Tania Kindersley's Blog, page 75

The Ashes; or, the wonder that is Blowers.

This morning, I started writing a rather long, involved blog. I thought you might like a good, meaty Saturday read. But then I switched on Test Match Special and Henry Blofeld was on such cracking form that I had to stop everything to listen.

Test Match Special is one of the shining lights of British broadcasting. I don’t imagine there is anything else in the world at all like it. It is peopled by eccentrics, jokers, joshers and statistics geeks. ‘What’s the record, Malcolm?’ At which point Malcolm makes a little humorous murmuring noise and digs out some obscure stat from 1911.

TMS is such a glorious programme that I think I would listen to it even if I knew absolutely nothing of cricket, and had no interest in the game. It is a raging joy and delight for anyone who appreciates the English language and the British character. In the Ashes, we get the added enchantment of a couple of wonderful Aussie voices, livening the cultural mix. It’s such a clever thing, because it makes the perfect counter-point to the old, old sporting rivalry.

In the box, with the genteel cake and the polite messages from the devoted test fans, the Australians and the English are sweetly courteous and sporting. They admire the other side’s skill, cheer a great shot by an opposing batsman, are scrupulously fair. There is an astonishing lack of chauvinism, even though you sense of course they desperately want their own team to win. When the youthful revelation that is Ashton Agar amazed the entire cricket world by putting on an eleventh man stand of 98, saving the day for Australia after a catastrophic collapse, every English commentator was devastated that he was out before he reached his hundred.

I adore test cricket. I have no interest in the quick version of the game and don’t follow twenty-twenty. I love the extraordinary tension and drama that builds up over the five days. I love the fact that nations who do not have test sides are baffled by the fact that a single match can last for so long a time. I love the stories and dramas and characters that are given room to breathe over those long, rolling, sunlit days.

I love the idioms. The very fact that there is a position called ‘silly mid-on’ makes me smile. ‘He just tickled that,’ the commentators say, with a straight face.

I love the storied rivalries. The Ashes is the most special of all, because of the snaking history of Australia and England with leather and willow. It started in 1882, when Australia thrashed England on home turf, and a newspaper wrote an obituary: this is the day that English cricket died and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. A group of women in Melbourne then presented a small urn to the English team, containing the burnt remnants of a bail, and so The Ashes was born.

And still, 130 years later, that tiny urn is fought over with fierce, diamond-sharp competition. Little boys from Brisbane to Bolton grow up dreaming of representing their country in The Ashes.

If I had the time, I would cancel everything and sit all day and listen to every minute of the eight hours of coverage. It’s hard to believe that you can be on the edge of your seat in a game that takes such a long time, and breaks for old-fashioned tea. But you are. As it is, I tune in and out whenever I can, and if I miss a particularly thrilling spell, I go back to the iPlayer in the evening and catch up with the day’s play, listening in a trance of hazy pleasure.

Dear old cricket. Dear old Blowers, who encapsulates for me everything that is splendid about this form of the game. He exclaims in delight every time he sees a flappy pigeon, gets improbably excited when he spots a shiny bus driving past (he has a thing about buses), calls every single person, no matter what their age or position, ‘my dear old thing’, gives the players straight-faced nicknames. ‘And here comes Starkers,’ he says, as the Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc runs up to the crease. (For the Dear Readers from abroad: starkers means naked, in British slang.) He is the most treasury of national treasures, someone who will never be replaced.

As I come back from working my mare, and settle into a lazy Saturday, and think vaguely what will win the July Cup at Newmarket, I turn on Blowers’ wonderful voice and I genuinely feel all is well with the world.

I woke this morning in rather a bad mood. I felt tired and twitchy and filled with self-criticism and angst. Not working fast enough, too many things to do, too many tricky decisions to take. I don’t like myself much when I am in this mood, because I have so much luck and so much to be grateful for, and I have no right to feel so scratchy. But Blowers banishes all that. He has the miraculous talent of spreading sunshine wherever he goes. I smile and my shoulders come down and the clouds roll away. All possible things will be well. How lovely it is that one good man can perform such a miracle, through the radiophonic device.

 

Today’s pictures:

A few shots from the week:

The beloved beauty:

The little HorseBack foal:

Stanley the Dog dauntlessly catching flies:

The hill:

A good old shaggy horse story for the end of the week; or, Red the Mare teaches me yet another life lesson.

I learnt a big lesson this week. Life is always teaching me lessons, sometimes over and over again, because I am a bit of a goofball and I constantly forget things. Also, there is the gap between head and gut, so that one may know something intellectually, but it takes a little time for it to percolate right down into one’s viscera.

Red the Mare is my best teacher of all. On Monday, she had a little wig-out. Two strange horses were coming to work in our field, and I thought we’d go out to greet them. It was idiotic. I took her away from her herd, and Autumn was shouting for her, and in the wide open spaces two unknown equines abruptly appeared and went past her towards her field. Of course she wigged.

I’d made about sixteen different mistakes. I’d got caught in hubris for a start. Look at me, with my immaculate horse, with my whispering skills, with my All That. In my fever to refute all the mean stereotypes about thoroughbreds, I had convinced myself that I had transformed her into a dozy old donkey. Not only that, but I was showing off about it.

On top of that, I’d let things slide. I am so pressed with work, and my time management is so ropey, that I’d rather taken her for granted. She is amazingly relaxed and tractable, almost all the time. She does learn all the new things I teach her wonderfully quickly. But I’d stopped doing so much work with her, just thinking I had made this transformational mare, and I could take the foundations as read.

The wig-out also happened because I was not concentrating, and did not read the warning signs quickly enough. I could have headed it off at the pass, and I did not.

And then, the final sin: I took it personally. I’m always banging on about how silly people do this. They say things like: ‘my horse is taking the piss.’ No, it really isn’t. Horses have no concept of the piss. They are just being horses. Their behaviour is very rarely directed at their human. They are usually reacting in their own equine way, or they are trying to tell you something. (This is uncomfortable, this freaks me out, I do not know what you are asking me to do, etc, etc.)

But I’m ashamed to say, my immediate thought was: after everything I’ve done with you, you reward me with this? From donkey to bronco in under ten seconds: that’s what I get?

I felt the black bird of shame swoop, as if everything that had come before was wiped out, and all was disaster.

It took 24 hours for me to talk myself down off the ceiling. It turned out, she was telling me something. She was telling me that I had to sharpen up and concentrate and stop feeling so damn pleased with myself. So I squared my shoulders and back to the humble basics we went. Good, hard, determined work; confidence and clarity on my part, which is what she likes; and most of all, remembering that it is not all about me.

The hubris fell flaming to earth, and good thing too.

Since that moment, she has been as lovely and good and responsive as a horse can be. I’ve set her new challenges and she has met them. The black bird has flown off to bother someone else. There is a difference between shame, which means everything is disaster, and humility, which means I need to learn from this specific thing.

Shame is negative and insidious and destructive. It is the voice in my head that says: I am useless and feckless and pointless and good for nothing. It is mildly self-indulgent and teaches one nothing. Humility is a bracing, good, instructive thing. It says: come back down to earth and learn well from your mistakes.

It also says: everyone makes mistakes; you are not alone. Humility is rather tender. It tells me: never mind, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.

This morning, in the blazing sun, we did some lovely groundwork. I went back to teaching her to jump, on the end of a long rope, and she suddenly found her leap. Often, when I point her at a little obstacle, she sort of ambles over it. Today, she really jumped, arching her strong back, picking up her dear feet.

She looked first amazed and then delighted. Her head went up with pride. It was enchanting to watch.

Then I got on and we rode through the wild grass, in nothing more than rope halter. Lovely trot, relaxed and long; some beautiful, soft transitions. I’m teaching her to move from trot to walk and back again using only my voice, like they do with Western horses. It’s very restful and she is learning it fast.

And there it was, at the end of a long week. The harmony was back. My good lessons have been learnt.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that I have to let my horse be my horse. I think I was trying to turn her into something she is not. She damn well is a thoroughbred; for all her sweetness and kindness and gentleness, all her ability to let herself down and be as relaxed as an old hound, she does have hot blood in her. Even though she was the slowest racehorse in England, she still did once run in a jostling field of professional equines at about thirty miles an hour.

I think I sometimes do this with humans. I may even do it with myself. I believe through sheer cussed will I may convert someone’s ideas or transform my own self. It never works. Everyone must be who they are; there are no magic wands, not in this lifetime.

So that’s my rather rambly end of the week muse and ponder.

Dear old Red. I don’t think she knew when she arrived in the wilds of Scotland that she was setting up a little University of Life, but it turns out that is exactly what she has done. I smile as I write the words. I feel, as I so often do, passionately grateful to her.

 

Today’s pictures:

The lambs are growing up and look very beautiful in the dancing sun. They always make me think of Jane Austen, for some reason. There is something wonderfully unchanging about sheep:

The little HorseBack foal:

My lovely wise girl:

With Autumn the Filly, who has begun sporting a very chic fly mask, to guard against the horrid horseflies:

Can you see the wisdom of the ages in those eyes? I so can:

Working with The Remarkable Trainer, earlier in the week:

And having a lovely pick at liberty in the wild grass:

Stan the Man:

That is his highly concentrated Where is that Damn FLY face:

The hill, shimmering in the heat haze:

Thank you for all the Stanley love from yesterday. You are very, very dear Dear Readers when you do that. It’s one of the lovelinesses and absurdities and sweetnesses of the internet, when fondness for a canine can come winging through the ether, from thousands of miles away. More touching than you know.

And now I am naughtily taking the rest of the day off to listen to the Ashes and watch the July Meeting at Newmarket. It’s the heavenly Sky Lantern today, another great female thoroughbred, although of a slightly different stamp than my own dear girl. People are talking of a tactical race defeating her, and the Gosden filly gaining the upper hand, but I stick with the glorious flying grey, and hope she will assert her starry class and prove the doubters wrong.

Stanley the Dog.

A Dear Reader asked for the story of Stanley the Dog.

There is no time to tell the full, antic tale. I will tell it one day.

But for Stanley fans (and there are a gratifying number) here is a little précis.

He is known in my mother’s house as the Whizz-About Dog. Because he whizzes about. He is very, very busy. He must look for squirrels, beat the bounds, inspect any possible food sources, and check for intruders.

Being a half-greyhound lurcher, he is astonishingly fast. His highest speed so far has been clocked at 32 miles an hour. When I told The Mother this, she looked very faintly disappointed. ‘What was Frankel’s highest speed?’ she said. I suddenly realised that she had decided Stanley was in the same league as the wonder horse. He’s got a little way to go before he can do 43mph.

He is a Steve McQueen dog. There is not a door, including those of the car, which he cannot open. Sometimes he lets himself out and politely shuts the door behind him. No one knows how he does this.

No comestible is safe. He once opened a firmly closed tin of amaretti biscuits, and despite the fact that they were individually sealed in tricky cellophane packets, liberated and scoffed the lot.

He yowls and leaps and yelps when I watch the racing. When Andy Murray went three games down in the second set at Wimbledon he actually looked into my eyes and let out a low, sustained howl.

He is devoted at the moment to catching bluebottles. He hurls himself in the air, jaws snap-snap-snapping like a crocodile on speed. He will not rest in this vital task.

When he wants love, he stops whizzing about and comes and puts his chin on my knee and gazes plaintively into my face.

He loves a car journey, and gazes intently ahead through the windscreen as if checking the horizon for bugs.

He is very, very funny.

He has a crush on Autumn the Filly. In order to cover up his great love, he barks at her and herds her and jumps at her, but when he thinks nobody is looking, he goes up and touches his nose to hers. Amazingly, despite the fact that he is so jumpy and barky, she puts her head down to his and blinks gently at him.

Because he was very uncertain about the horses to start with, and prone to leaping five feet in the air and attempting to nip their muzzles, he has performed the most valuable act of desensitising we could have asked for. If we ever meet a crazed pooch out on the trail, our girls will just look at it as if to say: Ha, you have not met Stanley. (Red did actually encounter a barky dog yesterday and did not bat an eyelid. Its owner was astonished.)

I never thought any dog could fill the shoes of the Duchess and the Pigeon. But somehow I landed on my feet, and got this extraordinarily special fellow. I love him to bits.

In which I must be realistic

There are about seventeen things I would like to write about. There are matters to discuss, thorny existential questions to chew over with the Dear Readers. But this week is impossible. What with book, HorseBack work, the new foal, Red the Mare, who is on a very strict regime on account of a small wig-out on Monday, which made me realise I had been letting things slide and taking her for granted and had to sharpen up my ideas, some intensely dull and time-consuming admin, Stanley the Dog and about ten other vital matters, there is no space for the blog just now. Oh, and there is The Ashes, for goodness’ sake.

So here are some pictures instead, from the last few days:

A Dear Reader asked what these were. They are lovely astrantias:

Stanley the very Manly:

Red the Mare, back to her best behaviour:

Watching Stanley the Dog do his crazy catching bluebottles shtick:

Autumn the Filly:

Evening light in the field:

Dozing:

Stanley, goofing about in the feed shed:

Posing. Sorry about that:

This was Stanley’s face during the Wimbledon final:

Myfanwy the Pony has no interest in tennis, but is looking philosophical. I suspect she may be considering the answer to the Universal Why:

The hill:

Awesome Spirit: welcome to the world.

I was going to give you a whole thing on Andy Murray, and Britishness and Scottishness, and snobbery and glory and shining sporting pinnacles, and all sorts.

Then it turned into a crazed work day and the hours tumbled past my ears until there were none left.

All the same, I might have made it, but I started late, and that is because, at 5am, this happened:

She is a little filly, and she was born at HorseBack UK in the dawn hours, and she is called Awesome Spirit, in honour of a very remarkable and much-missed man.

You can see why if you click here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151729392095568&set=a.269393705567.184638.197483570567&type=1&theater

There really will be normal service tomorrow.

An amazing day; or, Andy Murray makes a nation swoon

Today, Andy Murray won Wimbledon.

I shrieked, I yelled, I swore all over my Twitter timeline, where every shot was greeted with howls of anguish or whoops of joy. Stanley the Dog yowled and barked and leapt in the air and all but hid his eyes with his dear paws.

The level of skill from both players was sublime, but the fierce heart of the Scottish lion prevailed in the end. No-one, I wrote, with my fingers shaking, no-one deserves this more.

People from other nations must be slightly baffled that dear old complicated Blighty took such a long time to take such a stellar, gutsy, determined sportsman to her heart. I don’t fully understand it myself. He is adored now, no question, and he should be, but it’s been a rocky road.

Four years ago, I wrote a long blog about Murray, before one of his dogged, failed attempts at the Championship. I’m too worn out with emotion now to write a blog, so I thought I’d put this up instead.

From 1st July, 2009:

The currently agreed narrative on Andy Murray is to do with his Scottishness. Last year, he was excoriated in the press for being a ‘sour-faced Scot’; worse than that, he was, apparently, dour, petulant, chavvish, and petty. Oh do grow up, the columnists and message boards shouted with one voice. Now, there are the tiny green shoots of a wary liking for him, the tentative possibility that he might be a True Brit after all.

It turns out that whole supporting ‘anyone but England’ remark about the World Cup was a joke. It took a very long time for anyone to believe this, despite Tim Henman and the journalist who asked the question patiently explaining it a hundred times. The belief that Murray had no sense of humour was so strong that no one could credit the idea that he might have a capacity for irony.

Still, the Scots/English divide dies hard. No one much likes to talk about it in daily conversation; ‘remember the clearances’ is not going to lead to happy chat around the dining table. But the moment a sporting event takes place, all the old prejudices put on their glad rags and go out on the town to do the fandango. ‘I see the chippy Scots are out in force,’ remarked one contributor to the Guardian comment boards this week. (The Guardian! What happened to their bleeding hearts?)

Despite the fact that the knockers are conceding that Murray has grown up, cut his hair, and learnt some manners, the Scottish thing lingers, like a pea under the mattress of every princess. According to the papers, the moment he loses, which could be in under three hours from now, he will be a Scot again, his honorary Britishness swiftly revoked. Everyone will mutter clichés under their breath and start talking of the West Lothian Question.

Well, I live in Scotland and love it so much that when I am away from it I miss it like a person. One of the men in my local butcher does give me a funny look when I ask for neck of lamb, but I choose not to believe it is because I do so in an English accent. I resist patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel, but despite this, every time Murray wins a match there is a tiny cheer for Scotland in my heart. Yet it is more than sheer chauvinism that makes me love him, and love him I do.

I think the reason that people did not warm to him for so long has nothing to do with him being a Scot, that was just a convenient basket of bigotry in which to carry their dislike. I think they did not like him because he did not need them. He refused resolutely to resort to charm. Almost everyone now in the public eye attempts a little bit of charm, so when none if forthcoming it can come as a jarring shock. 

There was a hint of the Susan Boyle phenomenon in the early days: Murray did not look the part. Compared to the smooth Tim Henman, Murray was all rough and no diamond. Newspapers called him ‘snaggle-toothed’ with casual cruelty, complained about his hair, his skin, his general gawkiness. When the absolute fury that he directs against himself when he plays a bad shot leaked out into on-court swearage, he was accused of throwing tantrums. He was not sweet and beautiful like Beckham, or courtly and polished like Steve Redgrave. He did not tick any of the sporting hero boxes.

In my cussed way, I find all the things that people dislike in him only add to my love. I like it that his will to win is so extreme that he can think of little else. (Interestingly, it is this that makes other tennis players admire him; ‘he just really wants it,’ said John McEnroe last week, with a doff of the cap from someone who really knows about tantrums and desire.)

I like that he does not schmooze and oil up and read from the prescribed script. I am in awe of his work ethic: he practises for hours on end; runs, pumps weights and does mad feet-off-the-ground press ups to build up his physical fitness; he plunges himself into terrifying ice baths for a reason I cannot fathom. His dedication to his game is complete. So what if his after-match interviews are not festivals of schmooze?

Oddly though, away from his playing persona, a completely different Murray emerges. I saw a clip of him being interviewed on Jonathan Ross; he was laughing his head off, not a hint of dourness in sight. At home, he likes playing frisbee with his dog (massive points in my book, due to incurable canine bias), has a steady girlfriend for whom he buys presents on impulse, and goofs around with his coaches.

Despite his reputation for rudeness, he took the time in the middle of one of the most high pressure tournaments of his career to send out a little tweet thanking the staff at his local Pizza Express for staying open late on Monday night so they could cook him a pizza. I call that both thoughtful and polite. ‘He is our hero,’ said the pizza man, with staunch lack of equivocation. (When this was reported by the Associated Press, the writer could not resist observing that it was a plain old Margherita, appropriate for a man ‘who has been criticised in some quarters for lack of personality’. Go get your own damn personalities, I say to those quarters.)

After his victory at Queen’s, the first thing he did was not preen for the crowd or pose for the cameras, but run over and give his mum a big kiss on the cheek. Petulant, schmetulant. He is also endearingly self-deprecating, a trait the British are supposed to adore, but seem to have overlooked in this case. When asked about the letter of good luck he received from our great Britannic Majesty, he did not showboat about it. ‘That was very nice of her,’ was all he said.

Still, even if he were the dour, awkward chap of popular myth, I think I would still like Andy Murray. When he plays one of those impossible cross-court running forehands, it comes as close to poetry as sport ever can. Even I, knowing nothing of tennis, can see the beauty in it. I think he puts every atom of energy he has into his game, so there is nothing left over for playing public relations.

He likes the crowd, but you suspect he can do without it. There is a sense of self-containment about him, as he stretches himself to reach the heights he craves. I think he is a purist, and whether he wins or loses this afternoon, I salute that in him.

Lost day

So sorry, I think I lost a day. Almost certain it went down the back of the sofa.

Lovely comments yesterday; thank you. I always enjoy it when the Dear Readers offer each other words of kindness and wisdom.

Musing on light and shade. Or, the good parts and the bad parts, and all points in between.

Happy Independence day to all the dear American readers. It is also the happy birthday of my beloved Older Niece. So it is a day of jubilee all round.

Sometimes, as you may have noticed, I sit down to write this with hardly a thought in my head. Because I have taken on idiot amounts of work and have a horse and a pony and a dog to look after, my days are an endless parade of Not Enough Time. As a result, the blog has morphed into a series of small snapshots: this is my small life.

It once was a place where I could muse on the great matters of the day. I could parade my feminism and my politics and my old bleeding liberal heart. I liked doing that, and I liked the Dear Readers joining in the debate. It was like a little Mrs Merton all of its own.

There is no space for that now. The Today programme beams into my room each morning, and as my brain charges up with all the things it has to do, it takes in shards of news – horrors in Syria, the raging arguments over leaks and government surveillance, the oddness that is happening in Texas, the Where’s Waldo life of Edward Snowden. I contemplate these things in brief snatches and then gallop on to my immediate life, which has to be lived.

As I drive down the rutted HorseBack drive after my morning visit, looking up at the blue hills, where weather is swishing back and forth, veering between hard rain and bright sun, I think suddenly of the blog, and what it is all for, and what effects it may have. On my Twitter timeline, which I glance at quickly before settling to work, someone has put up a link with the words ‘Lifestyle envy’ on it. I resist the word lifestyle; I like to think that we humans have lives, not styles.

But there is something about the internet which does encourage a lifestyle. People put up little snatches of their existence – an amusing picture here, a paragraph of achievement there, a lovely view, a sweet canine. They generally show the good parts. I suspect that most people want to live well, and now in the age of the online life, they want to show that they live well. And sometimes this does lead to envy. I occasionally feel a bit of a pang when I see a perfect paradise of paddock and barn, or an ex-racehorse covered in rosettes, or a woman who has conquered the dizzy heights of chic. (This last makes me look ruefully down at my blackened hands and muddy jeans; dirt is a constant when you work with horses.)

I do tend to tell you the Good Stuff. I wail sometimes about a fraught day, or the moments when my heart aches for the Dear Departed. Mostly though, I say: see, here is a magical moment with my mare, or this is my great word count, or this is the kind thing some kind person said. You will notice I no longer boast of my cooking skills or my garden; both of those have rather gone by the wayside as my time has contracted. I am more likely to eat a ham sandwich than some intricate oriental dish, and have let the garden find its own way, so it has taken on a wild aspect, everything seeding itself where it will.

I think: is this bogus, or is this a charming little bit of light relief? Humans, after all, as TS said so wisely, cannot bear very much reality. You do not want to hear my daily frets and moans; much better to see the handsome face of Stanley the Dog and hear of the latest triumph of Red the brilliant Mare.

On the other hand, I scent the whiff of whitewash. Am I guilty of presenting a lifestyle, rather than a life? Middle age is filled with the rocky stones of reality. The Old People are going. (Another of the Good Old Men left us on Sunday.) I worry about all my responsibilities, wish I were more organised, lash myself to get more things done.

Despite the good word counts, I sometimes feel this book is just spinning its wheels. I wish that my poor mum was not in pain most of the time. She is brave and stoical, but it is a hard thing to have a body that hurts.

I struggle with the brutal fact of mortality, which is something I think pretty much everyone is up against at this time of life. My sleep patterns are sometimes erratic; I get scratchy and over-tired. In the wider sense, I worry about bigotries and hatreds and stupid tribal rivalries. My old inner hippy comes out and I wish everyone could just accept that love is love, and humans are humans, and there is more that unites us than divides us.

I have no answers to this question of how much dark should balance the light. I am just musing out loud. Perhaps the silver lining aspect of the internet is a good thing, not a phoney. I do smile when I see the delightful pictures of service dogs or wild places I will never visit or baby elephants that pop up on my Facebook timeline. Perhaps all this is not whitewash against reality, but a useful corrective, a reminder that in all the small daily frets and tensions that infect even the luckiest life, and the big global injustices and horrors out in the wider world, there is also goodness and beauty and small, potent acts of kindness.

Perhaps it is a fine thing to be in the presence of my old stalwarts, love and trees, literally and metaphorically. I genuinely don’t know.

 

Today’s pictures:

HorseBack morning:

Even though I was in a rush as usual, I stopped and spent ten minutes with this girl. She is one of my favourites, sweet and solid and kind and earthy. We stood together for a while and had a damn good chat, and she walked with me round the paddock, and I felt my raging mind calm and the centre hold. There is an astonishing thing about horses; all the existential doubts and fears fall away when I am with them. They are so authentic, so wonderfully anchored in the moment. They are like little four-legged yogis:

This dear mare is about to foal at any moment. All fingers are crossed for her:

Home:

The girls and Stanley the Dog having a good graze in our little makeshift arena before their afternoon’s work:

Red was astonishing today. In the blinding sun, which cast light and shade, with the wind up, she walked, step by delicate step, over a billowing tarpaulin, backed, again one step at a time, moving the very foot to which I pointed, through a narrow L made of rails, and followed me without blinking under a low makeshift arch with a flapping curtain on it. (The Remarkable Trainer is getting very imaginative in setting up her desensitising obstacle courses.)

These exercises require a huge amount of trust, accuracy and concentration. They are foundational, building confidence in us both, so that when the great day comes when we ride off to Mount Keen or some wild place, we will have no fears. They can throw anything at us.

I love the work, because it is gentle and slow and precise. I love seeing what my miracle mare can do. I love that she defies all stereotypes about thoroughbreds and mares and chestnuts. I love that her glorious lower lip wibbles throughout. I love her so much it sometimes feels as though my heart will burst.

And it has to be said that sweet Autumn the Filly was foot-perfect too, as if she had done this kind of thing all her life, when in fact she is only just four and at the beginning of her education. These clever girls give us so much joy.

And the hill, taken this morning before the sun came out, lost in the mist and murk:

An easy choice.

Insanely busy and productive day. Without at all meaning to, I ran away with the smoothing iron and wrote 2299 words of book. This is far too much, but when the muse is kind I do not look her in the mouth. There was good HorseBack UK work; even some admin, which is usually my utter downfall.

Then I had a choice to make. Sometimes I hate choices. Why can’t I do everything, have everything, be everything, wails the ghastly childish voice in my head. Sometimes I like choices, because they show me what is important. Today, I could do a proper blog, or do a favour for a friend. It was not an effortful favour, but it was time-consuming. It required some care and thought. But it was all about the things I like to write about here: the human heart, the small things, the lovely equines and why we love them so. In the end, it was a really easy decision.

So, back to normal tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is Mr Stanley looking bloody handsome:

And a picture I took this morning of two very dear people who are just starting on their great journey together:

One step at a time.

Long, hectic day. My fingers are crabbed and exhausted, no longer able to type a coherent sentence. Just enough life in them to tell you that Red did something so enchanting and clever this afternoon that I was beside myself.

She’s been a little stiff since The Mysterious Fence Incident, although her cuts are almost all healed, so we are not riding, but have gone back to groundwork. Today the Remarkable Trainer came and taught her, and me, how to do one foot at a time.

It’s another of those small things, barely visible to the naked eye. But to get a big thoroughbred, a flight animal, to move one specific hoof in one specific direction with merely the faint movement of human finger and body, is quite a thing.

After the Remarkable Trainer guided Red forwards and backwards through a sharp, narrow L-shape constructed of fence-posts on the ground, I had a go. I merely had to look at the leg I wanted her to move, and indicate very slightly the direction in which I wanted it to go, and she did it. It felt like a laugh-out-loud miracle.

It was quiet, intense, concentrated work, oddly tiring. It’s a meld of horse and human mind, and demanded a lot of both of us. It’s the kind of thing that might make some people scoff, but in fact it’s incredibly practical. Say one day we are out in the woods, and get ourselves into a tight spot, I shall be able to guide the mare out of it, foot by delicate foot, drawing on this foundation we have established on the ground. In a wider way, it builds trust and confidence and all that jazz.

Red loved it. She was unbelievably pleased with herself at the end, and I congratulated her as if she had won the Oaks.

There’s almost nothing I love more than working with her like this. I am overcome with her cleverness, her generosity of spirit, her willingness to please, her good-hearted eagerness to learn.

Afterwards, in the spirit of the moment, I walked Stanley the Dog round the set-aside and looked at the small humble things which I normally do not much observe, let alone photograph. That is why today’s pictures are of nettles and wild grass and clover. They are not the grand peonies or cultivated roses of my own garden, and most people would not give them a glance. I often do not give them a glance. But they have their own glorious beauty, if you stop to look.

One tiny step at a time, my darlings; one tiny step at a time. It’s my daily life lesson.

Today’s pictures:

The grass is singing:

Mr Stanley the Dog:

The good girls waiting for their tea:

Myfanwy the Pony also waits patiently:

If I put on my best pretty pony face will it come quicker?:

Or the yearny face?:

The best Best Beloved. Her goodness knows no bounds:

And then the rain came and the hill disappeared: