Hacking, and hewing
. . . to an assortment of lines. Or not, as the case may be. Mostly not in my case.
Connie was a pill this morning. Saturday mornings are a little complex when you can’t use the outdoor arena–and the outdoor arena is likely to be a no-go area now till spring–because the indoor school is small. Today was due to be (and, in fact, for a wonder, was) a very soft, mild day, the sort of autumn day that could almost be spring.* And Liz was looking for someone to hack out with. Caprice apparently had a serious meltdown a few weeks ago and Liz has been having trouble getting her nerve back.** I’ve been in the situation of having a horse who is a pretty fair nightmare to hack out alone*** so although I’ve come to dislike Caprice I still like Liz, so I agreed.
I think it’s quite possible that Caprice was winding Connie up–or maybe it was I Caprice was winding up and I was transmitting this information to Connie. We were in a big field at one point–a biiiig field–with the little road between Jenny’s town and mine on one side, and a small stand of maize on the other. We were going down pretty much the middle of it, and Liz was saying, oh, sweetheart, I know you don’t like lorries . . . What? What lorry? If the QE II was ploughing down the road† you might have been able to see her. And you’d need a pheasant the size of a helicopter flying out of the maize to cause reasonable alarm.
After most of an hour of this I guess both Connie and I were starting to climb out of our respective skins. But we reached a new low when she took exception to a man, a girl and a dog walking together–who had got off the path, very reasonably, seeing the Ride of the Valkyries passing a little too near and not wishing to be carried off to Valhalla quite yet–and having booted her past this manifestation of the reopening of the Hellmouth in southern Hampshire, we caromed the rest of the way down that last bit of bridleway, shying at large metal field watering tanks, cows–cows! Aaaaaaugh!–geese, farmhouses, mud, goblins and simurghs. We finally got back down to the road again–this is the one-lane lane that runs past Jenny’s farm–and when I asked her to trot past a car that had politely stopped for us to squeeze by, she climbed the bank to get away from it–not, I might add, that this was a climbable bank; we sort of levitated at an angle–and then about fifty feet from the yard turn-off there was a Mini†† that had been parked end on into the hedge with its nose just poking out, Minis not being a great deal bigger than SmartCars, and Connie was not going to go past the awful thing. –You’re almost home, stupid!
And in fact we’re still out there, facing down a grey Mini in the dark. Oh, okay, no we’re not. I whispered in her Connemara ear and told her to get her thoroughbred side under control. Horses, like dogs, are shameless: the fact that I wanted her hide for a hearthrug after all this had no impact whatsoever on her clear noisy assumption that I would give her her carrots and apple as usual after I’d cleaned her up and put her away. They are, after all, her just tribute. Feh. And–of course–I did give them to her. I know all the books that say that reward and punishment must be immediate in the critter world, and that withholding something later because you’re in a snit won’t do anything but confuse and dishearten your critter. I can also hear the sniggers behind my back: heh, heh, heh, heh, don’t anybody let on that we can remember: just stare ‘em in the face and look earnest and a bit dim. . . .
We were out a bit longer than I meant††† which then inevitably meant the rest of the day seemed to be happening about an hour later than planned. I walk hellhounds in the dark often enough during this unfriendly end of the year but on riding days when the morning hurtle is curtailed I try to get them out both in daylight and out into the countryside in the afternoon. Today this meant the second half of the walk was in the dark, pretty serious dark with a heavy cloud cover and no streetlamps. We didn’t get lost–this is a piece of ground I know extremely well, although we kept being not quite where I thought we were on it. Which included discovering rather too late that we were walking up the wrong side of a hedge: one lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction look very much like another lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction. Oh well, I thought. Tractor ruts along the side of a field usually mean there’s space for a tractor to get out at the top (or bottom) of the field when another hedgerow runs in from somewhere and produces a corner. Not this time. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
I thought I’d seen a good gap on the way up that we could probably all fit through, although it would involve me lifting hellhounds over a barbed wire fence and climbing after them. We’ve done it before. Fortunately slightly before I had a hellhound in my arms I realised that the strange shadows I was looking at were a WHACKING GREAT HOLE on the far side of the fence, the sort of hole where Mr and Mrs Badger could hold a patio party. Chastened, then, we went back aaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom and turned up again into the right set of tractor ruts. Darkness was by now absolute, and my Darkness was only tangible by his spring-loaded extending lead taking in and letting out nylon tape, and the occasional dark flicker passing over stubble-field straw or a bit of path that has worn to white chalk,‡ and Chaos, were I of a nervous turn of mind, looked a lot like one of those pale things in an MR James story that paces you as you grope your way through mysterious woodland, and you’re pretty sure it does not have your best interests at heart.
But we got back eventually, in time for me rush off to ring handbells. How do I get into these things?‡‡ Six of us are learning to ring handbell carols so we can ring a Christmas party at a local old folks’ home. I hope we’re all fast learners . . . I’ve never been a fast learner in my life. . . .
* * *
* My Souvenir de la Malmaison is still flowering. Old Blush–AKA Parson’s Monthly Rose for good reason–keeps throwing out flowers and Sombreuil is too, but Malmaison? If the rain doesn’t spoil her^ you get a very spectacular midsummer flush out of her, but in England she does not repeat. The odd flower just to torture you with, but not a proper repeat. I hear rumours, not to say fairy tales, of repeating Souvenirs, and despite that brand-name commercial roses are all little clones, the same rose can be remarkably individual from bush to bush in the same five-mile stretch of Hampshire: I have several roses behaving differently here than they did at the old house. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if I had one of those legendary repeating Souvenirs? Then I could be driven mad by rose-ruining rainfall more extensively.
^ See previous entries. . . .
** Pollyanna as this blog’s presiding spirit or not, I am not the only person at Jenny’s yard who thinks Caprice would make better dog food than he does a riding horse, and he’s getting worse.
*** However my old horse had some counteringbalancing virtues.
† Instead of running into sandbars off Southampton
†† http://damox.com/cars/thumbs/Mini/2005_Mini_Cooper_John_Cooper_Works_kit.jpg only this one was grey
††† Because the footing was so lousy that there wasn’t even much trotting, let alone cantering. Although given the mood Connie was in this was possibly a good thing.
‡ And there were bats. Yaaaay. Bats are endangered.
‡‡ I am a schmuck.
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