I think: I must stop starting these posts with a version of ‘I’m so tired I don’t know what my name is,’ or, ‘My brain has just turned itself off,’ or, ‘I have got nothing for you.’
All these things are true today.
But it is good tired. I galloped through this week like a wild brumby out on the plain. There was so much magnificence - the young people up at HorseBack, who have overcome their fears and their doubts and found confidence and agency; my sweet, funny mares in their field, basking in the sudden shafts of sunlight and eating the good hay; the production of thousands of words; intense and comical and wide-ranging chats with the friends who keep me going. The colours are mighty at the moment and I gaze and gaze at the trees. And the clients leave me, as always, in awe. I work with so many marvellous people, and they teach me as much as I teach them. I heard myself saying, this week, over and over, in tones of delight, ‘You’ve just answered your own question.’
And I am stupid with exhaustion now and I know this means I do need to look at my time management, but it was all in the service of something meaningful. But I’m oddly proud too that even when my fingers could hardly type, I showed up here for you, because you are such lovely readers and so generous and kind, and it means so much that you are out there - a group of strangers whom I shall probably never meet, walking through the days with me, leaving your encouraging comments and buying me cups of coffee. That, truly, is a thing of beauty, and I don’t take it for granted.
PS. The picture is of the young people on the Prince’s Trust course at HorseBack today. I saw them all when they first arrived - filled with trepidation, not knowing anything about horses, not having much confidence in themselves. After twelve weeks, they did a demonstration of such glory that I ran out of adjectives when I tried to write about it. There was a point in the demo, which they were doing in front of all their parents and families, when I found myself bursting into tears. (Not very professional. Luckily I could hide under my hat.) I think it was because they had come so far and they hadn’t given up and they found, in our team, and in the horses, sentient beings who really believed in them, so they could learn to have faith in themselves. I find that impossibly moving.
So there was weeping. But everyone there is used to me by now, and they laughed kindly because they know my funny ways.