Horses lend us the wings we lack

Some of them do, anyway.

The wonderful Valegro, winning the gold medal yesterday with Charlotte Dujardin. Incredible...

So I had a word with Alfie this morning and said 'How about it?'

He said, 'Easy-peasy!'

'I can stick my front legs out too. Look! Elevated trot? Pah!'

'Just as long as you don't make the mistake of getting on my back. It's rather hot, I had my flu jab yesterday and I'd much rather be out in the fields with my mates.'

After our lesson, I thought I might get some carrying handles for him...

That would make it so much easier for me to get him over the jumps...

Still, we have four whole years until the next Olympics...

...and Alfie's not for sale, like Valegro, by the way.

And if he were, it would be for slightly less than £20,000,000...

But Alfie's worth MUCH more than that to me.

Day 9 Update
Zero and total confidence

Welcome to my nightmare!

Hello, Alice Cooper fans everywhere. May I apologise in advance? This is NOT a blog about Alice Cooper and his eighth studio album .

Anyway, Alice Cooper DOES look quite nightmarish, even if he's a sweetie at heart, so it's not such an inappropriate image.

Back to my nightmare. The one to which I'm welcoming you.

I woke up with an awful feeling of terror and panic. I couldn't quite think straight. Wednesday? Dustbin day but I put the bin out last night. Did I leave the gas on? No, we only have electricity. Deadlines? None that I can't handle.

Then I remembered my nightmare.

Giant flying spiders? Pah! Mine was much worse.

Tessa and I let the horses into a field. They galloped off. At the end of the field was a cliff - a sheer drop onto the rocks and sea, hundreds of feet below. Alfie and Spot couldn't stop and plunged over the edge.

by Debbie Grayson Lincoln

 When I got there, I couldn't see Spot but there was Alfie's mangled body splayed out on the rocks, one leg sticking up in the air at an odd angle.

I can't tell you how devastated I felt.

Still, the relief that it was just a dream has made my day feel blessed and wonderful.Alfie got such a hug when I saw him safe and well chomping on grass, oblivious to his part in such a drama.

Alfred Hitchcock said 'Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.'

I managed that for myself, without any help from anyone!

But WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

I'm sure I've used this quotation before somewhere. I remember posting an image of Thomas Carlyle and thinking 'he looks about the most bored person I've ever seen.' But perhaps that's why he has the ambition to die of exhaustion?

See what I mean? The epitome of a bored person.

Anyway, I'm feeling close to achieving his ambition after the last three days, which is SO PATHETIC of me.

I think it's to do with different sorts of exhaustion. There's running a marathon exhaustion,

 ...galloping across Ashdown Forest on Alfie or Poppy exhaustion. That's exhaustion plus exhilaration plus fresh air and exercise. That sort of exhaustion feels wonderful (to me)

Then I thought of the exhaustion following giving birth. The same - apart from the fresh air! (More 'gas and air.') Still, a wonderful feeling.

Then there's the OTHER sort of exhaustion. Working very hard all day on corporate copy. A late night going to a seminar. A late night with guests round for dinner. Getting up at a crazy time. Driving 3 hours along very congested motorways to attend an all day conference where I participated in four workshops. Driving 3 hours home again...

This exhaustion feels horrible. I feel dreadful.

 SO...I DO want to die of exhaustion. But it has to be THE RIGHT SORT.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

The wisdom of Seneca.

(WHAT has the world come to when I search for an image of a perfectly good Roman Stoic philosopher of the First Century BC and I get THIS?)  I haven't even seen The Hunger Games...


Anyway...


The thought about things being difficult (or not) came to my mind this morning when my friend Serena asked if I'd like a ride on her pony, Ripple, another Connemara, aged 26, and with immaculate behaviour (apart from when he sees the ghost in the Leylandii hedge.)

Ripple Gillard-Hickman

I was wearing wellies and jeans (oooh, how painful the seams are!) but he went perfectly. I only had to THINK, let's turn left here, or let's jump over this wall and he did...no fuss. Then Peter (a non-rider) got on and Ripple cantered sweetly up the hill and things went very well until the saddle swivelled round under his belly with Peter's considerable weight when they were turning a corner. It wasn't a REAL fall...


What a contrast to riding either Poppy or Alfie!


The thing is...

It made me realise just how challenging my two horses are. And that I must be a pretty good rider with all the training they've given me. And that while it was a wonderful experience to float around on an obedient pony with no vices, I think I might eventually get bored. And that I wouldn't swap Alfie and Poppy, and all the highs and lows, and all the excitements and thrills, and all the tears and laughter...and cuddles...

...FOR THE WORLD!

You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.

I love this. It was written by Aberjhani, from Savannah, Georgia and I've just discovered his work. The quotation is from his poetry anthology Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black

Anyone who can create titles like that has my adulation at once. I aspire to be a lyrical writer.

Today is a day of sadness and joy, remembrance and hope for the future. A special day.

I'm attending a requiem mass for a dear old gentleman who used to be our next door neighbour and died just two weeks short of his 99th birthday. It's only a little bit sad because his wife Rosemary has been waiting for him for a few years and I expect she's quite impatient by now! Their life together was amazing.

Here's where he ended his days - St. Barnabas College, a residential home for retired Anglican clergy.

After that, celebrating a new life! Or rather two. This is a story that makes me feel so happy. An author friend of a friend, a while back, made a strange request (bearing in mind I'd never met him!) Could he have a photograph taken of him sitting on one of my horses, for publicity purposes?

Well, okay....

Stunning picture. ANYWAY, someone saw this picture, someone who liked horses...Claire...and she started corresponding with Ian. They are now a blissfully happy couple. They credit Alfie for the start of their relationship!

Today, they're coming over so Claire can meet Alfie and they are taking me out to lunch!

Alfie thinks he should have been invited too, but there wasn't a spare seat at The Hurstwood...and they haven't got hay on the menu.

You'll never walk alone...

I do believe Alfie might be a Liverpool fan.

I am, for sure, although I hardly dare to mention that at the moment after the woeful season we've just had and the sacking of King Kenny. Sob.

I've been a Liverpool fan ever since, as an impressionable young thing, I fell in love with Steve Heighway. (He had such a lovely Sundance Kid moustache and seemed so much more accessible than Robert Redford)

For that reason, I went to Liverpool University. And here's you thinking it was because the English and Philosophy Joint Honours course was academically outstanding. It might have been - in fact, it WAS - but that's not why I went there.

Anyway - back to Alfie. Lately, he's been very nervous out on the road. Jumpy. Spooky. Sometimes scary. I've been keeping very calm about it all because the very worst thing for him would be to feel that I was nervous.

Tessa suggested I sing a song as I was going along and that the calming vibes would transmit themselves through to Alfie. I think she might have meant sing a song in my head.

However...

You'll Never Walk Alone about fifty times over seemed to do the trick.

I'm not quite sure what the good residents of High Hurstwood thought as we went by.

They didn't say. They just looked.

Of course I'm a cowboy!

D'ya think I just found these spurs? Spurs? Eeeek.

For your information, I was looking up quotations about spurs, and apart from the sage advice 'Don't squat when you're wearing them' - everything seemed to be about a well-known north London football club and - sorry, nephew Jez and sons' friend Dustin - I'm not sullying my blog with any mention of THAT team.

Yes...spurs. Caroline the Cowboy.

(Blimey - you should see some of the images that come up if you Google cowgirl! I can assure you it would be most uncomfortable riding a horse in that sort of scanty attire...)

Yes...spurs. (Again)

Alfie has been going quite beautifully in the sand school ON HIS OWN (I mean, on his own with me riding him, not ENTIRELY on his own!) There's a dressage competition next week which, foolishly, I thought I might enter on both Poppy and Alfie, though not simultaneously.

With this in mind, on Saturday, after a good gallop on Ashdown Forest, we stopped off at said sand school where there were a number of other horses and riders practising.

Did Alfie go beautifully? Nope. He didn't go AT ALL. He didn't go when I spoke to him nicely. He didn't go when I kicked him politely. He didn't go when I slapped him smartly on the rear with the riding crop. He didn't go when I kicked him, slapped him and spoke to him less nicely all at the same time.

Hence - the spurs. NOT cowboy spurs. In fact, hardly spurs at all.

Did they work, this morning? I'm not sure really...we were on our own in the sand school. They didn't work when he refused to go past a gateway on the road but then, I was a little worried about using them forcefully what with passing traffic and so on.

I'm in two minds about whether or not using spurs is admitting defeat...or just being economical with my energy, time and stress levels!

Loosening the reins

 Loosening the reins when riding, in some situations, is definitely counter-intuitive.

Like this:

Out riding on Alfie, in the early days, when I was less experienced and he was more nervous. On a sharp bend in the road.

Ahead, Tessa riding Hero.

Immediately behind, a queue of impatient mothers in 4x4 vehicles doing the school run. (In my experience these drivers are The Very Worst; worse even than White Van Men. Why can they not just set off a little earlier so they're not in such a screaming hurry all the time?)

To the left, a high hedge.

To the right, a grass bank on which was Man With Strimmer.

 ...Man With Strimmer and ear mufflers, intent on his task. We were just level with him when he started the strimmer. Alfie had nowhere to go but up, in his fright. My instinctive reaction - pull him back.

 'LET GO!' screamed Tessa.

I remember thinking 'Is this woman MAD? I'm clinging on for dear life on a vertically rearing horse and she wants me to let go?'

But I did. And Alfie went down onto four feet again. (Man With Strimmer carried on strimming. The mothers in the 4x4s gave us a wide berth. I hope they felt suitably guilty but I'm sure they didn't.)

OF COURSE I should have loosened the reins or we'd both have gone over backwards.

I'm a bit like that with work. I hold on SO tight, try to keep everything under control, then it has the habit of rearing up unexpectedly and I must remember to...

'LET GO!'

Loosen the reins.

A canter is a cure for every evil.

...a spin and a bolt - possibly not.

Benjamin Disraeli said the first bit. I said the second bit.

...and Alfie said the third bit. Only it wasn't a spider. It was a small pile of snow that he was SURE hadn't been there the last time he went down that lane (it wasn't) and that he was SURE was Highly Suspicious (it wasn't.)

So the fight or flight response kicked in and the flight won.

I have to congratulate myself rather modestly for a) staying on b) not getting off after I'd stayed on c) getting us both home in one piece. Well, two pieces. Him and me.

In his defence, it was his first ride out since the snow hit on February 5th. Evidently, snow everywhere is Acceptable, patches of snow are Very Scary.

After that, when my heart rate had subsided to something like normal, I was wondering what my natural response is to perceived danger...

...and I suppose I err on the side of being the prey rather than the hunter - I flee rather than stand my ground. Not with physical danger though, but definitely with things that trouble my mind.

So I can't be too cross with Alfie. I wasn't anyway. Alfie is a bundle of insecurities mixed up with an unstoppable single-mindedness if there's food anywhere to be had.

I'm mostly just the bundle of insecurities.

...but wave an Apple Yum Yum under my nose and watch me FIGHT for it.

What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life

 My lungs are screaming at me this morning. Begging for mercy.






I blame Alfie. And the biting chill in the air. And the fact that I'm SO determined that Alfie should move forward during our lesson in the sand-school even when all he really, really wants to do is stand in the middle in a semi-coma, watching everyone else.

So - I over-exert myself. It might be less effort to give Alfie a piggy-back.

I've developed a peculiar high-pitched whooping sound to psych him up. That and the flinging my shoulders left-right, left-right in an energetic fashion to set him in motion. It's not pretty...but it works. (Tessa's comment was that if she ever felt the desire to promote her skills as a riding teacher, she wouldn't be choosing Friday mornings for her demonstration...)

Oh - the quote about oxygen and hope belongs to Emil Brunner, 20th century Swiss theologian.

I expect he had a horse like Alfie.

I must say that if I made half as much effort with hope as I do with oxygen, I'd be positively galloping round the sand-school of life.

Theories that go counter to the facts of horse nature are foredoomed.

Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed too, and that's the original quotation, by someone called Edith Hamilton, Latest American Writer I've Not Heard Of - the first of 2012.

I felt pretty foredoomed this morning, and so, I suspect, did Alfie.

A flatwork lesson had been planned. It was howling a gale and threatening rain. Me, I'm just too gung-ho for my own good. 'Yes, OF COURSE we'll go ahead!' I said, and set off with my long-suffering horse to the outdoor sand-school without first putting on coat and gloves. (On me. Alfie prefers mittens as he has no fingers.)

It was counter to human AND horse nature to be having a riding lesson in those conditions. Icy wind, one thing. Icy wind followed by pelting rain followed by more icy wind - another thing. I got drenched and then frozen to the bone.

AND we were trying to learn how to do counter canter.

For the dressage-uninitiated: "A counter canter is when the horse turns a bend on the incorrect leading leg. On the correct lead the inside foreleg would be reaching further forward than the outside leg. When counter cantering the outside foreleg is the leading leg."

I'm sure this diagram will make it all perfectly clear. As clear as mud, in fact. I showed the very same diagram to Alfie.

Poor old Alfie. After months and years of battling to get him to lead with the correct leg, he was being awfully generous to me when I was trying to get him to lead with the incorrect leg. You could hear his thought processes:

"Stupid woman. It must be the weather. She's obviously lost her marbles. She's going to look a complete idiot making me lead with the wrong leg so I'll help her out and change to the correct leg."

Such a kind and well-mannered chap! And now very confused. In fact, he's looking for a new owner.

Yep, counter canter...foredoomed.

"No matter how little money and how few possessions you own, having a dog makes you rich."

New quote, new mystery person called Louis Sabin. Let me go on a Voyage of Discovery. Ah, he's a writer. He wrote Great Teams of Pro Basketball. Oh, THAT Louis Sabin. Silly me.

Today, Roly went missing. I thought my heart might burst out of my ribcage I was in such a state. All that angst about Olive Oyl breaking down...NOTHING compared to the thought of losing Roly. That would go for Alfie and Poppy too. (Oh, and Peter and my three sons. Did I forget to mention them?)

Here's Roly when he was a mere adorable puppy.

Here he is - scary Halloween dog - raiding the dishwasher.

And now he's seven years old. Just chillin'. (I placed the chair strategically to obscure his masculinity. It IS before the watershed, after all. And they are particularly large.)

He's an intelligent fellow. Pensive, with pebble on head.

So...today he went missing, up at the yard. We called and called until we were hoarse. We checked all the empty loose boxes and the barns, without much hope, because we know that if he DOES get shut in by mistake, he barks and barks until he's let out. I ran all around everywhere. Tessa drove all around the lanes. (I had no car, of course.)

Finally after over an hour of searching in vain, we concluded (hoped, prayed?) he must have taken himself home across the fields, back the way we jogged this morning. Tessa lent me her car and I drove home. As I arrived, the phone was ringing. It was Tessa.

'He's back!' she said. 'You're going to die when I tell you where he was!' He wasn't in an empty loose box. He was in Alfie's loose box. WITH ALFIE.

We can only assume that he was worried about barking when confined with Big Animal With Large Hooves.

Alfie...you could have told us!