Of work and time and great, great mares. ~ Murraymakes

As I go up to HorseBack to do my morning stint, I get put up on a horse. If someone says to me ‘Would you want to ride?’ the only answer is yes. The horses need a last go over the obstacle course in the arena before the first participants arrive next week, and it also means that the HorseBack team who are studying for their UK Coaching Certificate can put in some teaching practice. I get to have fun and feel useful and learn more about the Western riding, which is starting to feel less strange to me now.

As I leave, I get a lovely invitation to lunch. Feeling like an idiot, I have to say no, because I am running back to my desk. The three current projects I am juggling must be juggled, and my time management has not yet caught up, even though I swear I am going to improve it every day. Lunch just now is a thing of moments; fuel from the fridge to get through the rest of the day. This is quite odd, for a greedy person like me, but a great relief for Red the Mare since it means I shall make a nice light weight on her back.

I was reading yesterday about someone going on the notorious 5-2 diet. I thought: I have a diet. It’s the No Diet Diet, which is good for me since I refuse to go on any weight-loss regime for political reasons. I think it would make the Pankhursts sad. The suffragettes did not chain themselves to railings so that I could hate my body. On the other hand, if you are riding a kind thoroughbred mare, it’s only polite not to be too heavy on her.

The No-Diet Diet consists of: taking on absurd amounts of work and being useless at managing your time, which means that you have no space to cook great lunches loaded with olive oil as was my old tradition. Now it’s a ham sandwich and a cup of green soup, which makes the banting effortless. I’m far too busy even to notice I am eating less than usual.

I would like though, when kind people say come and have lunch, to be able to smile and say yes, instead of shaking my head with a wild look of panic in my eyes. I am going to work on order and lists. I am going to make timetables and stick to them. I’ll get there in the end.

All focus today is to finish work in time to settle down and watch the mighty Hurricane Fly in the 5.30 at Punchestown. Yesterday, the great mare Quevega made me cry actual tears of joy and admiration with her dancing brilliance. I hope today my lovely Fly will do the same.

A snatch of poetry suddenly comes into my head. It is from George Whyte Melville, a horseman to his boots, who fought with the Turkish cavalry in the Crimea.

‘I have lived my life -I am nearly done –
I have played the game all round;
But I freely admit that the best of my fun
I owe it to horse and hound.
With a hopeful heart and a conscience clear,
I can laugh in your face, Black Care;
Though you're hovering near, there's not room for you here,
On the back of my good grey mare.’

Ah, I think, a hardened old fellow brought almost to sentimentality by the very thought of his darling girl. Mares do that I think, whether you see them on the racecourse, or mooch with them in the field. At Punchestown, Quevega looked so tiny and plain compared to the great shining strapping geldings she was up against. She has no flashy looks; like the equally brave and brilliant Dawn Run, she is a most ordinary bay mare. Nothing to look at, said the commentators. I don’t mean to be rude, one of them added. Yet it is true; she would never catch the eye in the paddock.

But oh, when she was let loose by Ruby Walsh in the glimmering Irish sun, she was a thing of singing beauty. Poetry in motion is a platitude now, rubbed thin with use, but it could have been minted for her.

As I stood with Red later, in the evening light, feeling her dear head resting on my shoulder, scratching her cheek and telling her the story of the race, I thought: there really is something about the ladies. The mares stop my heart like nothing else.

Today’s pictures:

Talking of ladies, here are some splendid ones. The sheep and lambs have come for their annual visit to the south meadow. It is a real sign of spring and makes me smile every time I see them: