It had been simmering away like so many good but unrealized ideas, another scrap of paper on the cluttered pile of things one should do really, one day, but... Everyone has a blog these days, however inane what they have to say is, overachievers, underachievers and everyone in between, so why not me. Why indeed. Being an accomplished procrastinator, the excuses have been plentiful.
But then it happened, today, somewhere on a particularly dull stretch of the M3, at the end of a particularly bad day and while there was nothing worth listening to on either Classic FM or Radio 4, my perennial companions on the road. Like a flash of lightning, the realisation that life just passes you by if you don't pull out the finger and do the things you want to do. Do it! Today, the minute you get home, no ifs no buts, doesn't have to be clever or witty or even have a particular direction of travel: just start the damn blog. Who knows where it might lead.
So you have been warned: do not expect coherence, or an ulterior motive (I have nothing to sell, you'll be relieved to know, no cool magazine/clothing line/single I've just launched, and no products to endorse, because I am distinctly un-famous). Just my thoughts and reminiscences as we go along, for all they are worth.
They will involve horses and riding to a large extent, because they are (in so many ways) an important part of my life, but it will be by no means an exclusively horsey blog. But there will also, I suspect, be much about food, drink, arts, fashion and the general weird abundance of my life. My life with horses and otherwise.
It started badly, the horse part. I was dragged into it rather reluctantly by The Overbearing Horsey Mother (TOHM), who, unable to countenance that her offspring should have any inclinations different from her own, was horrified about my obsession with ballet and determined to stamp it out. As a slight, skinny and unsporty child (aside from dance, I regarded all other forms of exercise with extreme suspicion and dread) and was initially very nervous around horses, though looking back, this was only because in my child's eyes they were part of the same loud, looming and large package as TOHM. It was only through a long, circuitous route of life events, accidents of fate, inexplicable choices and a fascination with what is difficult, that horses have become a source of so much happiness, companionship and wellbeing for me - it really was not the obvious choice from an inauspicious start.
