Mutterings and Meanderings

The way we were

2009-02-06T20:22:00.008Z

In a TV schedule awash with things I don't want to watch, I have been heartened by BBC2's Victorian Farm.

In the second episode, the lady of the house boiled and peeled a whole cow's tongue. Being a fan of the sliced stuff you can buy from butchers and delis, I have sourced a full, skin-and-all one from the butcher and am going to have a bash.

The TV lady simply said she had boiled the tongue but didn't say how long for, so I set out on a mission to find some instructions. My mum has a shelf jam packed with cookery books and recipes, including a sheaf of handwritten ones that belonged to my great-great grandmother.

Eventually, I found what I was looking for in the most wonderful old brown-paged volume called Economy Success Cookery. Over the decades, the book has lost its front cover and starts immediately at the first recipe so there is no way of telling when it was published. Mum is unsure if it belonged to my grandmother or great-grandmother.

I discovered that an ox's tongue - as it is properly called - should be boiled for two and a half hours or 'up to four if it is tough'. The recipe was amidst instructions for boiling the heads of cows, pigs and sheep, cooking the brains of those unfortunate creatures and how to use them. It was enough to give the Food Standards Agency a fit.

There were also a vast array of ice creams made with custard bases, a recipe for melon jam and a sweet 'vinegar pudding'. I am tempted to try the tangerine marmalade but don't think I'll be bothering with the brawn.

At the back, the book contains hints and tips on starching, use of a meat safe, preserving uncooked eggs by smearing them with vaseline and waterproofing your boots with boiled mutton fat, a la Victorian Farm. There are also potions to get rid of wrinkles, freckles and housewives' reddened hands, plus a 'non-injurious' tooth-whitening solution. If I knew what borax was or where to get it, I might give some of them a go - in these credit crunched times, it's got to be cheaper than Boots!

No snow

2009-02-05T20:27:00.005Z

To those who have kindly asked where I am, I am pleased to report that I am not stuck, neck deep in a drift of snow.

In fact, the deepest I have been this week is probably half an inch in Newcastle on Monday morning. Here on my wee stretch of the coast, we have so far been denied the white stuff that has enveloped much of the country.

I felt slightly cheated. I set my alarm half an hour earlier on Monday morning and swaddled myself in myriad layers for work, topped off with my great aunt's long, very thick (and very real looking) fake fur coat. "You want to hope the sun doesn't come out," said the man in the garage as I paid for fuel. "That looks as warm as a duvet!"

The snow began to whirl and hurl itself at the windscreen as I drove south towards Newcastle. The fields along the A1 were swathed in white. But by afternoon, the road was totally clear and I arrived home to find our familiar mud brown scenery had not received its own sprinkle of snowy fairy dust.

I felt slightly resentful at missing the joy of purified winter fields, the all-pervading mud glossed over and sparkling back at a china blue sky; I was jealous of those who enjoyed a guilty snow holiday from work and I missed out on the opportunity to take dozens of pictures of the Grey Mare looking like a Christmas card horse.

Having not experienced the worst snow for 18 years as the London-centric TV news never seemed to tire of telling us, I began to find the weather slightly tedious. As the week wore on, I started to consider it slightly ridiculous that the country ground to a halt because of a few inches of the white stuff.

But then I heard about a teenage girl killed while sledging with friends and walkers who died in the Cumbrian snow. Now I don't feel cheated; I just feel grateful.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T10:22:00.006Z

To all my blog friends old, new, virtual and physical, and indeed to anyone who happens upon this little piece of the Internet.

Wishing you all the best for the festive season and 2009.

Love M&M and the Grey Mare xxx

And so the year turns

2008-08-30T21:40:00.008+01:00

The cherry tree failed to produce a single fruit this year, ditto the pear which admittedly surpassed itself last year with a veritable orchard's worth on its own, and the apples have been poor. The plums - those that were not hijacked by wasps - were good, but yet again the hedgerows are where the real treasure is to be found.

I have been on my first brambling expedition of the year this evening. One bag for me, one bag for next door and ten stung and scratched fingers. The bramble and apple crumble, which I intend to smother in custard, will be worth it though.

Little gold and striped spiders have spun their webs in the bramble bushes and I felt guilty when I accidentally knocked one from his home. In the morning the webs will dazzle with dew.

The arrival of spun silk in the hedgerows adds to the whiff of autumn. The Grey Mare is readying herself for winter too and is starting to look slightly fluffy.

I remember summer. It's just a shame it hasn't deigned to delight us with its presence for a couple of years.

What I did on my holidays

2008-08-25T20:59:00.004+01:00

The majority of what I did on my holidays involved copious amounts of mud - both of the Northumbrian and Scottish varieties.

My week off started with a smile when the Grey Mare delighted me with her dressage. The competiton had been forced inside because the field where it was due to be held was wet, boggy and muddy.

My mud-free moment occurred when I bade farewell to my old Corsa and swapped him for a green machine. My new car is diesel, which I hope will cut the fuel bills. I had emptied the Corsa the night before going to the garage. The garage man still said: "Horsey girl are you?" I don't know if it was the Grey Mare hairs clinging valiantly to the upholstery or the pervading pong of eau d'cheval. I have been ordered not to turn the new car into a horse equipment depositary.

More mud was in order when I accompanied a friend who was showing two ponies at a big horse event in Scotland. We were towed onto the lorry park by tractor and towed off again the next morning. The lorry park henceforth became known as 'the swamp'. My friend did marvellously well and not only won her class but won the championship against the first and second-placed ponies in three classes.

And today, I returned to the muddy showground of Glendale. This year, I was under cover, serving tea and coffee to horsey folk for a couple of hours.

My holiday is over, the summer - such as it was - is drifting on towards autumn and it's back to work tomorrow.

The mysterious mind of the Grey Mare

2008-08-17T20:11:00.005+01:00

I have always thought I had the Grey Mare pretty well sussed. We have a good relationship and a fabulous bond. I usually know what will worry her and what she will take in her stride. But sometimes she surprises me.

Today was one of those days where she surprised me big time - and in a fabulous way. Today we went to our second dressage test. And we came second!

After the fiasco of our first attempt a couple of weeks ago, and her naughtiness and 'I'm not listening' while schooling this week, I was prepared for more of the same. I was even more concerned about our chances because due to the sodden ground, our test was in an indoor school. The Grey Mare has been in an indoor school once in the six years I have owned her and that was three or four years ago.

However, she was in a gorgeous huggy mood yesterday and seemed pretty happy this morning. She warmed up well in the field outside at the venue, I managed to stop her seeing the pigs near the school (many horses have a pig phobia) and we went into the indoor arena, complete with its scary white boards. An initial circuit of snort-snort-snort while we dandered round before the test began, then suddenly, she switched into soft, lovely dressage horse mode.

She behaved beautifully, worked well and I was utterly, utterly delighted with her. And we got a lovely big blue rosette.

I adore that wee horse!

Holy Moly

2008-08-09T17:53:00.005+01:00

It seems at the moment that people are getting caught by the tide and requiring rescue from the Holy Island causeway just about every weekend.

That's despite clear signs at each side, warnings and lists of safe crossing times.

Do people think those signs are there for a joke? Do they think in their arrogance: "Ah, it won't happen to me" and simply plough on regardless - and then get stuck?

Each rescue costs a fortune - and most could probably be avoided if people had read and paid note to the signs.

I have had a marvellous idea to stop people getting stuck. Put a little hut at each end of the causeway with a member of staff requiring that everyone who crosses signs a disclaimer and agrees to pay for the cost of their rescue if they require one.

I bet that would stop the stupidity in one fell swoop.

The delights of dressage

2008-07-29T21:14:00.005+01:00

The Grey Mare and I have a new hobby.

No, not her dropping me in the long grass when birds fly out of it unexpectedly (which has happened twice in the last month, the first of which necessitated me hobbling around with a stick for two days)... but dressage.

Dressage is something I have thought for some years that the Grey Mare should be able to do. She has resisted. However, we entered a competition and with grim determination (on my behalf) we practised. And we practised and we practised.

In the week or so leading up to our debut, I thought we had just about got it. I thought we might not make such fools of ourselves after all.

The day dawned, I was up at 5.30am, industriously plaiting her mane and tail and polishing her to perfection. She did, if I say so myself, look rather splendid. However, that is where the splendidness stopped.

Having not competed for four years, going away to the competition was just a wee bit too exciting. New place, new horses, and the horror of the white boards - and flowers - around the arena were all a bit too much.

The lovely soft dressage horseness we had almost achieved at home went out of the window and my grim determination returned - to complete the test. Which we did, with a couple of spooks, and a step or two outside of the dreaded white boards when she thought she was going to be able to escape.

However, it has now filled me with a desire to do it again - and keep doing it again until she performs away from home as well as I know she is capable of doing.

Merry Meet

2008-07-23T21:33:00.006+01:00

It is a fact universally acknowledged that once blogging has caught you in its web, it's not that easy to escape.

I may not have posted for more than three months, indeed I had decided to retire gracefully from the blogosphere but I have made friends through this secret society, and last night I met up with three of them.

@themill, a near neighbour and similarly retired, and I travelled down the A1 together to a lovely pub where we met Hadriana's Treasures, who had made a 50-mile trip to be there. Expatmum had come the furthest - from Chicago - but on this evening, had just popped up the road from her mum's.

We talked about blogging, the seductive thrall it has, friends, family and oh, normal things.

Despite my lack of posting, I also speak to Gill and Karen regularly too on that other thief of time Facebook.

As The Eagles once said: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave ..."

And it's goodnight from her...

2008-04-17T08:51:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will have noticed I have not been particularly blogtastic of late.

A year ago, I was firing on all cylinders, enthused and eager. A year ago, I was writing for a business publisher where creativity was stifled and big words were frowned upon.

Now, working for a newspaper again, I feel fulfilled creatively and no longer have the urge to tip-tap away when I get home. I’m also enjoying the spring evenings with the Grey Mare.

So, for now, I am disappearing from the blogosphere. I may be back – who knows?

Snow business

2008-03-24T10:51:00.008Z

In our little pocket of coastal Northumberland, the snow rarely lingers. It has a tough battle against the salt air and needs to come fully equipped with reinforcements if it is to win the right to settle. It did - briefly - overnight but the roads are again wet and grass is peeping through the temporary dusting on lawns and fields.

It's a different story inland. Drive along an uncovered Beadnell Straight towards Swinhoe and before you reach the top, there will be snow. A definite line marks the end of the salty dominance. Looking out from my garden, the Cheviots have been white for a few days. And it's supposed to be spring.

I have a love-hate relationship with snow. Currently, I'm happy to be smothered in the stuff: I am off work for a week and the Grey Mare has a stable to be tucked into. But when I have to drive through it, and in previous years when she lived outside all year round, I hated it. Then, I was glad of our special little ecosystem.

Sometimes, though, the snow beats the salty air. At school, I prayed for snow, because it meant we would be sent home. The thickest I have ever seen was in February of 1987. We were all but blocked in for about a week. I loved it. The Grey Mare's predecessor (another grey mare, natch) lived at a dairy farm in the next village. I would trudge through the snow to feed her and be brought home by the tractor that had been called into service to deliver the milk.

The grey mare # 1 is long gone, and so is the dairy: houses occupy the field where the ponies grazed adjacent to black and white cows. I still think of them every time I pass by.

Chasing chickens

2008-03-19T19:30:00.007Z

I don't like running at the best of times. And 6.15 in the morning is certainly not the best of times.

To be honest, I don't think any time is a good time for chasing chickens. It puts me in quite a fowl mood. But as there are only three left, I wouldn't like to be responsible for losing any more. Once, there were four brown chickens, six Black Rocks and a cute white one that looked like a snowball. But over the course of the winter, Mr Fox has been picking them off one by one.

The chickens, which roam freely during the daylight hours, have a perfectly fine hen house to sleep in. But they rarely do: why should they when there is the luxury of the stables to enjoy? The American barn with its sliding doors, electric lights, bales of hay, convenient stalls to roost on and horse feed to plunder must be a chicken's idea of a luxury hotel. And that would be all well and good if they didn't decide to sneak outside when you arrive to muck out in the morning.

The fox massacred one on the lawn the other week; today I thought her sisters would be going the same way after I stupidly forgot to close the main door when I took the Grey Mare the few yards to her field. Suddenly, they were clucking around my feet and I was able to quickly shoo two inside. Chicken number three, however, was made of sterner stuff. She was outside and she was not going back in.

I sprinted round and round after this feathered blur, shocked at her turn of speed. If her legs were longer, I would have sworn she was a decendant of the Road Runner. Finally, I managed to corner her near the hen house and fortunately the door was open. I bolted it smartly behind her, and leaving her in solitary confinement, I almost collapsed in a heap with the exertion.

"Are you all right?" asked my friend, arriving to feed her horse. I explained what had happened. "Oh, you should've just put some grain in a bucket and shaken it for them," she said when she stopped laughing at me.

"No, what I should have done," I gasped between pants, "is left the f***kers for the fox!"

Flasher

2008-03-17T20:19:00.004Z

My car is going to get me into serious trouble.

I am hugely grateful for the turning of the year and the ligher evenings - if only because it means I sometimes manage to get out of town without having to switch on my lights. Although my headlights are working, they seem to have a mind of their own. If I indicate, the full beam will come on. Sometimes the full beam comes on if I drive over a bump in the road; sometimes it comes on for utterly no reason. Sometimes it takes several attempts to turn it off and the person in front will - obviously - think I am flashing at them. I won't be surprised if some burly white van man stops and thumps me.

This itchy trigger is just one of the many ailments my car is suffering from: the engine often has spluttering fits like a 60-a-day smoker (those in the know tell me the 'big end' is going) and the exhaust seems to have emphysema. People ask me when I'm going to get it fixed. I say I'm not; I don't see the point in throwing good money after bad. "Some people pay a lot of money to make their car sound like this," I tell them. My point is proven when I drive past teenage tarts and wannabe boy racers and they turn to see which of their loud-exhaust heroes has just whizzed by.

The windscreen wipers have just started to make a tick-tock noise when I turn them on, for all the world like a clock counting down to the end of the road. If the relationship between my car and I was a book, we would now have reached the final 25 pages.

Road toads

2008-03-13T19:54:00.005Z

Nature can be a cruel mother. Tonight she sent the rain, heavy and prolonged, knowing it would tempt out the toads to walk across the roads as people returned home from work.

Driving into my road - a street so small that calling it a road gives it illusions of grandeur - I stopped twice to rescue two toads (and a piece of crumpled up cellophane) from the tarmac. Three more toads were saved from stepping into the danger zone and were placed in the relative sanctuary of my garden.

I picked up a big frog from the middle of the road beside the stables and popped it on to the verge. Another stood, stupified, further along. I was too late to help him: either clipped by a car or picked up by a dog, he seemed not long for this life. I placed him in a flowerbed to die with some dignity.

Watched

2008-03-11T20:25:00.009Z

The Grey Mare is sulking.

I thought yesterday's "I'm really not pleased with you, mother" attitude was because she had spent the day inside. With the worst storm since 1987 forecast and the gale starting to gather momentum when I fed her in the cold light of dawn, I thought she would appreciate it. She loathes spending the day with her head down, bum to the wind, simply surviving the elements, and I loathe the thought of it. However, the great storm did not hit Northumberland: by the time I arrived home there was an eerie calm of the kind where you find yourself breathing quietly, listening, waiting for something to happen.

I took her out for some grass, I chattered away inanely as is my wont, sorted out her bed, her dinner, her hay and her magnetic boots. I then sorted out the dark prince, who along with my sister's other three is my responsibility while she is off Nessie-spotting for a couple of days. The poor lad is lame and is staying in through necessity rather than non-arriving storms. I gave him some carrots and had a chat with him.

The force of the evil eye assailing me along the line of stables compelled me to turn around. "What are you doing, giving him my carrots!" she seemed to be saying. I had forgotten just how possessive the Grey Mare can be. She gets rather upset if I have anything to do with another horse in her sight as she thinks - quite rightly - that she is the centre of my universe.

She spent today outside, came in when I called and ate her tea while I went down the field to feed more of my sister's horses. But once I returned, I was searched thoroughly for carrots (in case I was hiding any for him) and watched intently while I sorted him out for the night.

I don't know how my sister manages to have four horses and keep them all happy. One spoiled little madam is quite sufficient for me.

Monroe

2008-03-10T20:13:00.003Z

Marilyn Monroe is haunting me.

Until the last 10 days, I had barely spared her a thought in years. But now, I switch on a music channel and Sir Elton, complete with outrageous blue periwig, is singing Candle in the Wind, backed by footage of a kiss-blowing Marilyn. A Marilyn ‘expert’ is fooled by a Madonna picture in a wannabe pose and Lindsay Lohan attempts to ape MM in a magazine photoshoot. A columnist praises the pneumatic blonde for her support of Ella Fitzgerald in segregated ‘50s America. An interviewee asks for my opinion on dream dinner party guests. “Monroe and Kennedy,” I say, without missing a beat.

At 18, Monroe and fellow ‘live fast, die young, have a beautiful corpse’ icon James Dean were my retro poster stars of choice. In the late ‘80s, student union poster sales were packed with arty shots of MM to cover crappy student house wallpaper and peeling paint. I devoured biographies, soaked up conspiracy theories and stared hard at grainy black and white images taken after the post-mortem. My homage extended to my bleached platinum bob and a period sporting scarlet lipstick and fingernails.

Like other teenage obsessions, it passed. But, nearly 50 years after her death, it seems the world’s obsession is still strong. That, I suppose, is a mark of true charisma and star quality. I look at the fragile and vulnerable blonde with the big, vibrant smile and consider today’s crop of celebrities. I wonder how many of them will still be making it into the news – or even people’s thoughts – half a century after they’ve gone?

The future's bright...

2008-03-06T08:32:00.003Z

My mind had been bubbling over with blogtastic ideas – but it seems few will make it into cyberspace. At least not for the moment: I am having Internet issues.

Four calls to my ISP’s techie team in some far-flung call centre (I refused to answer the same questions on the fourth call and instead attempted to find out what was happening by employing Jeremy Paxman tactics) have ascertained – I think – that my broadband is buggered.

My overseas aide told me it could be three to five working days before it is fixed. Having dealt with this particular company’s estimates before, I know that its concept of time is rather fluid.

Was I happy with this? the call centre chappie read from his script. No, I said, I was not. But unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it.

Siblings

2008-03-03T21:14:00.006Z

My Beelzebub is a proper witch's black cat. Wide-eyed and lithe, she is my familiar straight from central casting. And she adores her mother: she is a one-woman cat. Strangers come to the door and she hides until they have gone. I come to the door and she purrs. She wakes me in the morning by putting her face close to mine and 'singing' - for all the world as if she is humming and purring at the same time. This morning, I glimpsed her shadow behind the curtain in the spare room as I left for work. "Goodbye," I said, "I'll see you tonight." She came out, yowling her response. She is a very vocal cat.

She refuses to be put in a cat carrier. When we moved house for the first time, I tried to put her into a large cardboard box. She repeatedly punched her way out. Then I nearly lost her up the chimney. Eventually, I was able to get her into a hessian sack and carry her on my knee in the car, talking to her all the time. On arrival at her new abode, she hid for a day and would only eat Yeo Valley yoghurt.

The contrast with her black and white brother Wombat is immense. They have had the same life experiences but they are very different characters. Whereas she is finely-built, he is a chunky man in the Bagpuss mould. Where she is shy, he is confident and gregarious. Where she is vocal, he meows rarely and has a deep, low, reassuring purr.

They both sleep on my bed at night; B at my feet and Wom curled in beside me. I used to wonder how it was possible to have more than one pet and not have a favourite. Now I know: they are very different but I adore them equally.

What a carry on

2008-02-29T20:06:00.008Z

I am starting to panic-hoard carrier bags. Even if I am just buying a pint of milk, yes, I'll have a bag with that, please. I feel like those shoppers who stuffed their trollies with bread during the fuel blockades (and I think we're due another one of those too). If I don't get them now, soon there will be none left.

I fear for the future of the carrier bag. It may be much maligned, but I need it. What else will I use to carry horse food to the stables, line bins and - vitally - empty smelly cat litter into? Much as I like the idea of lovely brown paper bags that biodegrade beautifully, I can't see them performing the same functions as well as my environmentally unfriendly plastic friends.

Admittedly, I hate to see bags ripped and flapping, trapped in fences on windy days. So does the Grey Mare. I abhor litter of any kind. But I fear losing the essentially free, reusable resource that is the supermarket carrier.

I am fed up with the constant demands to ban this and ban that. New rules and regulations are never about new opportunities. Each time, they are removing something or preventing you from doing yet another thing. I vote we put a ban on banning. Let's save the endangered carrier bag from extinction before it's too late.

Stop, look and listen

2008-02-27T19:52:00.006Z

I am officially fed up with pheasants.

I very nearly hit my second of the week tonight when he decided to step out in front of me, totally oblivious to the fact I was driving a ton of rusty metal and he was but a few pounds covered in puffed up look-at-me-girls feathers. He was very nearly a mangled, bloody and broken mess of gold, russet and green.

Admittedly, I had been momentarily distracted by the sight of my first spring lambs silhouetted in the twilight at the top of a hill. I braked - hard - closed my eyes and when I opened them he was gone. Off, no doubt, to seek a lady friend to impress with tales of his escape from the big blue monster with the blinding eyes.

The cock pheasant that stepped out in front of me in the Monday dawn wasn't so lucky. His body was tossed into the air, its trajectory momentarily interrupted by hitting my windscreen with a sickening thud. Instinctively, I closed my eyes again, convinced the glass was about to shatter. I cannot understand how hit-and-run drivers can claim they were not aware they had hit someone when crashing into a pheasant makes such a racket.

I hate running over pheasants but at this time of year, the lust-blinded boys pay little heed to cars. I think it's such a shame after they have survived the winter, the fox and the gun that they have such an ignoble end. If pheasants spent more time flying and less time strutting, I'm sure there would be far fewer fatalties.

Of frogs and friends

2008-02-23T20:12:00.006Z

"There is frogspawn in the pond," said my mum today. "It's two days earlier than last year."

As I peered into the pool, I remembered that last year one of my first blog posts had been about fecund frogs in that said same pond. I checked back and realised I'd made my usual faux pas: I'd missed my poor blog's first birthday.

It shouldn't be surprised - I manage to do this with living entities as well as virtual ones. I always feel guilty when I do and people are always so nice about it. I wonder if inwardly, they are seething. I know I would be.

I wonder if my blog is too? Admittedly, I haven't been the greatest mother during the first year of its life. I almost commited infanticide during its first few weeks as I feared discovery. I then became overly-attentive and nurtured it at a pace I couldn't keep up. For a while, I neglected it completely as worrying about the Grey Mare devoured my available energy. I also neglected the friends I had made through it.

A year and a day on, I hope I'm starting to get the balance right.

School holiday heaven

2008-02-20T20:03:00.008Z

I love the school holidays. I'm not at school nor do I have children, but I love the fact my drive to work is quick, easy and uncluttered by yummy mummies (and daddies) taking their little darlings to school. Heaven forbid that they should have to catch the bus or even use their legs.

But hang on a moment, that's what I used to do. When I went to school in the village, I walked. When I progressed to high school in the town 12 miles away, I caught the bus with everyone else. People who lived in the town walked to school or caught the town service bus. I remember being shocked when I found out that people caught a bus to different parts of town, rather than walking.

Perhaps if children walked now, there wouldn't be the growing obesity problem among our young people that the the do-goers are forever bleating on about. Perhaps if they walked, I would zip through the outskirts of the city in the four minutes it took me today, rather than the 15-20 it can take on a normal day. Perhaps, if they walked, all those yummy mummies' BMWs and 4x4s would stop contributing to climate change. Has anyone else noticed how cold it's been this week when the kids are off school?

Let the train take the strain

2008-02-12T20:03:00.000Z

My name is M&M and I am a public transport snob.

Today is not the first day that I have thought that trains are a better class of carrier than buses; it's more entrenched than that. Trains and railway stations are touched by romance; there is an air that you could be going absolutely anywhere and that anything could happen. Perhaps it's because I have watched Brief Encounter too many times, or perhaps it's because buses remind me of school.

As a teenager, I hated the 12-mile trip to school, espeically in the winter when I left in the dark and came home in the dark. I don't like the smell of buses and quite often, I don't like the smell of the people on the bus. When was a student, I travelled home for the Easter holidays on a National Express bus after recovering from a sickness bug. I ate a blue cheese sandwich and some cherries the night before; unfortunately, I was not as recovered as I had thought. I have never travelled by National Express since.

Buses do have some things going for them. As you crawl along at a speed slightly less than a slow walk, you can peer into people's windows and get a glimpse into their lives. Don't tell me you've never done it. However, the impotent road rage I experience sitting in a bus that's stuck in traffic is worse than when I'm behind the wheel of a car. I don't like feeling I'm not in control.

Note to self: get the Metro tomorrow at the Park and Ride.

A spring in the stride

2008-02-10T15:42:00.000Z

It was the squashed frog that started it.

Still moist, it lay spreadeagled on the road where it had met its sticky end. I thought the frogs were all still hibernating, but it would seem not. Instead, they are awaking from their elongated winter sleep and sallying forth to seek sex, mind and body obeying instinct's instruction to find water and a mate. It probably never heard the car; I hope it didn't feel anything. I have a soft spot for frogs.

But it was the first signal I have seen this year that spring may not be so far around the corner. Every year, it seems impossible that the dark dampness will end, and every year I am amazed anew. But the light is gradually winning its battle and this weekend it crowed its superiority. Today, the sea was turquoise and the beach was packed. Beyond, the castle was masked by a diaphanous veil. Only the greyish wash sullying the blue showed it was a February not a June sky and the beach people wore coats rather than T-shirts.

Riding the Grey Mare, I spotted snowdrops beneath a naked thorn bush. The Grey Mare too, is naked - afterwards, I turned her out without her rug so she could enjoy a couple of hours of sunshine on her back. Of course, the first thing she did was roll in the mud before sallying forth to see her boys.

Like the frog, she is currently being driven by instinct. It is her first season of the year and it would be fair to say she is quite the definition of a saucy mare, as she shakes her booty at the boys, then sniffs, snorts and arches her neck. Thank god none of them have any balls.

Crisis? What crisis?

2008-02-08T20:29:00.000Z

I had big plans to be a better blogger this year. Following my ill-horse-induced hiatus, I started to pick up the threads in December, writing, visiting and generally settling back into the blogosphere. But it's already February and it's almost two weeks since I have blogged.

I blame Facebook. I joined in January, just to have a look. Initially, that's all I did. Then my sister joined and quickly became addicted. She badgered me about it and I started to play. Then I started to understand the attraction. Just like when I began blogging, almost a year ago, I discovered a new and - dare I say it - addictive world. Except Facebook wasn't a totally new world; it was peopled by lots of lost friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Suddenly, I was corresponding with people I hadn't seen in more than a decade and thinking about the fun I used to have; Friday afternoons in the pub that stretched into drunken evenings; sunny days when we sat, legs dangling out of first floor windows singing along with The Monkees; feeling filled with energy and enthusiasm.

Of course, it's inevitable I will compare that with how I feel now. Yes, I am quite content, but I am tired. I start to think - again - that I'm getting old. I look at the subject matter of my blogs so far this year and there is a slight theme emerging: worrying about my age. I still have a year and a half left in my thirties but I feel I am on the cusp betwixt young and old. I don't know how old you have to be for a mid-life crisis. Is it too early to buy a Harley Davidson?

Love is ...

2008-01-26T15:24:00.000Z

If I had the Grey Mare's ability to attract the opposite sex I would not be sitting gathering dust on my spinster's shelf. Everywhere she goes, she inspires devotion. The latest horse to fall under her spell is one of my sister's thoroughbreds - the dark prince who was once entered (but didn't run) in the Derby. Following her recuperation alone in a little paddock adjoining the dark prince's field, she has now joined the big boys in there.

I watched her entry back into society with some trepidation; I am an incredible worrier when it comes to her welfare. She stood for a while staring at the other horses down the field then began trotting towards them. The dark prince cantered up and met her half way, then brought her to join the group. With minimal fuss, she was welcomed into the herd. The following day, I received a text from my sister after she'd turned the dark prince out. "It's pathetic," she said, "he's totally in love with her."

Two days later, her other boyfriend who had been on box rest due to lameness was allowed out for the first time in three months. He is now inhabiting the little paddock where the Grey Mare had been. They kissed over the fence and that night, when she went back inside, he spent hours shouting for her.

"I think she's even more of a mummy's girl since she's been staying in," said my friend (until she was ill, the Grey Mare lived outside 24-7). The Grey Mare put her head on my shoulder and cuddled in. She knows I always have carrots in my pocket.

Phraseology

2008-01-22T20:02:00.000Z

The day is lingering longer as January progresses. The darkling sky still has streaks of brightness at 4.30pm. It is growing lighter "by a cockerel's stride every day", according to my granddad. That phrase came from his granddad and he has passed it on to me.

I can picture a cockerel striding across the farmyard but I am flummoxed as to the origins of linty. One of my sister's horses had been under the weather and I asked my mum how he was doing. "Oh," she said, "he's going like a linty." "Like a what?" I asked. "Like a linty," she said. "It was one of your nanna's phrases. Have you never heard that before?" I must confesses I haven't but equally, my mum doesn't know what a linty is - other than anything that goes like one is doing very well for itself.

My nanna was born and bred Edinburgh. In addition to being an amazing woman, she had a marvellous turn of phrase. "Where do you think you are, on your granny's yacht?" was a favourite, and some poor souls were often "Up the creek without a paddle". Latterly, she would point at people (usually out of rolled down car windows on baking hot summer days) and exclaim: "The things you see when you havenae got a gun!"

As a child, I wanted to know what she meant when she described my uncle's soon to be ex-wife as a "fornicating bitch". This was one of my many questions that would elicit the reply from whichever adult was in earshot: "I'll tell you when you're 16." I wish I'd written all of those queries down in a book. But it didn't matter: miraculously, I think I knew what most of them meant once I'd reached the age of consent. I believe that's what will happen when I die - suddenly, I will understand everything.

My mum is of the opinion that if you learn something for yourself, you are less likely to forget it. "Look it up in the dictionary," was often her response when I asked for definitions or spellings. And of course, she was right. It's just a shame I can't find a definition of a linty that fits the phrase.

Energy

2008-01-18T20:05:00.000Z

Five o'clock in a Friday night city centre is a special place. Picking your way across a road filled with snarled up traffic, you can sense a crackle in the air: energy, anticipation, expectation. Already, people are sucking hard on ciggies outside pubs and buskers by escalators advertise their MySpace pages on guitar cases as they seranade commuters with Oasis's best.

As you rush, caught up in the stream of humanity tasting the freedom of the weekend, you think how pleasant it would be if you too were on your way to the pub. You remember other Friday nights after work, fag in one hand, gin and tonic in the other. Friends and drinks and maybe dancing later. Or home to shower and change, TFI Friday on Channel 4, red wine, then out on the town. Bouncing along, buoyed up on the wave carrying you into the weekend; no time to stop to catch your breath.

Now, although I can feel those ripples of energy, they aren't strong enough to support me. I no longer have sufficient oomph of my own to sail into the weekend without stopping. Now at the end of the week, uncorking a bottle of wine is just about my limit.

Outed

2008-01-16T21:23:00.000Z

Blogging, for me, is a rather furtive and anonymous business. The opinions I post are, I like to think, forthright, but the few images in which I appear are less obviously me. When I began blogging, I was utterly terrified someone I knew would read what I'd written and associate it with me. I thought that if people I knew in the 'real world' were aware of my blog, I may subconsciously temper my tantrums. Although I write for a living, I write about what other people are thinking or doing; blogging, like the abortive novel and a half I've written, is more personal. And I don't know how comfortable I am about people peering too closely.

I have a healthy respect for those who are happy to blog under their real names, illustrate their blogs with pictures of themselves and talk in depth about their friends and families. I couldn't do that: it would be akin to publishing the pages of a personal diary. If anyone ever read a diary I'd kept, I would be obliged to kill them.

So, there is a very small circle who associate the blog with the person. My brother and sister know, a fellow blogger up the road who I hope is now a friend, knows - and in the last week, two other friends have become aware of my extracurricular scribblings. Sitting in Starbucks drinking overpriced coffee last week, the first friend intimated that she was considering starting a blog; the second shocked me by announcing that she had one. I went home and read her blog, then sheepishly emailed to admit that I blogged too.

Last night, the first friend emailed me. She had found my blog and wanted to know why I hadn't told her about it. "Er, cos it's very embarrassing," I replied. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, I have an ever-so-slightly shameful but enjoyable secret. But I know she won't tell: she's got one now, too.

Trot on

2008-01-14T20:08:00.000Z

After a month of walking, the Grey Mare's ridden rehabilitation programme has progressed to trotting. Although she is free to canter and buck in the field (and she does), we have been taking things slowly on the ridden front. Admittedly, I had tried a few strides of trot 'just to check' last week but that was all.

On Saturday, we set off on our familar power walk around the stubble field. I asked her to trot and she was off at a smart pace, legs going like pistons. I think she was overjoyed to be allowed out of a walk. She wasn't too keen to slow down again either. "Now you've let me trot, I'd like to carry on for a bit longer," was the message she was sending me. We walked for a while longer then tried another trot. This time the overriding message was: "Sod this, I want to canter! Can I? Oh, please!" Although the answer, for now, is no, it's fabulous to feel her so full of life and exuberance.

"I'd get really bored if I had to walk for a month," said one of the little girls at the stables. I am inclined to think the Grey Mare agrees with her. Me, I'm just happy to be riding my horse again.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

2008-01-11T21:04:00.000Z

I have long been labouring under the misapprehension that I still look exactly the same as I did when I was 25. Mentally, I feel the same so obviously I must look the same, mustn't I? People tell me I don't look my age, and in my vanity, I believe them.

In most recent photographs, I am wearing a riding hat. The peak cleverly casts a flattering shadow that erases wrinkles better than botox. In my ignorance, I have assumed that's what I look like all the time.

But this week, I have been unable to escape from the frightening truth. I have had three photographs taken because of my new job. Each of of them has made me think: "Oh my God, who is that wrinkly woman?" In one, I look in pain so I felt compelled to ask to have another one taken. In the replacement shot - which I am now stuck with - I have bags beneath my eyes you could carry your shopping home in.

I wonder if eye bag surgery is available on the NHS?

Elemental

2008-01-09T20:10:00.000Z

This morning started with proper blow-you-away weather; gales whistling around rooftops and ripping twigs from trees, leaving a trail like little broken fingers scattered across the road. On the A1, cars bob like corks in a river, drivers' knuckles clenched on the wheel against swift side-swipes that send you off course, while dead leaves scooped up by gusts from I know not where are hurled maliciously at the windscreen. Wizard of Oz weather.

Nor am I a fan of the cold. I currently have three quilts on my bed - a goose down one, a summer weight duvet and a long lusted after patchwork quilt delivered by Santa Claus. However, I recently discovered that trying to brave bed at this time of year without a hot water bottle is a false economy: 10 minutes after huddling down, I am invariably forced out to find one.

As a born and bred Northerner, people from elsewhere seem to find it odd that I don't tolerate the freezing temperatures terribly well. "But you're out feeding horses in all weathers," they say. Yes, but I'm usually wrapped up in sufficient layers to cope with Siberia. They also consider it curious that I am too mean to switch on the central heating. Instead, I tend to use a halogen heater in the room I am in. Currently, there is no heating on in the house and I am wearing a padded coat as I type.

Cold though our winters are, I don't think the mercury falls as low as it did when I was a child. I no longer awake during the night with cramp in my legs or unable to feel my fingers and toes. But I miss the frosted feathers on the inside of winter morning windows and the weeks when flooded fields froze solid enough to skate.

Weighty Issues

2008-01-06T20:32:00.000Z

I read a Sunday newspaper supplement today that was devoted to helping its readers shed their excess weight. It was full of tips: two pages were devoted to what celebs allegedly do to lose their extra pounds. Cameron Diaz apparently exists on snacks, Jennifer Aniston is said to sprinkle mustard seeds over all her meals, and queen of the skinnies, Victoria Beckham turns to a herbal tea. Personally, I think Mrs Beckham just doesn't eat.

The magazine also featured tales from real readers who had battled their own weight problems. One underwent self-hypnosis, one went under the knife for liposuction and another for a gastric band operation. As I type, Channel 4 is repeating the Half Ton Mum programme about Renee Williams, who had gastric bypass surgery when she weighed almost 70 stone. Apparently she would eat eight burgers at a sitting - or rather a lying down, as her massive bulk meant she was bed-bound. She died less than two weeks after the operation.

What strikes me about all of these women is the fact none of them thought: "Oh, I'm overweight, perhaps I should eat less and take more exercise." Instead, they turn to surgery, hypnosis or faddy products.

When I stopped smoking, I put on a stone. I make no excuses - I pigged out, so I put on weight. I have now lost 12 of those 14 pounds, simply by eating less. It's not that difficult. Nobody is forcing you to stuff your face; sometimes, all you have to do is say "No thanks."

January blues

2008-01-03T20:01:00.002Z

January is not my favourite month. Looking at it from a number of different standpoints and trying to give it the benefit of the doubt doesn't help: it basically has very little going for it.

The first few days are the hangover from the festive period; Christmas trees are drooping, lights and glitter that twinkled in an otherworldly, expectant way last year have now lost their magic; similarly, shiny things in shop windows no longer sparkle or tempt, but appear tired and tawdry. The start of January is the deflated party balloon in the corner of the room.

I don't like the Puritanical mood of the month either. I have known a number of people who detox or give up chocolate or alcohol for the whole of the month. By 31 December I am sick of festive food and longing for fruit and salad, but I don't deny myself the right to reach for a drink or comforting stodge for the next four weeks.

I don't make New Year's resolutions either - I'm glad I don't have to think about stopping smoking anymore, and there's no other major changes I want to make. Perhaps I'm becoming more comfortable in my own skin as I get older. The infamous Jerry Springer apparently resolves to do more of things he enjoys each January; that's the sort of resolution I like.

The January landscape tends to send my spirits sinking down into my shoes. The overbearing hue is mud brown, the trees are naked and damp, the grass is colourless and the rain is relentless. The earth seems to have given up completely and at this point the transformation that will take place in the next few months seems utterly impossible.

Sometimes, the mud is disguised by an enchanting blanket of snow; the magic and twinkle of late December returns briefly. Then you receive text messages from three well-meaning friends and family members to inform you the A1 is closed north of Gosforth and they're worried you won't make it home from work. I hate driving in snow: another reason not to do January.

Coughing and spluttering into 2008

2008-01-01T16:16:00.000Z

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as the festive season hoves into view, I am struck down with a lurgy of some description or other. In 2006, I had flu from hell which left me basically bedridden for a week, only crawling out to tend to the Grey Mare's needs and to drink Lemsip. This year, it was a cold which has morphed into a dry, hacking cough. One of the girls at the stables asked me if I had kennel cough the other day; I don't think she's that far from the mark.

I have been woken night after night, coughing up my guts as they (don't) say in polite society. My stomach muscles are aching with the effort. During the day, I have had to stop and catch my breath after doing anything vaguely energetic. The Grey Mare has been literally running rings round me in the morning when I take her down to her paddock. She is supposed to be the invalid but I am the feeble one. And I hate feeling feeble.

I have dosed myself up with hot lemon drinks, two varieties of cough medicine and little pills that boast they are 'flu strength' at stamping out the symptoms of coughs and colds. However, I don't think any of them work; cough medicine tastes nice but what does it actually do? I would love to find one that was as effective as the Drambuie my Grandad gave me last night. Unfortunately, I can't spend my life sipping Drambuie for medical reasons.

This morning, I awoke after an undisturbed night's sleep. I think I may be on the mend: typically, it's back to work tomorrow.

Looking forward to 2008

2007-12-31T20:00:00.002Z

A belated merry Christmas

2007-12-27T01:34:00.001Z

I hope Christmas brought you everything you hoped for and more. All the best for 2008!

Further tales of the Grey Mare

2007-12-21T15:24:00.000Z

The Grey Mare has been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in one of the bones of her foot. Her treatment was a steroid injection into the coffin joint in her foot to bring down the inflammation, plus an expensive joint food supplement for life. Being the sort of horse mother I am, I have also bought her some magnetic boots.

She has been sound now for around six weeks. She was sound when she went into the vet for her injection three weeks ago. My vet had warned me there were certain risks associated with this procedure, not least the nasty things that can happen if infection gets into the joint because of the injection. I closed my mind to this, and thought happy thoughts.

Fortunately, my Horse and Hound was delivered a day later than usual that week. I think the fates were being kind to me, because hours after the she'd been for the treatment I sat in the bath reading that week's veterinary article which just happened to be a very frightening rundown of what happens when such a procedure goes wrong.

Luckily, it didn't go wrong. Madam is now out in the field during the day and in the stable at night. Last weekend, I started riding her. We will have to walk for around a month to build up her muscles again. Today, we have been for a power walk around the adjoining two fields.

On Wednesday, we had the farrier and because the Hunt was in the area and liable to send her doolally, she only had a couple of hours in the field. Consequently, on Thursday she did go doolally when I turned her out: cantering, squeaking (you should hear her squeak) and bucking with excitement. No one, it seems, has told her that she has arthritis.

Demobbed

2007-12-18T19:10:00.000Z

My month's notice was up today at work and I am free. I have felt demob happy for the past week or so, a feeling that has grown as my leaving date approached and the amount of work I had to do dwindled. Today, I have written around eight useful paragraphs; yesterday wasn't much more productive. I feel I would have been better employed staying at home.

Instead, I played a few rounds of word association email with my editor. The final one started with Stalin and ended with golf, meandering via The Ronettes, Rowan Atkinson and Marmite on the way. I then had my own meander round t'internet, starting again from Comrade Stalin, via the Cold War to the BBC's espionage timeline which was a wonderful launch pad into the world of the Cambridge spies (I had an art teacher who claimed to have been taught by Anthony Blunt: "I always thought he was shifty" she used to say), through death by umbrella at London bus stops to David Shayler, who I recalled had recently developed something of the David Ickes.

I interviewed David Icke many moons ago, when he was on a speaking tour. This was when he was in his turquoise shellsuit phase before he decided that the world was ruled by an elite group of giant lizards. Although he had not reached that point, he was on the brink: he didn't once look at me when answering my questions, rather he gazed at a distant corner of the ceiling as though channelling proclamations from the mothership.

However, after setting off on the trail of Mr Shayler, I believe that rather than being touched by the David Ickes, he has been touched by tongue-in-cheekism. His website ('I'm Brian and so is my wife') has convinced me of that. I almost emailed him to thank him for cheering up a turgid Tuesday afternoon.

I then spent a pleasant 10 minutes munching cherry liqueur chocolates and gazing out of the window, imagining my life as a spy. However, I must realistically conclude that after a few G&Ts, I may be as indiscreet as the talkative Mr Shayler.

So, rather than MI5 or 6, it's back to the world of straight journalism in the New Year for me. But now I must dash - Spooks starts shortly .....

Laika

2007-12-14T23:31:00.000Z

I have never had a problem with the Russians. OK, so Vladimir Putin reminds me of an archetypal Bond villain but as a 1980s teenager, I found Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher a more frightening prospect than the USSR. I even wore a hammer and sickle badge on occasion.

But I’ve recently discovered something that has made me rather cross with Russia. It has nothing to do with poisoned spies, but rather a poor little dog that died 50 years ago. I was vaguely aware that the first living creature sent into Space from Earth was a Russian dog, and that the dog died. But I didn’t realise the dog was deliberately sent to her death with no intention of bringing her back.

I’ve missed the 50^th anniversary of Laika becoming the first animal sent into Space – that happened at the start of November. In 1957, she was blasted off in Sputnik 2, around a month after Sputnik became the first satellite sent into orbit. That first satellite hadn’t even come down before they sent up another one with a living animal on board. And they seem to have done it so quickly to satisfy the vanity of Krushchev, who wanted a grand gesture to mark the 40^thanniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

I can’t understand why the people who trained the space dogs – and there were a fair few canine cosmonauts - didn’t stop and think about what they were doing. How can you justify sending an animal to certain death when you have built a relationship with it? And they must have had a relationship with the little dog. Did no one step back and say: “Hang on a minute, this is inhumane?” Did no one say: “Hang on a minute, dogs’ bodies work differently to ours?”

As it was, Laika didn’t live for the four or so days the world was told; malfunctions in the equipment supposed to keep her alive meant the tiny cabin she was strapped into became hotter and hotter and she died within hours of stress and overheating.

Now, one of the scientists responsible for sending her to her death says: “The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.” At least he had a choice; Laika didn't. I hope the guilt never leaves him.

Dear Readers

2007-11-14T19:32:00.000Z

Thank you so much for the concern and the good wishes that have been passed to me through the comments box and via email. It’s all very much appreciated.

The Grey Mare is currently on box rest. A week and a half ago, she went for x-rays, which have been sent to the Royal Dick in Edinburgh for a second opinion. I am still awaiting the results.

Today, a bone cruncher has been, who has found a sore spot on her shoulder. He thinks she had ripped a muscle and has prescribed massage. He says she is sound. In herself, she is bright as the proverbial button and adoring all the fuss and pampering. She is a very ‘nice person’ and is an adorable horse to handle. She is the perfect patient.

Her stress levels at having to stay inside (this is now her third week on box rest) have been mitigated by the fact one of her two boyfriends is also ‘under the vet’ and is currently residing the box next door. They make eyes at each other across the divide.

As for me, well, I’m knackered – and keeping everything crossed for a good outcome.

Love M&M.

PS. The Edwardian ring went for £177 – way way beyond my reach.

Edwardian bling

2007-10-22T21:52:00.000+01:00

Edwardian ladies had much smaller fingers than me. I don’t have particularly fat fingers, but I do have chunky knuckles. They’re the sort that are better at giving a good punch than looking elegant. In fact, a psychic once told me: “Of course, you know you will suffer from arthritis when you’re older?” “Can you tell that from reading my palm?” I asked. “No,” she said, “I can tell because you’ve got big knuckles.”

I know this, but I have felt myself utterly compelled to bid on eBay for an Edwardian amethyst ring that I am unlikely to be able to force on to my finger. It’s just so beautiful and purple and old. There are a good few days left to run on the auction so it’s likely that I’ll be outbid (I know my limit and I stick to it). But however irrational, I really really want it.

My left hand is currently missing having its own ring. The last one – a gorgeous green amber and silver jobbie I called my dragon’s eye – was caught on the arena fence once when the Grey Mare and I parted company. I needed a hammer and plenty of patience to remove it from my finger. Prior to that, I had a square honey-coloured amber ring, which sadly snapped. The space is now waiting to be filled.

I wonder who the Edwardian lady was that owned the amethyst beauty? I wonder if she treasured it and wore it every day? I wonder if she’s left any of her aura on it? Sadly, I know for certain that she had smaller fingers than me.

Starry, starry skies

2007-10-18T19:53:00.000+01:00

Northumberland’s giant skies are rightly renowned for their lack of light pollution and the clear views afforded to those who want to gaze at the stars. Walking through a 5 o’clock field this morning, the sky was a little girl’s Disneyified dream: it looked like someone had grabbed generous handfuls of diamonds and hurled them across a backdrop of black velvet. Having recently finished reading Stardust, shooting stars were on my mind. Within minutes, there had been two to wish upon.

The bright, shiny, fake modern world makes us forget just how enveloping and dark real darkness is. Once, caught in a power-cutting storm while going to fetch the Grey Mare for her dinner, I was reminded of just how total it is. It’s surprising how much difference light from the village makes in the middle of a field. When they’re all switched off, you’re bent double against horizontal rain and your only illumination comes from the occasional flash of lightning, it would be very easy to become disorientated. Just the searching beam of a car’s headlamps on the coast road and the comforting three red buttons of the Chatton Mast at the foot of the Cheviots keeps you grounded.

Another more pleasant elemental experience also happened to me while walking back through a New Year horse field about two winters ago: my first, and so far, only view of the Northern Lights. The shifting and stretching colours dancing across the darkness left me transfixed. For once, I felt that over-used soubriquet awesome was justified.

A turn of phrase

2007-10-16T19:48:00.000+01:00

Over the last few months I have unwittingly found myself talking like a 1950s pony book. “Jolly good” has been in my repertoire for some time – initially said with a sarcastic tinge – but it has also been joined by “Crikey!” which I’m finding myself saying more and more. And I’m not alone: a friend at work and a friend at the stables are also crikey-ers, while my sister has taken to exclaiming: “It’s simply not cricket!”

I don’t know how these archaic phrases have entered my vocabulary. I admit “jolly good” was initially said tongue-in-cheek, but it has rooted itself and now pops out quite naturally. I had a similar phase with “sweetie” and “darling”, when Absolutely Fabulous was on TV (Patsy is such a heroine of mine). That passed in time, but my current turn of phrase is showing no signs of abating.

I have to confess I think some of the exclamations in old pony books really are simply super. I’ve mentioned before that Jill Crewe was my pony book idol – and the speech of Jill and her friends was riddled with classic such as gollys, goshes and the sublime “My Russian rabbits!” which I have never encountered anywhere else.

But my word of the day has unfortunately been much more prosaic. It was repeated often while I was driving this morning. It begins with T and rhymes with fat.

Changes

2007-10-14T18:47:00.000+01:00

Things have changed so much in the month that the Grey Mare has been lame. I have missed the subtle changes I normally notice while we hack around the quiet roads and through the fields. I feel I have been cheated out of the best bits of autumn.

Suddenly, now that I have started noticing things again, I see there are crunchy brown leaves on the ground. Small children jump, kick and stamp upon them, while bigger ones freewheel through on their bikes with grins on their faces. The conker trees that stand sentinel along the A1 have changed into clothes of red, yellow and rust. The scarlet scattered berries amid the thorn hedges have ripened to a deep, bloody and squashy red. The marshy field at the bottom of the lonnen is riddled with toadstools. I counted 10 heron silently sitting on the other side of the reeds. Sometimes, I think there is something otherworldly about that place.

The Grey Mare, too, has changed. Gone is the sleek coat of summer; now she is fluffy as a teddy bear. But there is no point in clipping until she’s back in work. The enforced break has also affected her belly. Never the most svelte of horses, she is now as round as a barrel. I hope I can fasten her girth when the time comes to get back on and see what else we’ve missed.

Ouch!

2007-10-13T16:06:00.000+01:00

I firmly believe that some things happen for a reason. Yesterday, I went to catch the Grey Mare ahead of the latest vet visit, but before I saw her, I spotted a pristine, white poultice in the grass. Totally unsullied by sweaty horse hoof, it must have come off shortly after it was applied the previous night. This is the first time in a fortnight that she has managed to lose her poultice.

Her foot was black and muddy and I decided to give it a good soak in a bucket of warm water before the vet arrived. A very relaxed Grey Mare almost nodded off, so the tubbing lasted longer than usual. So long, in fact, that her black heel looked white and across it, two red lines were clearly visible. Two red lines that reacted when the vet used the hoof testers: the first ‘ouch!’ the Grey Mare has given since this saga began.

This, it appears, is the source of the nasty stuff; the place where the pus is attempting to track out. I am helping it all I can with more soaking and poulticing. I am considering taking out shares in Animalintex and Vet Wrap.

The vet returns on Monday. I am continuing to pray for pus and am very grateful for everyone’s support and kind thoughts.

Bye for now

2007-10-07T17:46:00.000+01:00

I'm taking a break from blogging for the moment because my poor horse is still not right and that's all that's on my mind. I don't have anything more interesting to say right now.

I might be back in the future.

All the best!

Of poultices and pus

2007-10-02T20:13:00.000+01:00

I never thought I would have cause to regret the excellent quality of the Grey Mare’s hooves. Forget tough as old boots, these little beauties are hard as granite. My farrier often praises her hooves and lauds her as an excellent example of a barefoot horse.

However, when the horn is that hard, and a nasty abscess is grumbling away inside, there nowhere for it to escape. So thinks the vet after reassessing the still lame Grey Mare yesterday. The poor darling cuddled into me while the vet injected the nerve block into her heel, just lifting her head once when the needle went into her soft flesh. The nerve block showed that the lameness was indeed in the foot.

On Saturday, I suspected it may have been in her shoulder. She flinched when I prodded her shoulder on the bad side, but didn’t on the good side. She was massaged with muscle embrocation (amazing stuff for clearing a blocked nose), and I called the Back Lady. The Back Lady was in Devon.

On Sunday, she showed no reaction when I poked her in the shoulder. However, there was heat around her coronet on the bad foot. It was still there on Monday when the vet came. The vet will be back on Friday. Between then and now, the Grey Mare must be tubbed each night, which she tolerates as long as I stand stroking and chatting to her; the minute I walk away, she lifts her foot out of the bucket. Then her foot is poulticed, bandaged and taped. The plan is to soften her foot sufficiently so the vet has a fighting chance of finding the poison if it is there. I am praying for black, smelly pus.

I saw a shooting star tonight; I hope that’s a good omen.

Fly away

2007-09-24T19:28:00.000+01:00

Swallows are, I think, my favourite birds. I love everything about them: their first appearance, swooping low over the fields, signalling that summer’s around the corner; their cream chests and rosy cheeks; the athleticism of the adults in their aerial arcs; the cherubic babies with their wide mouths in an ever-present grin.

But this ridiculous hotchpotch of weather has conned some couples into breeding again, leaving it dangerously late for their brood to build up the strength for their long journey to Africa. The one good thing about this year’s plague of flies is that they still have plenty to eat. But time isn’t on their side; just last week the brood living in the bottom corner stable was fluffy and soft. Expecting them to make the trip to warmer climes would be like asking a toddler to run the London Marathon. I feared for their future.

I went to look at them tonight. The babies of last week were gone; perched on the beams were little navy coated adults. Suddenly, like a flurry of fallen leaves caught up in a gust of wind, four or five of them were dancing in the air, swooping amid the rafters to show me what they could do.

I hope the weather is kind. I really hope they make it.

International talk like a pirate day

2007-09-19T20:19:00.000+01:00

Arrrr me hearties, did you?

Unfortunately every time I do, I sound like a member of The Wurzels ...

A poorly Grey Mare

2007-09-18T20:15:00.000+01:00

My Grey Mare is not a sore and sorry sort of horse; unlike my sister’s thoroughbreds, who have a habit of hopping on three legs if they suffer the indignity of a scratch, the grey girl grins and bears it. So, when something is wrong, I fly into full panicking mother mode.

Initially, we thought her lameness was due to a poison foot. She was dually poulticed on Saturday and Sunday to draw out it out. The farrier came on Monday to probe for the pus. There was none. Suddenly the confidence of certainty disappeared and the butterflies stirred in the pit of my stomach.

“Never mind,” I thought, “the vet is coming to the yard to see some other horses.” I booked the afternoon off work and rang the surgery. Apparently the vet was “too busy” to look at her, the receptionist informed me. She would book me in for Friday instead. This didn’t help my mood. I tackled the vet (who, incidentally is a lovely person and a damn fine horse vet) when she arrived. “I’d hate to think,” I said, “of her suffering until Friday.” The vet agreed this wasn’t an ideal state of affairs and promised to look at her if she had time. Fortunately, she had time.

The poor Grey Mare has a bruised sole and has been prescribed three days of box rest and a course of anti-inflammatory powders, which are mixed into her dinner. For a greedy horse, she is very fussy and is very suspicious of the tiny yellow granules added to her food. However, she eats it if I feed her by hand.

She is also very upset at being confined to barracks rather than being out in the field with her mates. Consequently, she is very pleased when I arrive. She mugs me for sweeties, insists I scratch her itchy bits and makes me feel incredibly guilty by refusing to eat her hay when I am there. I am told she settles down to munch when I have gone. She is bright as a button in herself, but I can’t help fretting. I love that little horse.

Sloe-ly does it

2007-09-16T16:28:00.000+01:00

Whichever god of greenness was responsible for this year’s glut of brambles appears also to have waved a magic wand over the blackthorn trees to create a similar surfeit of sloes. Looking like hard, little black grapes, the berries swarm across the branches. The best one are usually high in the trees: big, black, touched with a brush loaded with bluish mat paint, so they look like out-of-reach blueberries. But don’t pop one into your mouth: raw sloes are poisonous. Even the birds don’t eat them.

Sloes are secretive; if you weren’t looking for them, you would probably not notice they were there. Unlike brambles which announce themselves with red berries before colouring to purple juicy ripeness, sloe berries turn directly from green to black. Similarly, sloe pickers can be secretive about their sources. Where I Iive, there is a place that everyone interested in picking sloes knows about. But a few years ago, quite by chance, we discovered somewhere new. I can’t tell you where it is though.

The best way to pick sloes is to find a handy branch to hook your bag, so you have one hand to pull down a laden branch while the other gathers the berries. Due to the berries’ hardness, you can also strip them from the branch in a whoosh if you don’t mind removing all the leaves and pieces of broken bark afterwards.

In no time at all, we had 7lbs of sloes. They’re now in the freezer, their skins bursting before they’re defrosted and mixed with gin and sugar. Come Christmas, it’ll be time to crack open the first bottle.

In the darkness before dawn

2007-09-12T22:16:00.000+01:00

It’s been some time since I was out and about at 5am. A mid-September 5am is dark; very dark. The sky remains devoid of those comforting first streaks of brightness, those tentative fingers fumbling for the light switch. Much of the world is asleep, including many of the horses as I walk through the fields.

As my eyes become adjusted to the darkness and my night vision kicks in, I can see that they’re not all asleep. Some are lying down, dozing, but there are always sentries on guard. A few are snoozing on duty, their heads hanging low. Others are cropping grass.

Overhead, an unknown bird lets out a warning cry. The horses take no notice. When I reach the Grey Mare’s field, I fear I won’t be able to find her. But I’ve forgotten one of the beauties of grey horses: they shine like little beacons of brightness in the dark. Indeed, she’s easy to spot: a snoozer on the hill.

She seems surprised to see me, but bribed with a carrot, she follows me slowly, a child shaken from sleep. “I know how you feel,” I tell her, “but it’s your own fault.” My early morning jaunt is due to her refusal to be caught by my sister for the farrier the day before. Today, I’m taking no chances and am catching her myself before I leave for work. Sometimes her devotion to me is endearing; sometimes it can be galling.

I lead her into the stable and she nudges me for carrots. I studiously avoid looking down the row; a pony died there yesterday and I do not want to see a head looking over a stable door where none should be. I have seen horses that weren’t there before, but I don’t want to today: the loss is still raw.

I fetch the Grey Mare some haylage, and suddenly she’s awake and tucking into her out-of-season treat. Outside, the sky is brightening. The new day is here.

Jelly virgin

2007-09-10T22:32:00.000+01:00

The pillowcase looked as though it had been used to mop up after a particularly gory accident. Deep purple-red liquid seeped through and dripped into the container below. Its contents didn’t look very edifying; in fact, one could be excused thinking the remnants of said accident had been scooped up and hung out to dry.

The pillowcase, which I'd nailed to shelf in the larder, was actually filled with a mush of brambles and cooking apples. The juice dripped into a (sterilised) plastic bin overnight and I have just finished attempting to turn it by some kind of alchemy into bramble jelly.

People are often surprised to hear that I cheerfully concoct chutney, make sloe gin and cook a mean quiche. I like to think of myself as quite domesticated. In fact, I often claim that I have missed my vocation and would’ve made a marvellous housewife. However, until tonight, I have never attempted to make jelly or jam.

My mum is a practiced jam maker. She gave me instructions on judging when the jelly was set, but refused to come round and tell me whether it was or not. “But I need you,” I pleaded into the phone, gazing at the bubbling brew on the cooker but knowing not what I was looking for. She laughed at me and refused to come to my aid. “I’m cooking fish fingers,” she said.

I think jelly making must be a dark art. I have no idea if the purple goo is set or not. Anyway, it’s in jars and I’ll find out tomorrow when it’s cooled whether I’ve inherited the knack.

On the cusp

2007-09-06T20:35:00.000+01:00

Suddenly, this week, the scent of autumn is in the air. The vividness of summer is gone; the landscape has lost its lush texture and is brittle and fading, the sky is a backdrop of washed-out chambray with a handful of painted, far-away clouds. The light is amazing but is gone shortly after 8pm. We are on the cusp between seasons.

The summer weather has not been kind. It has not been a vintage year of memories in the sun. When I shut the door on it this year, it won’t be with regret; rather I am ready for the new season and won’t be looking over my shoulder at the summer that never was.

But the wheel of the year is turning and its cycle is on time. The hedges are stuffed with a glut of glossy brambles, the crab apples are starting to appear, the sloes are beginning to colour on the blackthorn. Our plum tree and cherry tree have been a disappointment but the apple trees and especially the pear tree are groaning under the weight of their fruit. My fridge is packed with courgettes, cucumbers and tomatoes – little red and yellow jewels - from my dad’s greenhouse. Soon, I will start to think about making chutney and sloe gin.

Tonight, the beach was lonely, the sea turquoise and still, and the stubble fields stood empty, their gates open and inviting. The Grey Mare loves this time of year too.

Driven to distraction

2007-09-03T21:01:00.000+01:00

The theory part of the driving test has apparently just been made more difficult. The BBC website is carrying a quiz to see how many of the multiple choice questions we know the answer to. To pass, you need nine out of 10. To my shame, I scored seven. I would have scored six if I’d answered question 10 honestly.

In my defence, I sat my test a long time ago – before the theory test was even invented. Our theory involved swotting up on the Highway Code and learning the stopping distances on the back cover parrot-fashion ('and double it if it’s wet’). I had no concept of what the stopping distance physically looked liked then, nor do I now, and I certainly can’t remember what they are in theory. I wasn’t quizzed on stopping distances in the three quick-fire questions I was asked after I’d done the practical part of the test. I am one of those unbearable smug people who passed first time.

I am a firm believer that you only really learn how to drive when you’re out there doing it on your own. I didn’t drive at all in the six months between passing and buying my first little mini. Three days later (with a friend along for moral support), I did a round trip of 300+ miles: I had to find somewhere to live because I was starting a new job. That drive was a baptism of fire: I managed to graze the central reservation while fiddling with the lights. I also learned to parallel park in that little car, something I would’ve failed my test on had I been asked to do it. But in the real world, I had to learn if I wanted to park outside my house.

I think now, though, new drivers forget rather than learn new skills when they throw away their L-plates.

One question I would like to see included in the new theory test is:

When do you use your indicators?

a. I don’t, I expect the other motorists to telepathically know what my next manoeuvre will be.
b. Indicators? I don’t need indicators – I’m king of the road!
c. My car doesn’t have indicators.
d. When turning or pulling in or out.

I reckon a lot of today's drivers would get that one wrong …

Diana – a decade on

2007-08-31T20:04:00.001+01:00

Ten years ago today I was at a 30th birthday party. There were twinkling fairy lights, buffet food in the garden and plenty of gin. I allowed someone else’s fiancé to kiss me and wasn’t popular. Later, my flatmate and I went with our former news editor and his wife and drank more gin at their house. They had a separate fridge reserved for alcohol; I thought this was the height of sophistication. Later still, we ended up looking at Ceefax, as journalists do. We ‘oohed’ a bit at reports Princess Diana had been injured in a car accident.

The next morning, I was woken from my alcoholic slumbers by my flatmate bashing on my bedroom door. “Princess Diana’s dead,” she said. I surfaced from the haze of sleep, convinced I was still dreaming. Once copis mentis, I wrapped myself in a duvet and planted myself in front of the TV for the day: “This is history,” I told my friend.

In the week that followed, reality seemed suspended. I had read a piece by Lynda Lee-Potter days before Diana died, in which she ripped the Princess to shreds; miraculously, hours after the crash, Ms Lee-Potter published a gushing column, praising the People’s Princess and surreptitiously sweeping her tirade of the week before under the carpet. Suddenly, in the public’s perception, journalists were in league with the devil. Midweek, I took a taxi to the pub with the same group of friends; we fell to discussing conspiracy theories that the Princess had faked her death and was now living with Elvis on a remote Pacific island. Then I caught sight of the taxi driver’s pinched face in the mirror; I thought he was going to throw us out.

I was bemused by the public wailing and gnashing of teeth; the piles of flowers outside Kensington Palace, the petal strewn road as the hearse travelled to Althorp. I didn’t weep for Diana: as Keith Richards reportedly said, “I never knew the chick”. I saw her once, when I was sent to report on her visit to South Tyneside. Etiquette dictated that one could not address a member of the Royal Family unless they spoke to you first. I had to be content with smiling recollections of elderly ladies with plastic union flags who had briefly bathed in her sunshine. My abiding image, though, was of a tall, slender woman with impossibly thin ankles. She looked like a sunflower: one strong gust of wind and her stem would break.

Rats

2007-08-29T21:06:00.000+01:00

It’s about this time of year that you start to see them. Once the corn has been cut, you catch sight of them feasting among the golden stubble in the early mornings, or dodging the traffic to gobble up any grain that has been spilled on the road. They don’t all survive the road: I have seen about half a dozen squashed rats today. Drivers don’t tend to avoid rats like they do other creatures.

There is something in the human psyche that recoils at the mention of rats. “They’re just sleeker, less cuddly rabbits with a PR problem,” I said to my mum tonight. “No they’re not,” she said, and shuddered, “they’re dirty and disease-ridden.” That’s just the point: I’m sure our collective revulsion is a racial memory dating back to the plague. But rattus rattus, the black rat that was infested with Black Death-carrying fleas, was expelled from Britain long ago. Our rats today are his cousin, the brown rat.

I have not inherited the rodent-terror that runs down the female line in my family, but mention rats to many otherwise sane people, and they feel fingers of repulsion creeping up their spine. Rats still have the power to strike fear into people’s hearts. We thought we had the rat story of the year when I was a trainee journalist. One of my fellow trainees spotted a couple of rats one morning; research revealed they’d been lurking in the area where the city’s cholera dead had been buried decades before. How long could cholera survive in the soil, we wondered? We communicated with the director of communicable diseases at the hospital; (un)fortunately, he told us that the disease did not lie dormant.

Apparently there is a new breed of ‘super’ rat that is resistant to warfarin. These fortnightly bin collections are probably keeping him in a manner he’s become accustomed to. His country cousins, gorging on the grain, don’t know what they’re missing …

A little mutter and meander

2007-08-28T21:42:00.000+01:00

A little while ago, I received an email inviting me to take part in an interview with Bloginterviewer.com.

I checked out the site, and seeing a few familiar faces there, I tackled the questions. If you’re interested, you can see my interview here. You could even vote for me if you felt like it...

And watch out – it could be you next … I have nominated some of you ‘orrible lot to spill the beans as well!

Showbusiness #2

2007-08-27T20:23:00.000+01:00

I have no regrets that I stuck to my guns and didn’t steward at the big agricultural show today. OK, so I had to pay the entrance fee and buy my own lunch, but it was worth it. I didn’t have to climb out of bed at the crack of dawn, and for once, I was able to watch the action in the main ring.

A group of horsy ladies of a certain age arrived as I sat watching a hunter class. “The chairs have been commandeered,” said one. “They’ve been commandeered. Comm-an-deered!” Their chat centred on the eventing world. They’d been to Blair last week, and didn’t like the way the British young riders all rode the water jump the same way. “They bounced in. They bounced. Think what that will do to their horses’ legs. The French didn’t ride it that way,” said another. Next weekend, they were off to Burghley. Today, they sat in the sun and tried to pick a winner from the small hunters.

We saw pony show jumping, stunt horses and riders and the hunt. After the hounds had galloped around the ring a few times, the commentator invited the watching children in to meet them. There is something very endearing about foxhounds; they are always waving their sterns and they always seem to have a delighted grin on their faces. So did most of the children, until they reluctantly had to leave their new friends and return to their parents.

The show was, as always, a wonderful cross-section of humanity. Joules Girls in pearl earrings, farmers, hunting types, pensioners, families out for a day with the kids. And of course, there were more of those dreaded bargains to be had; and had they were. I really am suffering from a guilt trip now. Thankfully, the Joules stall wasn’t as tempting as the one at Thirlestane, but there were plenty more temptations to separate a gal and her money.

Unfortunately, the cattle, sheep and goats were missing this year but there was still something for just about everyone: local food, clothing, jewellery, paintings, crafts, fairground rides, tractors, trailers, cars and motorbikes, and of course, horses, horses, horses …

Twitchers

2007-08-23T20:21:00.000+01:00

My pair are neither entirely house cats nor are they outdoor cats. Like an over-solicitous mother, I do not allow them to wander, but I do allow them to play in the garden.

My current home has a wonderful garden for cats. As well as clumps of long grass that I have missed with the mower, there are bushes to hide beneath, fences to climb upon and trees to bird watch. They are very good twitchers but that’s as far as it goes. Birds fascinate them but they simply cannot work out how to catch them.

It’s probably my fault; they do come from a long line of streetwise farm cats so it’s not their breeding that’s to blame. When they were kittens, we lived in a house with a garden that didn’t have the same bird watching and stalking opportunities. Moreover, there was a busy road near a school which is why they have never been allowed to wander the streets alone. After that, we lived in a flat devoid of a garden for a few months. Then, their sport consisted of watching a family of swallows that slept on the telephone wire and becoming over excited about two young pigeons that set up camp for a while on the windowsill.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about their lack of bird catching skills. They know how to stalk, how to hide in the undergrowth and how to shimmy between the blackcurrant bushes next door. I think they’d be able to manage a mouse if they found one, but creatures with wings elude them. It must be very frustrating being a cat.

Of mud and money

2007-08-20T16:40:00.000+01:00

I am always over-awed when I see sportsmen and women performing at the top of their game. Especially, when like yesterday in the rain and mud of the Thirlestane Castle Horse Trials, conditions are not ideal. Horses bounded over giant cross-country fences as if they were tiny logs, jumped off drop fences that looked like they should’ve come equipped with parachutes, and skipped through tricky combinations.

Watching the professionals at work also inspires me; I go home thinking: “I want to jump like that.” But then I return to reality: those were Olympic class riders who have worked for years to get that good.

One thing I am good at is shopping. The monsoon conditions and red clay mud, so different to the Bournville brown of home, didn’t put paid to that. The credit card took a hammering and with it came the associated guilt of spending too much. But what else can you do when Joules tops are half price, Mark Todd jackets are so very reduced, and that new winter rug you’ve been eyeing up for the Grey Mare is £15 cheaper than you’ve seen it anywhere else?

Brambling

2007-08-16T22:25:00.000+01:00

I studied Seamus Heaney at school. His bog body poems may have been thought-provoking but I much preferred Blackberry Picking; it was something I could relate to. Like Seamus and his pals, we would pick industrial quantities of the black sweet fruit. Ours didn’t go to waste: I made soggy-crusted pies and crumbles with topping that was too thin, so purple juice seeped to the surface like blood through a bandage.

There is something inescapably bloody about brambles; as Seamus says, they look like ‘a plate of eyes’: much more macabre than desiccated bodies in the peat. Brambling always makes me feel somewhat like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, fighting through the thorns to reach the prize. Fingertips turn red, clothing is snagged, burrs stick to sleeves and no matter how hard you try to avoid them, the nettles always sting you. I don’t know what sort of protection racket the nettles have going, but wherever there are brambles, you can be assured they’ll be there too.

I picked my first brambles of the year tonight. There weren't many in the usual place so I tried another spot where I had spied them from the Grey Mare’s back. I started off picking anything that looked ripe then, as I found more fruit hiding under thorns and dry grass, I became more finickity about the specimens that made it into the bowl. Truth to tell, there weren’t as many as I’d hoped; but there were enough to bake into a crumble with apples from the garden. Hopefully, this one won’t leak around the edges.

Goggle box

2007-08-15T21:50:00.000+01:00

Televisually, things aren’t great for me at the moment. The quiet, blank-faced TV sits in the corner like a rejected lover whose charms have waned. He has nothing to offer me; he is a disappointment.

I’m not saying this state of affairs will continue indefinitely. It’s just there is nothing on TV that I want to watch. I am not the sort of person who switches it on automatically as background noise; rather I watch TV when there is something that I want to see. I’d rather listen to music, have a wander round cyberspace or read a book than view drivel.

I see around 20 minutes of BBC Breakfast News when I’m getting ready for work in the morning. I catch the odd sniff of a soap when I’m at my mum’s. But the last thing I purposely sat down and watched was Austin Powers on Saturday – and I’d seen it twice before. I’m positive when there were fewer channels, there were more things worth watching. TV was an event: I remember watching Live Aid and Charles and Diana’s wedding, just like everyone else was. Getting my first TV in my bedroom was an event too. It was a black and white monstrosity that a neighbour had been about to throw out. I sat in my room and shrieked with glee at The Young Ones.

Going further back, and there was a golden age of horsy TV: Black Beauty, Follyfoot, Flambards, The White Horses. I’d gladly watch them all again but they’re never repeated. Instead, we are now in a golden age of reality TV. Apparently the next big thing is a US show where someone is attached to a lie detector and asked excruciatingly embarrassing questions in order to win wads of cash. I don’t care. Nor do I care that Louis Walsh is returning to the X-Factor. I certainly won’t be switching on. I don’t find ritual humiliation – or inane wannabe pop stars - entertaining.

Summertime blues

2007-08-13T21:10:00.000+01:00

We are quite blessed with the weather in this little coastal pocket of Northumberland. Thanks to the salty air, it’s never too hot or too cold. Snow rarely sticks around for very long and the baking heat they allegedly sometimes feel inland is tempered by the breeze. I’m thankful, too, that we haven’t had the floods that have done more than simply ruin summer in some parts of the country. But I can’t help feeling cheated.

Already, the long, lush verdant grass is gone; in its place are yellowing stalks and dry heads of seed. Look closely, and the red berries are starting to appear in the hedges and the first flush of ripe brambles, deep and black, are dotted amid the thorns. The fields are turning to gold; tractors are trundling along the lane. Soon, the swallows will stop swooping after flies and gather on the telegraph wires ahead of their long journey to Africa.

The thick, creamy skies of June and July with their texture of shiny blue gloss paint have gone. Instead, the blue is now a watercolour wash; at least when it’s not a swirling dark mass carrying the threat of thunder. There is a nip of autumn in the air and the nights are drawing perceptibly in.

To paraphrase my Dad, if that’s our summer, we’ve had it…

Who are you?

2007-08-10T20:33:00.000+01:00

I am a pig farmer, a dog breeder, an oral health co-ordinator, a writer on soap operas, a sales director at a property development company, a cookery book author, a Hollywood corporate accountant, a community worker and a nun. Google says so, so it must be true. Gratifyingly for my ego, the real me was actually the first entry on my vanity search; later, some reports I had written at the turn of the century about a struck-off medic appeared, preserved in the aspic of cyberspace.

“I’d have a great answer when my wife asked: ‘What did you do today darling?’” said my colleague after he tapped his name into the oracle. ”‘Oh, in the morning I split the atom, did a spot of power boating before lunch, then I wrote an article for The Guardian, before taking some photographs, rewiring a house and recording my new album.”

Apparently, search engines that ferret out personal information on people are a huge growth area. I find that quite frightening. The opportunities for identity fraud must be immense; not to mention schizophrenia. As a small child, I would apparently ask my family to guess the character I had chosen to be that day. I would sulk if they didn’t get it right. Imagine if the Internet had been around then. Which me shall I be today? Or shall I roll them all into one composite?

I don’t know which would be worst result of a vanity search: finding lots of details about yourself, or no mention of the real you at all...

Who will you be today?

A tale about a tail

2007-08-08T22:04:00.000+01:00

I have bought some net curtain whitener. It’s not for whitening net curtains, it’s the latest weapon in the war I am waging against the stains in the Grey Mare’s tail. I have been questing for the Holy Grail of Grey Mare tail cleaners for some years, but unlike Indiana Jones, I am yet to find it.

On Sunday, I tried the Fairy Liquid tip. It had to be proper, branded Fairy Liquid of the original variety. I squirted purple spray into the final rinse, as had also been recommended. I can’t say I was impressed with the result. I have tried expensive equine whitening shampoos and I have tried human shampoos; they were a disappointment. I have searched the Internet in vain for the old fashioned ‘blue bag’ that used to be the thing for white tails. Unfortunately, it is no longer manufactured. Biological washing powder is the next recommendation if the net curtain whitener doesn’t do the job.

When you see grey horses at shows and on TV, their tails invariably look like waterfalls of silvery light. That is how I want the Grey Mare’s tail to look. After washing, it does – in places; but her tail is large and luxuriant and the strands of silver are spoiled by yellow-stained sections.

Let’s be frank about this; mares pee differently to geldings and it stands to reason there will be bits that aren’t quite Persil white. But one day they will be. I will discover the secret formula...

Fatal curiosity

2007-08-07T21:18:00.000+01:00

My cousin is home from the War on Terror. I walked into my mum’s and he was sitting on the sofa, drinking tea.

My sister and I berated him for not bringing his gun with him, so we could shoot annoying tourists.

I wanted to ask him if he’d shot anyone, but I didn’t. Well, it’s only in Agatha Christie that one discusses killing over a nice cup of tea.

Mad hatters

2007-08-06T21:57:00.000+01:00

When I was kid, we wore velvet riding hats with elasticated straps. Usually, we shoved these straps over the peak and out of the way. We only took them down when we went hunting. I fell of frequently; luckily, the only lasting damage was to my pride.

Those were the days when elderly ladies riding side saddle to hounds were still a common sight. Wearing top hats and netted veils over their faces, they would jump five-bar gates with serene dignity. Portly, Christmas card men also sported top hats and occasionally, you would still see someone in a bowler. Oh, how I coveted a bowler…

Then along came Esther Rantzen with her crusade for safer riding hats. Things were never the same again. I remember my best friend’s mum buying her a jockey skull. She wore it without a silk. I thought it looked ugly and swore I’d never have one. I do though: it has a purple velvet cover. I also have a lightweight, vented suede-covered hat and a ‘posh’ navy velvet hat that comes out for best.

I remember, too, when back protectors first appeared. We thought they’d never catch on. Those of us who grew up without them find them awkward and wear them infrequently, but today’s little girls feel undressed without them. Health and safety has created a different world. We used to clamber on to the riding school ponies bareback and hatless and jog down the road to the field. If things got dodgy, you clung on to the mane and closed your eyes.

Legally, you don’t actually have to wear a riding hat after the age of 14. I think you’re a nutter if you don’t, though. The last time I got on a horse without a hat, I was bucked off, twice, in the space of two minutes. Luckily, I landed on my feet both times. The previous time I rode without a hat, I was also bucked off; I bashed my head on a stone and was seeing stars for a few minutes. You’d think I’d learn.

But it’s all down to personal choice. I have a friend who cracked two vertebrae in her back in a fall and she still doesn’t wear a back protector. I used to work with someone who had a similar accident and now won’t go near a horse unless she has her full body armour on. You pays your money and takes your choice.

What the Grey Mare did today

2007-08-04T19:49:00.001+01:00

Little luxuries

2007-08-02T21:10:00.001+01:00

My shower is on strike. Apparently it’s just too big and powerful for the fuse box and it won’t work again until a new one is installed. As I’ve said before, I am a bath person; but I have a lot of hair and I like to rinse the conditioner off with the shower.

Instead, I am pouring beakerfuls of water over my hair to rinse it. It puts me in mind of my teenage years before we had a shower fitted. I must’ve been about 14 or 15. We had central heating installed around the same time: the radiators were an utter luxury. They meant the end of freezing mornings dressing with the airing cupboard door open, socks and knickers warming on the tank. It was also the finish of the feathers and fronds left by Jack Frost’s fingers on the windowpane; of warm, white breath blowing a window within the window to see if it had snowed overnight.

Until last year, I spent almost five years in a house with an open fire and no central heating. I coped fine with two oil filled radiators that plugged into the electricity socket. My current home has storage heaters but I am too mean to switch them on. Instead, I heat the room I’m in and put on an extra jumper. I think my generation was the last to grow up without central heating as the norm.

Where I live, there is no mainline gas. I remember approaching a gas cooker with trepidation when I first left home. Now I would love a gas cooker. I’d like the option of gas central heating too. But what I really, really want is my shower back. It can be grim up North, you know …

Separated at birth?

2007-07-31T22:26:00.000+01:00

I have finally been to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Am I the only one that thinks Imelda Staunton did a damn fine impression of Maggie Thatcher as the toad-like Dolores Umbridge? Helena Bonham Carter was in fine form as the evil Bellatrix Lestrange but I wish the director had told Emma Watson (Hermione) that constant deep breathing and eyebrows with a life of their own do not a convincing performance make.

The other thing that grated was the amount of munching and slurping going on. Harry Potter films are long – yet the sense of being at a midnight feast persisted throughout. Has the nanny state so shamed the UK’s junk food eaters that they now only dare indulge under cover of darkness at the cinema?

Perhaps the eating was a desperate ploy by parents trying to keep their children quiet. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. After the first half hour, the small people because restless and talkative. There were children there who were far to young to be able to follow the plot and were patently lost.

However, I enjoyed the film and enjoyed the trailer for the first of the His Dark Materials films, which will be out later in the year. Though why Northern Lights has been renamed the Golden Compass I do not know. I just hope they haven’t messed about too much with the story.

Dear tourists …

2007-07-29T18:47:00.000+01:00

Do you leave your brains at home when you go on holiday? That’s the only explanation I can offer for the idiocy I have witnessed from tourists this weekend. Either that, or those I have encountered are just imbeciles.

I have ridden on the beach twice this weekend. It has been windy on both days and people have decided it would be marvellous fun to fly kites. Fine; just don’t swoop them down so they frighten the horses, and don’t stand in the middle of the beach so I don’t know which side you’ll chose when you bring them horse-scaringly down to earth. In addition, if you have a yappy, rat-like terrier that enjoys chasing things, keep it on a lead when there are horses cantering by. I don’t enjoy being chased.

I also would advise fathers with toddlers to look where they are going and not stare at the sand when they decide to walk up the beach from the sea. Then you will avoid being ploughed into said sand by a galloping horse. That’s what nearly happened to one poor dear today. He awoke from a dream when I yelled: “Watch out!” as he ambled across my path. There is no way I, or the two riders behind me, would’ve been able to stop in time.

Climbing down the main access route to the beach through the dunes, must, it would seem, be arduous work. I can come up with no other explanation why a family would set up their seats, yellow inflatable boat and child’s buggy across the main thoroughfare like an Everest expedition’s base camp. Such behaviour is tantamount to sitting down in the middle of the pavement. And don’t look at me like I’m an idiot when I ask you to move it. It’s not me that’s blocking the only horse-friendly route off the beach.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am no fan of caravans. My hatred is ratcheted up another notch when caravette drivers with white hair and indecipherable gender decide to reverse without bothering to look what’s behind them. I offer no apology for going into full shouting, arm-waving Basil Fawlty mode when they narrowly avoid hitting a pony.

And it’s only the second weekend of the holidays …

Fame, fame, fatal fame...

2007-07-27T21:01:00.001+01:00

When I was small, I wanted to be famous. I used to think everybody did. Now I can imagine no worse fate than having a recognisable face. Of course, it’s not just your face they’re interested in: it’s your cellulite, your skinniness, your wrinkles and your spots. Each blemish magnified and laid bare for criticism. They reckon you’re fair game.

To my chagrin, I must confess to surfing the Daily Mail’s website while I have my lunch. Every few weeks, someone else is ‘It’. At the moment, it’s Amy Winehouse. Amy, apparently, is too thin, and her lifestyle is taking its toll on her looks. Before her, it was Kate Moss. Photographs of 30-something Kate are compared to Kate when she was a teenager. Goodness, can you see the difference? Kate’s lifestyle is apparently taking its toll on her looks. For a while, it was Sienna Miller. How dare Sienna, the paper intimates, dare to be blonde, good looking, and managing to survive without Jude Law? I think the Daily Mail should just be done with it, and call itself the Daily Misogynist.

In my radio days, I had two pseudo-stalkers. The most recent called himself my “biggest fan”, and would telephone the newsroom when I was reading late night and weekend bulletins. Where, he would ask, could he see me perform? Surely I acted as well? It would be a shame not to, he said, with a voice like mine. A few years earlier, at a different radio station, I would receive frilly cards riddled with bad spelling from an ‘admirer’. He would call reception and ask to speak to me. I always refused. Then, I think (I can’t be sure), I met him while ordering drinks at a bar. A surprisingly normal looking person asked me where I was from. “The North East,” I replied. “So is M&M on the radio,” he said. “You sound like her. She’s from Newcastle, you know. Do you know her?” I quickly made my excuses and fled.

I was uncomfortable, although not unduly worried by these experiences. But imagine that magnified by a million and happening every day. When I am a famous author, I shall have a pen name. I shall invent a history for the book jacket. At book signings, I shall wear a black wig, huge black sunglasses and scarlet lipstick. No one will ever know it’s me.

Show business

2007-07-24T20:01:00.001+01:00

The letters have gone out: I am a wanted woman. I haven’t received mine (it will be at my old address and I’m not going around to retrieve it) but my friend has. My name is on her letter too. But we have both agreed to stand firm this year: the local agricultural show must go on without us.

When I agreed to steward for the pony classes, I thought it would be a fun thing to do. I didn’t realise I was signing away my August Bank Holiday ad infinitum. That, however, has been the case. I’m actually quite scared to say: “No, sorry, no can do.” I plan to duck and dive a bit instead…

Showing classes, or rather the people who show their horses, have rather a reputation for competitiveness. Even – or should I say, especially - the tiny tots on the lead-rein: the determined mothers dressed in tweed matching their adored little one’s jacket, the toning ribbons in the child’s hair (it’s usually a girl) and the pretty Welsh pony and its tack polished to within an inch of their lives. “You’re on the wrong diagonal!” I heard an anguished father hiss at his daughter as they trotted passed. When I was that size, I had no idea what a diagonal was.

Then there are the Arab owners. There are two types of people who buy Arabs: the jolly hockey sticks endurance types and those with a desire to show their exceptional equine in-hand. The in-hand Arabs arrive, their dished faces adorned with traditional rolled leather Arabian bridles, their heads held high and their pixie-like ears pricked to attention. They are usually accompanied by the most unhorsy horsy people you would expect to see in a show ring. If it wasn’t for the leather cane carried under the arm, the flat shoes for running, and of course, the horse, you could be forgiven if you thought they were supposed to be somewhere else.

They appear perfectly lovely, hair piled high, immaculately dressed and made up – until something goes wrong. Like when they’re late and the class has started – and finished - without them. Then they’re not so sweet. As they argue with the judge, you think: “You’d have made it if you hadn’t spent so much time in front of the mirror.” But you don’t say anything.

You don’t know whether to speak up, either, when the judge bends down to examine a pony’s hooves .. . and leaves her tweed skirt around her ankles. You bite your lip to stop yourself laughing, then wonder if you should dash to her aid. The competitor standing nearby prods you. “Steward! Don’t you think you should be helping your judge?” As you traipse across the field, you hope she’ll notice before you get there. She doesn’t, but fortunately she has a sense of humour.

As you leave after the last class, you cringe as you hear her tell the reporter from the local paper: “You’ll never guess what just happened to me …”

School's out

2007-07-23T20:03:00.001+01:00

At this time of year, I wish I were a primary school teacher. How I would adore six weeks free from the daily grind … then I remember that I’m not particularly fond of children (I wish some of my teachers had had the decency to consider that fact when choosing their careers) and that actually, primary school teachers work damn hard. Probably.

In truth, I haven’t had the freedom of a six-week stretch of summer holidays since I was 13. The holidays between leaving middle school and going up to the scary high school were bookended by a week at an aunt’s and a week with a friend at her grandparents’. In the middle was the heaven of other people’s horses, sea and sand; days of fresh-air tiredness, of appetites sharpened by salty air and satisfied by guilt-free fish and chips.

After that, my summer holidays were spent working. I worked in a green grocer’s, where I learned to count the correct change into people’s hands; I worked in shop, where I learned it was politic to wait until the foul-smelling person left before blasting the air freshener; I worked in a chippy, where I learned to tell the difference between haddock and cod; I worked in an hotel, where I learned chefs enjoy a pint and making a mess, but are far too important to clear up after themselves.

Overall, I learned that, like children, I’m not overly keen on tourists and the service industry was not for me. I learned that if wanted something more out of life, I’d better get me an education. Then one day, pallid, indoor teenagers may be waiting on me as I enjoyed my moment in the sun.

Back in a bit ...

2007-07-21T10:31:00.001+01:00

The boys of summer

2007-07-19T20:40:00.000+01:00

The Boys’ Brigade has arrived. Each year, the appearance of rows of old-fashioned green and white tents and the accompanying larger communal marquees encamped in a field along the coast road seems to sound the starting gun for summer. The boys are different every year but the pattern of their two-week visit doesn’t change: football on the school field, marching with trumpets and drums down the main street on Sunday, and gaggles of teenage girls tracking their movements in the hope of bagging themselves a Scottish summer love.

That’s one of the beauties of growing up in a coastal village that gathers more that its fair share of tourists: the boys of summer. Girls, eagerly awaiting the fresh talent that will arrive in holiday cottages and bed and breakfasts, head off to summer jobs in cafes and shops beneath extra coats of mascara and lip-gloss. Some blush when they have to serve the object of their desire, others flirt brazenly. Later, they meet up in the amusement arcades, then walk hand-in-hand along the beach.

I never had a fancy for a Boys’ Brigader but I shared the anticipation of romance as the school year died and the six-week holiday beckoned. It is more than half a lifetime ago, but one fortnight-long affair remains vivid. I wore pink eyeshadow and a yellow Frankie Says Relax T-shirt. He cut a deep hole into the arm of a wooden bench with a penknife while he waited for me one evening. For years, I would remember him and smile when I walked by that seat. He wrote me a ‘I really do like you’ note on a postcard and passed it surreptitiously across the counter of the shop where I worked. When he returned home to Kent, we wrote and he would ring each fortnight on a Friday. My mum thought he was “nice”.

But when you’re 15 and mobile phones haven’t been invented, distances are insurmountable and affairs fizzle out; boys at school suddenly start to grow up and become more interesting. Summer loves are packed into memory boxes, to be taken out occasionally and smiled over, like sepia photographs. Wistfully, you wonder where they are now….

Spin cycle

2007-07-18T19:53:00.000+01:00

“Just imagine,” said a mummy-type colleague today, “what life would have been like with children – and no washing machine.”

”What about mothers before washing machines were invented?” asked another. “What about the Victorians?”

“They had servants,” I said confidently. (When I say things like this, my mum generally gives me an arch look and asks: “Where did you come from?”)

“But what about the poor ones?”

“They would have smelled,” I said. “They didn’t have baths as often as us, they didn’t wash their clothes as often – and they didn’t have deodorant.”

Smelling bad must have been a hazard of Victorian life. You look at the heavy fabrics they wore and imagine how hot they became. Imagine riding a horse or playing tennis in a crinoline – and a corset. No wonder they were always fainting: probably when someone lifted their arm above shoulder level.

Although they had rudimentary washing machines, washday was only a weekly occurrence. Ditto bath time. No wonder women didn’t start wearing knickers until relatively recently.

Life without a washing machine or life without deodorant: which do you reckon would be worst?

Happiness

2007-07-16T20:07:00.000+01:00

I didn’t think I was particularly unhappy. OK, so I don’t bound around with Labrador-like enthusiasm all day, but nor do I spend my free time in darkened rooms listening to Leonard Cohen.

The feel-good emotion appeared today in many forms: the yellow lilies I bought for my mum; the cats’ purred greetings when I arrived home; the golden-bodied, gauzy-winged dragonfly; the touch of the Grey Mare’s velvet muzzle and smell of her silken neck; the officer of the law, head back, mouth open, snoozing in his car where the dual carriageway of the A1 funnels into one. He made me laugh out loud: the ultimate sleeping policeman.

Admittedly, there were also annoyances: the persistent overnight rain that left pools on the road (dried up now); the person I had arranged to interview who put me off until tomorrow; the fact that god-awful Umbrella song is still No1. Minor irritations really; certainly insufficient to plunge me into a deep depression.

That’s what I thought anyway, at least until I took the Happy Planet Index test. Apparently, I am below the international, UK and female happiness average. I am on a par with people from Burkina Faso (I suppose I might be rather perturbed if I lived in a place where I couldn’t pronounce the capital city). My life expectancy is also below average. Is it because I live alone, in a shock, horror, terraced house? Perhaps I should have marked extra boxes for the cats.

Then I looked below the headlines and realised something didn’t quite add up. The results advised me to stop smoking (I’d ticked the box saying I was an ex-smoker) and take more exercise – I’d marked the ‘I take exercise five to seven times’ a week option, the maximum in the survey (horses don’t look after themselves, you know).

It would seem the little person sitting in cyberspace marking these surveys wasn’t reading the responses properly: either that or they were trying to turn their predictions of doom and gloom into self-fulfilling prophecies. Perhaps I won’t spend the evening sitting crying on the kitchen floor, after all.

Up, up and away ...

2007-07-14T22:40:00.000+01:00

When I was a child, we mainly holidayed in Scotland. I didn’t actually leave these shores until I was 18 – and then it was by boat. Lift-off didn’t happen until I was in my early 20s and working in a radio newsroom.

I was rather delighted, if a little nervous, therefore when an invitation to join the RAF Falcons parachute display team at the local air show arrived on the editor’s desk and I got the gig. My first experience of flying was in a noisy Hercules, piloted by chaps who spoke evah so naicely. The display team members were lean but not mean, and harnessed we observers to the side when they dropped the plane’s immense back door and leapt out into the wild blue yonder. I was given a headset and went to the flight deck (not cockpit) to watch them, before the plane climbed then dived at a frightening rate of knots to swoop along the coastline and elicit gasps of awe from the crowd on the ground. My gasps, however, were of agony: I had never encountered ear popping before. The professionals handed out tiny cans of pop and boiled sweets. Sipping and sucking are supposed to alleviate the pain.

I had another interesting airborne experience at another radio station. As I finished an early shift, the engineer asked if I fancied flying to Bristol with him to collect some equipment. As he was a former RAF officer whose nickname was Wing Commander, I had no qualms climbing into the two-seater plane. Fingers of fear, however, began to prod my intestines when he sat with a book on his knee checking the instruments before we took off. I didn’t think much of his chances of getting us up – and more importantly down – if he had to consult a manual. Later I discovered that he hadn’t been a pilot in his previous life, but an RAF engineer.

My best flight, however, was in a balloon. There is something truly magical about floating along in a big wicker basket with the roar of the burners above you and people enjoying the sunlit evening below. Voices and laughter drifted up through the warm air like a lullaby; children shouted and waved; feeling like Phileas Fogg, I waved regally back. This was one experience that truly deserves the accolade of awesome. I returned to earth with a bump though: the balloon landed, the basket tipped over and the pilot’s binoculars smacked me smartly on the back of the head.

Rockin'

2007-07-13T21:19:00.000+01:00

I have secretly been coveting one of these pink badges for some time; I have felt like I did at primary school when everyone had superballs and I had to wait until the weekend for mum to get me one. A week is a long time when you're seven.

Now, however, I am replete: the lovely Keir Royale, with whom I share a background in broadcasting and an appreciation of David Bowie, has made me very happy by bestowing a Rockin' Blogger award upon me.

I am passing the honour on to Rilly Super and Gill - because they both give me the giggles.

A load of bull

2007-07-12T19:59:00.000+01:00

The bull in a field near my house lives like a sultan, surrounded by his many wives and children. He is immense: his enormous, disproportionate neck dwarfs his not inconsiderable back end, where the business side of things dangles dangerously between his legs. He has a chestnut coat stippled with star-shaped dapples and nostrils pierced by a huge brass-coloured ring. Despite the trappings of his position, I believe he is a benevolent despot; the atmosphere in his kingdom is invariably relaxed.

Last year, some of the girls fed him handfuls of grass over the gate. Surrounded by curious calves, he took the offerings and chewed with a look of contemplation. Later, he chivvied his children along, curling his lip like a horse when they stopped to pee. I think he is probably a good and patient father.

In the winter, he lives in a big hemmel with another similar coloured bull. I see them from the road when the Grey Mare and I pass their farm. He and his companion chew contentedly, whiling away the hours like a couple of old blokes sitting on a park bench.

I think bulls, have on the whole, an undeserved reputation. But I can’t help feeling ever so slightly wary. My reaction is coloured by being chased by one when I was very small, and from a passage in my favourite pony book, Ruby Ferguson’s Rosettes for Jill. Our heroine and her pony Rapide find themselves in a field with an angry bull; the only way out is to jump a giant hedge. A bull, Jill informs her readers, may ignore someone on foot but will generally chase a horse. I have once ridden through a field containing a bull. He didn’t bat an eyelid.

The chestnut chap’s disposition is similar. When I climbed the gate to cut across his field the other night, his children scattered; slowly, he raised his huge head and observed the stranger in his midst, before returning to the more important task of grazing. Still, I remained close to the fence. Just in case.

Something old

2007-07-11T21:02:00.000+01:00

I am spying signs for summers fayres and fetes everywhere at the moment. They spell homemade cakes, fudge and jam – and jumble. I love jumble: rooting through other people’s cast-offs is great fun. I am not proud when it comes to second hand items. Perhaps I should say pre-owned, pre-loved or even vintage, because somewhere along the way, the act of buying someone else’s clobber received an image makeover and new price tags to match.

As teenagers, a friend and I would buy men’s jackets, jumpers, shirts and waistcoats from the second hand shop in the village. I was enthralled by the slightly musty smell, the knowledge I was wearing something that had a history and the fact it was different to the identikit clothes in the mainstream shops. I was also pleased with the prices: babysitting money didn’t go far when you had a pony to keep as well.

When I went to university, second hand student chic was everywhere. In those days, the word vintage wasn’t yet being bandied about and you could still buy 1950s and 60s clothing for affordable prices. There were clothes stalls every week at the students’ union and little niche shops in town selling old Levi’s 501s, waistcoats, suede jackets and other wonderful stuff. I bought a loud printed 50s skirt with a starched underskirt and a dinner jacket, which still had a first class London rail ticket in the pocket. They went well with my platinum bleached hair, scarlet lipstick and elbow length white gloves.

Over the years I have picked up some marvellous things: I have a 1960s butter-soft brown suede jacket that cost all of £3, a three-quarter length fake fur coat of around the same age and an astrakhan swing coat that makes me feel very Jackie O. I have found Jaeger jumpers for a couple of quid and I can’t remember the last time I bought a new pair of jeans. I can’t pass a charity shop without going in.

The T-shirt, cardigan and shoes I wore to work today were second hand; only my skirt and underwear were new. Even I draw the line at other people’s knickers.

Of wrinkles, rabbits and roadshows

2007-07-09T19:42:00.001+01:00

'Watch the mirror, count the lines,
The battle scars of all the good times'

So sang Soft Cell. It’s Marc Almond’s birthday today, too; I wonder if he feels old? I certainly do after a weekend of carousing: out for a meal on Friday, out to make the repeated acquaintance of Mr Gordon’s and Mr Bombay Sapphire on Saturday, then rounded off with a barbeque (of course it rained) on Sunday.

I need a weekend off to get over my weekend. I just can’t take the pace anymore. I don’t know how I ever did. At one point, going out three nights in a row would have signified a good time; now it signifies that a week of early nights is in order if I want to catch up on my beauty sleep and forestall any more on those insidious wrinkles.

The most bizarre thing about my weekend, however, was the taxi ride home on Saturday night. We climbed into a car with an avowed killer: our driver’s day job was in vermin control. He claimed to own more than 35 ferrets. Apparently they don’t smell if you clean them out every morning.

I spend much of my time avoiding rabbits when I’m driving. The taxi driver, however, spent most of the time trying not to avoid them. I postulated that knocking them down on purpose wasn’t really very fair. On the contrary, he responded, he was doing them a favour: the ones he knocked down had myxomatosis. How he could tell in the dark, while driving, I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t: maybe I should eat more carrots instead of giving them all to the Grey Mare, or it could be that my age is beginning to tell on my eyesight.

The Antiques Roadshow is in Alnwick tomorrow. Perhaps I should take myself along …

The lore of the road

2007-07-05T21:22:00.001+01:00

My driving instructor was a strange little chap: we couldn’t start my lesson until The Archers had finished (in case it affected my concentration); he could smoke and I couldn’t (ditto). “You drive like you live your life,” he told me once. I took it as a compliment.

But I remember him most for introducing me to the rudiments of the lore of the road. “Beware of Volvo drivers,” he cautioned, “they think they own the road.” The father of my boyfriend of the time drove a Volvo and perfectly satisfied the stereotype. Saab drivers were to be given a wide berth too: “Their cars are built like tanks so they’re not too bothered if they hit you.” I quickly learnt that BMW drivers (especially those in black cars) were part of the same clique.

Today, Audi drivers appear to have adopted the mantle. There seem to be more Audis on the road: they always used to be aspirational motors that were confined to the affluent. Either Audis have come down in price or people are buying cars out of their class. They certainly don’t show many manners. They think nothing of pulling out in front or cutting you up. For such expensive cars, I find it quite curious that most don’t have indicators fitted as standard.

In that respect, they are almost on a par with the kings of the indicator avoiders – the boy racers. It seems to be a badge of honour – along with fat exhausts that look like empty baked bean tins and a mind-numbing bass beat that they nod to like the Churchill dog – to turn off or pull out without signalling their intention to other people on the road.

I spend two hours commuting, five days a week. I have developed a very thick skin and can string together whole lists of expletives in a most artistic manner. Audi and BMW drivers, I have found, are especially good at tailgating you at 80mph. I don’t move. If they flash their lights, my foot involuntary removes itself from the accelerator. I am also quite handy at gesticulating and blasting the horn. “Once you’ve found the horn,” says one of my colleagues, “you never forget where it is.” She’s so right.

Hare, there and everywhere

2007-07-03T21:49:00.000+01:00

“They’re the size of foxes,” said my friend as we sat on our horses watching a pair of hares gallop away across the field. Not only are they large in size, this year’s crop of hares are large in number. They appear to have been breeding, ahem, like rabbits…

Hares are the stuff of folklore and fable. They are touched by magic. People used to believe witches transformed themselves into hares to escape capture. In Precious Bane, Prue Sarn’s mother believes her daughter was born with a harelip because one ran in front of her while she was pregnant. At sea, fishermen consider the word ‘hare’ unlucky. In The Wicker Man, the grave of the supposedly missing Rowan is occupied by a hare …

They are shy and secretive creatures. Like partridges, they wait until the last possible moment to flee - which can lead to some very hairy moments when they suddenly bolt from beneath your cantering horse’s hooves. Once the Grey Mare and I were idling along, neither of us with our minds in the here and now, when I was transfixed by a large, unusual stone. Suddenly, it shot off across the field, rudely jolting us both out of our reverie.

Elegant, enigmatic and supreme athletes, hares are amazing to watch. They are speed and grace, bodies designed to sprint. Apparently, you can now buy pet hares to keep in a hutch. I find that rather objectionable: it would be like locking Raphael Nadal in a broom cupboard.

Music for the Millennium

2007-07-02T21:21:00.000+01:00

I am not a member of the iPod generation. I like my music to be more touchable and tangible; I like CDs, I like cassettes, I like vinyl. I have music in abundance in all of these mediums.

The fact that ‘virtual’ music on a computer can just disappear when the mood takes it was graphically illustrated to me when my computer died and had to be resurrected a few months ago. But it’s more than that: I like to look at album sleeves, read the notes and see the case sitting on the shelf along with its compatriots. I like the smell of vinyl records. I like the car compilation tapes I have made over the years.

I bought three albums on eBay over the weekend for miniscule amounts to replace some rather ropey tapes that are near the end of their useful lives and would probably – in their wisdom – allow themselves to be eaten by the stereo. But the problem with Internet shopping is that you don’t receive immediate gratification. I can understand why downloading tunes appeals in this context, but I want CDs with cases.

What we need is someone clever to invent a transforming machine, where the seller could load the item in at their end, and send it through the ether to the recipient’s machine. Something like the Flue Powder or Portkeys utilised by Harry Potter. If I’m not mistaken, the Americans have secretly been able to do something of this sort for decades ….

A night at the races

2007-07-01T20:25:00.000+01:00

I returned from Friday’s night at the races with a cold, blisters on my feet and a lighter purse. The cold and blisters were, I believe, caused by my pursuit of glamour despite the intemperate weather. The lighter purse was due to a number of factors, including gin, Pimm’s and having to buy my own ticket.

I don’t normally pay to go racing on the night before the Northumberland Plate – my mate usually provides me with free tickets. Somewhere along the line, we managed to cross our wires and he got me tickets for Plate Day itself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to go racing two days in a row – especially with jugs of Pimm’s (or should I say jugs of fruit and ice with a trickle of Pimm’s) costing £15 a shot. One of my friends was determined to drink champagne because she felt her usual pint wouldn’t complement her dress; she saw the price of the champers and stuck to lager.

Jump racing is my sport of choice, so each time I go to a flat meeting, I am bowled over by the Munchkin-esque stature of the jockeys. I am not terribly tall and I did have 3.5in heels on, but these guys barely reached my shoulder. I wonder how many of them are the equivalent of a female size zero and how many eating disorders are hidden under the brightly coloured silks? I wonder if the thrill of galloping home ahead of the opposition makes it worth missing your dinner. I contemplated this as I paid for my Indian takeaway on the way home.

Winners

2007-06-28T19:36:00.000+01:00

So, that’s Tim Henman out of Wimbledon. As predicted, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. As the bright young hope that is Andy Murray is injured, we have been left with no British players in either the men’s or the ladies’ singles. It’s just like the bleak days of the 1980s (but thankfully without Margaret Thatcher), when a few has-beens who didn’t exactly set the court alight when they were younger managed to scrape the odd victory.

There was always something slightly distasteful in those days about out and out patriotism; probably because those that advocated it were rather distasteful themselves. The union flag had dodgy connotations: bovver boys with snarling, hate-filled faces. Lots of us Generation Xers adopted a cynical attitude in reaction. Cheering people just because they came from the same country as you wasn’t right-on.

Somewhere in the ‘90s, things changed. I remember Italia 90, Gazza crying, and feeling rather emotional myself, albeit an emotion fuelled by a few pints of Stella Artois. It wasn't just football: suddenly, we had tennis players who won matches and looked as if, on a good day and with a strong following wind, they might actually go all the way. Suddenly, it was all right to be vocal in support of British sport. It was OK to want success. And once they became successful, you didn’t have to adopt the Daily Mail’s sneering attitude of shooting people down.

One of my colleagues still has a jaded, cynical view. Why, he wondered today, did Henman bother fighting to a fifth set, when we all knew he was going to lose? Surely it would’ve been better if he’d done the decent thing and bowed out after three? I said that we’d still have someone in the competition if Andy Murray had been fit. My colleague said: “Maybe, but he wouldn’t be in for long. He’d still lose.”

“I can imagine what you’d have been like in the Second World War,” I said. “’That Churchill, I don’t know why he bothers. He’ll just lose in the end’.”

It’s like saying: “Why bother living, trying, striving – because ultimately, we’ll all die.” I may have a strong streak of cynicism running down my spine and I can be as jaded as the best of them, but I don’t do nihilism. We have to reach for our moments of joy in life; we have to believe that sometimes, dreams do come true.

The sting

2007-06-27T21:20:00.000+01:00

It would appear that I have squatters. There is a crack in the eaves where I have spied wasps hovering then disappearing. I don’t like the thought of wasps in my roof. I don’t like the thought of wasps full stop. They will have to be dealt with.

I don’t like the concept of killing anything, least of all suffocating a whole town of creatures with poisonous gas. I am not Saddam Hussein. However, I will make an exception when it comes to wasps. Wasps are evil.

I had no problem with them until the age of 19 when I was stung for the first time. I had been swimming in a water-filled quarry in the Malvern Hills and was sitting eating a Nutella sandwich. A wasp decided it wanted some of my lunch and refused to go away. I ran off with my sandwich; it chased me and stung me on my bare back below my shoulder blade. It felt as though someone had dropped the end of a lit cigarette on my defenceless flesh.

That was when I declared war on wasps. A traveller I picked strawberries with summed them up perfectly: “Wasps are the skinheads of the insect nation; they have no purpose other than going round beating people up.”

Bees are a totally different proposition. Fundamentally, unlike a wasp that can – and will - jab away willy-nilly, a bee has to have the mentality of a suicide bomber to sting you. Besides, how can something that creates a substance as luscious as honey mean any harm? There are numerous deep orange-bottomed bumble bees feasting on the flowering clover in the Grey Mare’s field at the moment. Many a time I have fished bumblers out of the water trough on sticks, and left them to dry on the fencepost.

I wouldn’t do that for a wasp. I’d hold it under.

Anyone for tennis?

2007-06-25T21:04:00.000+01:00

It may be autumnal outside, but generally, when I look back from the vantage point of late August to assess my summer, this is where the starting gun goes off. We’ve just had Royal Ascot and Glastonbury, the Hoppings have arrived in Newcastle, it’s Plate Day on Saturday – and Wimbledon has started.

I am a big tennis fan. I am watching Tim Henman battling against Carlos Moya as I type. I like to think if the gods of tallness had been a bit more generous than 5 ft 3in and a bit, and I hadn’t grown so fond of Gordon’s and Silk Cut, it could’ve been me out there at SW19. I played a lot as a child – whacking tennis balls with a passion against the garage door when I couldn’t find a partner. The game brings out my competitive streak – and also on occasion, my temper. I can quite understand where John McEnroe was coming from.

I couldn’t at the time. I admire McEnroe immensely now, and enjoy his punditry, but as a child I loathed him – probably because he was of the same era as Bjorn Borg, whom I adored. It was the same with Martina Navratilova - I was always a Chris Evert fan and couldn’t appreciate Martina’s mastery of the game when she was at the height of her powers. I am old enough to remember Virginia Wade’s victory in 1977 – I rushed home from school to see who had won the semi-final between Virginia and my idol Chris Evert. “Oh no,” I said, when I heard Chrissie had gone out. But when I realised Virginia was one of us, I cheered up.

My favourite players have always been those with charisma and artistry, rather than those with brute strength. I have never been particularly a fan of Henman – his passion doesn’t seem real and he always seems to manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He may not have been a ‘proper Brit’, but I much preferred Greg Rusedski. However, my favourite was always Andre Agassi – I screamed him to victory both times he won the men’s singles.

Roger Federer may be a sublime tennis player – but like Pete Sampras (is it a man, is it a monkey?) – he doesn’t possess that charisma and indefinable magic that does it for me. Where’s Goran Ivanisevic when you need him?

The enigma of blogging

2007-06-23T23:00:00.000+01:00

It’s the weekend, therefore I must’ve been tagged (again).

This time, it’s courtesy of darling Chippy, who is getting his own back after I nabbed him last weekend.

I thought this blogging lark allowed one to be enigmatic. However, I feel my secrets are being chipped away, bit by bit…

This week’s eight random facts are:

1. I was born on the same day that Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was buried.

2. Something in the Air, by Thunderclap Newman, was No1.

3. I was expelled from play school. My mother was mortified.
4. The first single I bought was The Tide is High, by Blondie.
5. My favourite smell is the Grey Mare’s neck in summer.
6. I once told Rolf Harris to f*** off over the phone. I thought he was a colleague messing around. Fortunately, Mr Harris rang back and saw the funny side.

7. My first toe is longer than my big toe. Apparently that means I am of Viking stock.

8. I refuse to do another tag until at least September.

Glastonbury memories

2007-06-21T22:14:00.000+01:00

It’s 15 years since I went to the Glastonbury Festival. Typing that sentence makes me feel rather old. The sands of time may be running out on my 30s, but give me a ticket, and I’d be there again like a shot.

Going to Glastonbury these days involves jumping through lots of hoops and a certain amount of luck. When I went with three friends from the radio station where I worked, Operation Get Glastonbury Tickets was planned with similar military precision. The presenter targeted the record companies, and I, as the journalist, was set upon Greenpeace, which was that year’s Glastonbury chosen charity. Blagging is not my strong suit; I am not very good at asking people to give me valuable things for nothing. Luckily, I was able to do my blag via letter (I am much more persuasive in writing) and eventually four wristbands arrived in the post. But they weren’t just any wristbands: they were blue backstage wristbands.

My Glastonbury is a kaleidoscope of memories. Poppies in County Durham cornfields as we headed south to London; the coach from the capital with cockney lads in the back seat smoking strong spliffs (nowadays they wouldn’t even get away with a cigarette); dragging bags; pitching tents; the beautiful longhaired man with a faraway look in his eye that I bought love beads from; people with no tickets being cheered as they scaled the wire fence and melted into the crowds; eating tempura and drinking warm mulled wine as the long hot, hot, hot June days drifted into the cool of evening. In those pre-mobile phone days, we were inhabitants of another, bedazzling country that was cut off from the rest of the world. After dark, campfires glowed around the tented city and the beat of drums was an unconscious backdrop; Henry V’s troops encamped on a hill on the eve of Agincourt.

Backstage, too, was another world. There were showers, proper loos – not stinking pits dug in the ground – and there were rock stars. In a Glastonbury that was still more crusty than corporate, we repeatedly bumped into The Levellers, their partners and their dreadlocked children. Rather than the flashy tour buses parked around them, they inhabited a beaten up old van. They sat on the roof and banged their army-booted feet in time with the music.

It was the year of Shakespears Sister's massive hit with Stay. Marcella Detroit had the voice of an angel, while the former Bananarama babe Siobhan Fahey looked brittle, demanded champagne and hid in the corner of the field with a friend because she didn’t want her stage make-up done. Boys threw boxer shorts at Tom Jones. Peter Gabriel wore shorts and disappointed my friend who had a long-running crush on him. “Oh,” she said sadly, “he’s got old man’s knees.” Van Morrison looked sour and refused to let anyone take his photograph.

My moment of awe came when I spotted Lou Reed. I knew if I didn’t speak to him, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Dressed in a khaki jacket, jeans and carrying a bottle of water under his arm, he didn’t look particularly dangerous. But his drawl was just how I imagined. He fleetingly touched my arm when he took the pen to sign his autograph. I didn’t wash it for the rest of the weekend. “Can I have an autograph for my boyfriend, too?” I asked, “Then he’ll love me for ever.” Lou obliged; my boyfriend, alas, did not.

When in Rome

2007-06-20T20:09:00.000+01:00

The novels of Daphne du Maurier have long instilled in me a fascination with Cornwall; in idle moments of fantasy, I think how lovely it would be to live there. But I have no connections with Cornwall other than a romantic notion of what it would be like: I have never even been there.

Everywhere I have moved has been for a reason – usually because I have a new job to go to. That’s why I am confused by the sheer numbers of Londoners who are deciding, seemingly on a whim, to decamp – or as they put it, ‘downsize’ - to the rural idyll, often by sticking a pin in a map and thinking “That looks nice”.

One of them is having a good old moan in the Daily Mail today about the countryside and country people. Kate Mulvey, who quit London for the Cotswolds, reckons around 115,000 people are leaving the city for a similar rural idyll every year. But if she’s to be believed, people like her who don’t fit in are “stigmatised and even cast out” by “dowdy” “bigoted” “hectoring and pushy” and “very nosy” country types, who all wear dirndl skirts and Alice bands.

Single, divorced or childless (I prefer the word childfree) women, she claims, were viewed with suspicion as potential husband-stealers and were therefore to be avoided. That’s not something I’ve noticed in my village I have to say; it’s not something that has happened to 30-something, single and childfree me.

According to Kate, conversation stopped when she walked into the pub. “In London, you could walk into a pub half-naked and people would look at you for barely a split second,” she writes. Maybe Londoners are more self-centred and not really interested in other people? Perhaps if Kate and her ilk were less self-obsessed, they would find life in the countryside a little easier.

When I left the country for the first time at the age of 18 to go to university, I realised very quickly that the town was not suddenly going to bend and start doing things my country ways. I was the newcomer; I had to learn the ways of the place I had chosen to move to. I learned that I didn’t leave my door unlocked, that I didn’t walk down the street in at twilight with my Walkman clamped to my head, indeed, that it wasn’t wise to walk home by myself late at night in the dark.

Whenever I have moved to a new job, I have adapted to the culture of that workplace. I have not subverted my character – and God knows, I have a strong character and plenty of opinions which I am wont to voice - but I have not forced ‘my way’ upon people and places that have been doing things ‘their way’ for a lot longer. True, I have not liked everyone I have encountered, but I have always made friends wherever I have gone.

When city people stop thinking that the countryside is an Archers theme park and stop trying to make everyone else behave like displaced Islingtonites, then perhaps they’ll be happier. There is a reason the phrase ‘when in Rome’ has been in common parlance for so long.

But then, if articles like Ms Mulvey’s puts more of them off, perhaps country people will again be able to afford homes in their own villages.

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow ...

2007-06-19T21:59:00.000+01:00

The weather gods may have forgotten that we are supposed to be sizzling amid a globally-warmed June, but at least the hedgerows know their place in the world order. As the Grey Mare and I meander around the quiet back lanes, she snatches surreptitious mouthfuls of frothy cow parsley from the verge and I gaze at the cornucopia of plants jostling for space in the hedges.

At the moment, the hedgerows are at their very best: stuffed with pink dog roses, red and yellow honeysuckle, and the various hues of different green shrubs. One year, I spotted gooseberries; when I returned in the car, I couldn’t find them again. Later, more obvious fruits will appear: a sprinkling of purple brambles, then a scattering of scarlet hips and the occasional half-hidden handful of green crab apples as we move towards autumn.

Our route often takes us over a disused railway line, now choked with long grass and weeds of triffid proportions – all the better to hide the occasional rubbish that fly-tippers think no one will ever notice. There are plenty of things to be seen from horseback that you would never register speeding past in a car. Growing amid the tall trees at the side of the abandoned track is a pear tree that produces a few golden, out-of-reach fruit each year. I often wonder who tossed that pear core from a train all those years ago.

Bathtime

2007-06-16T21:32:00.000+01:00

Four hours in the saddle today has left me with the kind of dull ache in my muscles that only a bath can ease: a deep, hot bath luxuriant with scented bubbles.

I am a bath, rather than a shower, person. For me, a shower is something you do when you’re in a hurry; it’s not something to be savoured. It dates back to my teenage years when our first shower was fitted. Initially, it was a novelty, but when my mum decided that showers were more efficient and should be taken in preference to baths, my contrary gene kicked in. As soon as I left home, I made a point of having a bath every day.

I cannot imagine how people can live in houses that don't have baths. The two summers I spent picking strawberries as a student were hard enough. We only had showers that were erratic and quickly ran out of warm water. My first bath on returning home was like a religious experience.

A bath is about so much more than getting clean. Bathtime is me time. I read in the bath, I drink wine, I contemplate the universe and my toes as they wrinkle and prune. Baths envelop and cosset; showers only slick off the surface.

One Christmas, my mum bought me a decadent bubble bath that looked and poured like molten gold from a square glass jar. It was a little piece of heaven that encapsulates for me what baths are all about. I fantasise about the day when I have my dream bath – a giant Edwardian roll-topped cast iron model with golden-clawed feet.

Showers? You can stick them…

Cross-examined

2007-06-15T21:42:00.000+01:00

I am expecting something of this kind from the powers that be at Blogger, after one of my darling cats stood on the mouse while it hovered over the ‘Flag this Blog for Objectionable Content’ button. Honest guv, I ain’t done nuffin’ wrong …

However, I have received an altogether more interesting cross-examination from my aristocratic friend in Morocco:

What were you doing ten years ago?

On a rainy June evening, much like tonight, I was attending a County Ball in a long black dress with a beaded, mirrored and embroidered bodice. Both the ball – and my dress – were rather fabulous.

What were you doing one year ago?

Sitting on the kitchen floor crying because I’d had to move into a flat I didn’t like.

Five snacks you enjoy

1. Marmite crisps.

2. Black olives.

3. Cherries.

4. Houmous.

5. Thortons Viennese truffles.

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics

I am one of these sad people who is very good at remembering song lyrics, so I will go for the sub-genre of five songs I know the words to and favour when I am drunk:

1. Theme from the Monkees.
2. The Laughing Gnome.
3. The Wizard of Oz.
4. Band of Gold.
5. Mrs Robinson.

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire

1. See my family and friends all right.
2. Open a sanctuary for horses.
3. Buy, train and ride a Grand National runner.
4. Write a novel.
5. Get a Hollywood smile.

Five bad habits

1. Being smug about stopping smoking.

2. Crisps.
3. Untidiness.
4. Sarcasm.
5. Paddington Bear hard stares.

Five things you like doing

1. Riding.
2. Generally messing around with horses.
3. Reading.
4. Listening to music.
5. Drinking G&T with ice and a slice of lime.

Five things you would never wear again

1. Ra-ra skirt.
2. Frilly New Romatic-stylee blouse.
3. Bay City Rollers T-shirt.
4. Pedal pushers.
5. Black PVC trousers.

Five favourite toys

I am not a toy person in the gadget sense of the word:

1. The toy lamb I have had since I was four.
2. The beanie Bagpuss sitting on top of my PC
3. My digital camera.
4. My stereo which still has a record player on it.
5. My Tarot cards.

Now I have to tag a further five bloggers – and this time, I’m going for some of my male visitors:

Chip Dale, Arthur Clewley (where have you gone, Arthur?), Stay at Home Dad, Brom and the Universal Ladyboy, who frequents Gill’s blog.

Mists and mushrooms

2007-06-14T19:33:00.001+01:00

There is something radically wrong with the wheel of the year. It appears some wag has given it a shove and it has skipped summer altogether. Why else have we been shrouded in mist, soaked with continual downpours and chilled with temperatures that forced me out of bed at 1am to seek tea and thermal socks? Circumstantial evidence, perhaps, but it’s the mushrooms that swing it for me.

A glut of mushrooms appears in the Grey Mare’s field towards the end of August each year: buttons, pink and brown-gilled field mushrooms, the occasional flat horser, as big as a steak, and sometimes a puffball, divine sliced and fried in butter. But they’re here already, admittedly in much sparser quantities, yet still sufficient to pick a couple of handfuls each night.

In our pre-packaged world, there is something deeply satisfying about eating something you have found, gathered, prepared and cooked. I risk scratched arms, snagged and sticky-budded sleeves and purple fingers to retrieve glistening brambles from the hedge, so I can savour the custard-coated crumble later. I clamber onto wobbly fences and avoid stout, sharp thorns to reach the best sloes, which will be combined with gin to be sipped in the glow of Christmas and on crisp hunting mornings. Plums and apples are collected from the garden to create chutney to accompany Stilton on thick buttered bread.

No, I have no quarrel with autumn; I just wish we’d had summer first.

Biting the hand that saves you

2007-06-12T21:15:00.000+01:00

I have blogged before about my bizarre affection for that much-maligned bird, the crow. I can now report, first hand, that it is not reciprocated – at least not by the rook whose life I’ve just saved. So pleased was he with my rescue mission, that he decided to bite my finger. It hurt.

The Grey Mare is in the habit of stopping for a drink from the trough in the field next to hers when she’s on her way home after we’ve been out. Tonight, I noticed some black tail feathers sticking out from under the sloped housing that covers the ballcock and separates the two parts of the trough. Thinking it was a dead bird, I pulled the feathers to remove it. However, it was far from dead: it was trapped.

I attempted to free it, but received a bitten finger for my pains. The bird was very resistant to rescue. If I had continued to struggle and it had come out in a flap of wings, the Grey Mare would have had a fit of myriad hues that would have made Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat pale into insignificance and probably put her off troughs for life.

Grey Mare safely back in her own field, I returned with a stick and was able to prise the rook out of his watery trap. He was so drenched, I could see the pink of his skin under his sodden feathers. He shook himself like a Labrador, cawed once, took a few tottering steps, and realising he was back on dry land, strutted off arrogantly. I’m sure if he could speak, he would’ve said: “Am I bovvered?"