley. Not a bit of it. They fell in love at first sight and now spend every morning playing games of their own fiendish devising. Edward likes to stand on his hind legs and shadow box Stanley with his little fat paws. Stanley enjoys rolling Edward over and over with his nose.
This morning, there was a new game. You shall see.
They started off with traditional sniffing and exploring:
Then, having a rumble, as my friend M always puts it:
Pause for thought:
VELOCITY:
And the inception of the new game. This is entirely invented by Stanley the Dog. It involves doing top greyhound speed in perfect circles, and JUMPING over Edward in the process:
Edward gets the gist quickly, and lies very, very still:
Stanley: ‘Look what I DID!!!’ Edward: ‘I’m just going to stay here for a bit, if you don’t mind.’:
The good companions:
As you know, for some improbable reason I can’t quite identify, everyone on this blog, even the animals, get special pseudonyms. Privacy, I suppose. Stanley was the first person to appear under his own name, because it was so splendid. Edward too gets the same treatment. Mostly because I love the sound of Edward and Stanley. It makes me think of two old-school gents, with bowlers and rolled-up umbrellas.
August 30, 2013
A little tangent for a Friday afternoon.
A lot of wisdom and kindness from the Dear Readers this week. One of my favourite Twitter gentlemen, a fellow racing fanatic, asked me yesterday how I do a blog every day. (Well, not quite every day, but pretty close.) I replied that I could only thank my weirdly obsessive nature.
I like doing it. It is not for money or fame or the ghastly idea of building the brand, which it seems everyone must do now. It is a marking of the days, a recording of my beloved Small Things, a small existential stamping. Yes, yes; here I was.
And yet, there is an oddness too. I feel a very faint bat’s squeak of obligation. This is nuts, of course, but sometimes I do not fight my nuttier imperatives. This audience has settled into a small and exceptionally select band. I can’t tell you the pleasure it gives me when I see a comment from some of the old faithfuls, who have been with me since the beginning. I also glean particular joy from the international correspondents. You come here, and give me the gift of your time. I feel that in return, I must give you something, as many days as I can. I sometimes feel bizarrely guilty when I go missing in action, even though there is usually the most excellent excuse of life getting in the way.
That really is quite strange. My finger hovers over the delete button. The truth is that today I am tired from a long week and I was not going to write anything, just give you some nice Stanley the Dog pictures. On some days I have a tale to tell; on others, the brain is filled with mud, and I can feel my synapses snapping off, one by recalcitrant one, and there is no story. I am like that today, but I wanted to thank for the kind comments of the week and before I knew it, I was off on this peculiar tangent. (I am fatally addicted to tangents.)
The finger hovers, and then stops. I’ll let it run. I feel a curious liberation in sometimes giving space to my less explicable thoughts. Why not? I write often that I believe people should have the moxie to follow their own goofy star. Perhaps I should put my money where my mouth is and reveal my own profound goofiness. The entire humming theme of Backwards was that the hunt for perfection is a snare and a curse. So in some ways, offering such imperfection feels like putting down a marker. Sometimes I like to tell you the good parts of my day, but I resist the shiny magazine trend for offering gleaming, seamless lives, with all the contradictions and muddliness and small moments of failure airbrushed out. (I think that was why it seemed important to tell you of my shaming crash onto my arse yesterday, and not just confine myself to the glory jumping.)
Shame thrives in secrecy. It lives and feeds in the dark. The moment one admits the flaws, the failings, the idiot notions, the moments of sheer folly, the crashings down to earth (literal and metaphorical, in my case) they lose their power.
And that, my darlings, is my winding and tangential Thought for the Day.
If you can call it a thought.
Today’s pictures:
Are a selection from the week.
We haven’t had any garden pictures for a while:
The lovely colours of some of the HorseBack herd:
This splendid gentleman arrived in the feed shed this morning:
Stanley the Dog:
Can you hurry up with the tea?:
Thanks, it was delicious:
King of the Absolutely Enormous Stick:
The very dear Myfanwy the Pony:
Excellent yoga stretches:
Can’t resist one more of me and my darling duchess:
The hill:
August 29, 2013
Highs and lows. Or, lessons from the horse’s mouth. Or, beware those flappy wings of hubris.
I’m always banging on about the life lessons my mare teaches me. I think that horses in general are tremendous professors. On some days, the good old universe joins in, and sends me an excellent corrective too.
Today was such a day.
The mare and I did some wild jumping. Zoom, zoom, she went; whoop, whoop, I went. She has taken to leaping as if it were the thing she has been waiting for. All those years she raced on the flat and played polo offered her no opportunity to express herself in this glorious aerial way. Now there is no stopping her. She’s still learning, still working it all out, but she is willing and eager and she gives me the great gift of trust. If I ask her to do this novel thing, she will damn well do it.
I can’t tell you how thrilling it was. There we were, out in the open green spaces, in only the rope halter, soaring over the homemade course that the Remarkable Trainer had rigged up. The jumps were absolutely tiny, but we didn’t care. We were as excited as if we were galloping around Burghley.
She did not pull; she did not waver; she did not refuse a single request. Quite frankly, I forgot that I was riding an ex-racehorse without so much as a bit in her mouth, I was concentrating so hard on sitting her well, and keeping her straight and confident, and going with her. It was only afterwards that I thought how remarkable it was. She is so clever and I am so proud. I shouted out loud and threw my arms in the air.
An hour later, I was flat on my arse on the sandy floor of an arena.
My dander was so high by this stage that I had rashly agreed to scramble bareback onto a horse I had never ridden before. I was clumsy in my mounting attempt, because my middle-aged body is not agile enough, and this particular mare was not having it. She bronced three times in protest, and off I thumped. (She was right, by the way, and I was wrong. She was perfectly correct to object.)
I hate falling off. It is not the bruise to my coccyx I resent; it is the blow to my pride. That is what hurts. I had been flying so high, not only proud of my glorious Red, but, I am ashamed to admit, rather proud of myself, as we mastered our new, thrilling jumping game. Look at me; I am all that. La di bloody dah.
The screeching bird of hubris flapped its treacherous wings. The universe and a determined horse brought me crashing down to earth. I write this with rueful fingers. Never fly too close to the sun.
I’ll get the feeling back in a while, that spiralling, dancing, delighted joy that Red gave me today. They can’t take that away from me. I’m a bit bumped and bruised and humbled just now, is all. I can’t do the things at forty-six that I could do at sixteen. I must remember not to be an idiot, especially when my competitive spirit is drumming in my ears.
What it does make me realise though is that Red is even more kind and forgiving than I had thought. If such a thing were possible. I do scramble onto her when I ride bareback, and she does not move. As if the scrambling were not enough, I make terrible ancient oofing noises, which she also bears with perfect equanimity. My muscles are still not as strong as they should be, and she does not mind. I point her rashly at jumps when I have not jumped for thirty years, and she generously consents to do something quite new to her.
There are a lot of things about her that impress me, but perhaps her generous nature is the one that I admire the most. She has a high spirit in her; she is a thoroughbred, after all. She does not forget her gracious bloodlines. She could turn her nose up and refuse my requests, if she chose. She is not a push-button old dope, going through the motions. Instead, she offers so much, with an open heart.
After I wrote this, filled with rue, I stumped down to the field to give her her tea. She was still looking pretty pleased with herself. She gave me her customary whicker, that low, throaty, Lauren Bacall whinny which makes my heart dance. She pricked her ears and nodded her head. She stood polite and still as I gentled her neck and chatted to her and told her what a brilliant person she was. She breathed contentedly through her nose and wibbled that beloved lower lip.
She doesn’t care that I just made a fool of myself. I am her person, and that is all. So I left her, as always, feeling better than when I arrived. That is another of her great, great gifts.
Today’s pictures:
Are a little hit and miss. Some of them are rather blurry. But I wanted to give you an impression of the flying. And even though the jumps were only about eighteen inches off the ground, it DID feel like flying.
Starting off gently:
I have my concentrating extremely hard face on. I swear that Red is POSING for the camera:
JOY:
Whoop, WHOOP:
You can see her still figuring it all out here, as she lands a bit in a heap, but on she still goes. Nothing will stop her. Nothing will stop us:
I know this is very blurry, but imagine it with the International Velvet soundtrack. (Those of you who were horsey children will know what I mean.):
Love this face. Oh, look, a very small JUMP:
Now she’s starting to look unbelievably professional. She is one of the fastest learners I ever met:
The tiny, tiny fence built of silver birches:
And the double:
Back in the quiet of her field, with her most adorable Good Evening face on:
And The Mare Who Objected. You can see there are no hard feelings. How could there be?:
