Winter weddings: why do people do it? Oh, the fantasy of being a snow-queen bride in a white fur cape, snowflakes twinkling everywhere, and consummating the marriage in the flattering light of a fire.
But the truth is, for all but the starry-eyed, hypothermia-defying bride and groom, winter weddings are an utter bore, not least because they involve missing a Saturday's hunting. You'd have to put on a really good show to beat that, and let's face it, most weddings just can't compete. (Yes, I know, they are the only other occasion where it is socially acceptable to start drinking at 11am, but still.)
Think of the effort of pulling together a day outfit that will be smart and remotely on-trend while at the same time fending off the elements. Unlike most winter pursuits, where the correct attire is season-appropriate, weddings are inherently at odds with the cold. You are faced with a horrid dilemma. Wrap up too warm and you risk entering frump territory, not to mention suffocating in an overheated, crowded room. Keep it light and you will freeze to death in a chilly, damp church for what will feel like the longest 45 minutes of your life. And then carry on freezing outside said church while the lovebirds pose for posterity.
Add to this a long drive in fog or snow, and being holed up indoors with heaps of other people's friends, relatives and howling children, plus the pitfalls of choosing a gift, and you can see why I am not overly enthusiastic about brother-in-law's forthcoming nuptials. It gets worse: they are getting married in Wales, for heaven's sake (cue horizontal rain and certain footwear death in waterlogged ground). And I am trying to do all of the above on a shoestring - whilst not letting standards drop, obvs.- as I am now one of the nation's embarrassingly large number of young and qualified unemployed. And the meet I shall be reluctantly missing is a really cool one, with a barbeque afterwards. Grr doesn't begin to cover it.
The human mating season should be, as is the case for most other species, seasonal, restricted preferably to spring and summer. Is it really necessary to plight one's troth in the bleak midwinter? I can recall one wedding weekend on the Isle of Wight where the bridal party stood in a blizzard having their pictures taken, like a scene from Scott of the Antarctic, and the possibility that the return ferry might be cancelled hung ominously over the proceedings, jolly though they were.
Thinking of tying the knot? Spare a thought for your guests, be they hunting folk or not, and steer clear of the winter months. You never know, the British weather being what it is you may still get to wear that fur cape and have a cosy fire lit in your bridal suite.
Monday, 21 November 2011
Friday, 18 November 2011
Feeding the multitudes
The hunting season proper has started, with a cracking opening meet. Were it not for that, I would very likely give in to the strong elemental urge to hibernate until Spring. Darkness falls far too early, there is finally a chill in the air, and the pull of sofa, blanket and bed is strong, especially as I am sniffling along sorrily with a bad cold. However: we are hosting on Saturday, so there has been much bustling and baking to do.
We have ordered no less than twenty bottles of port, on account of it being a joint meet and because we are still haunted by the memory of The Shortage. Two years ago, our first time as hosts, we seriously underestimated the drinking capacity of the small Wednesday crowd. When the port ran out (which happened all too soon) I panicked and started passing around glasses of raspberry juice, but seasoned drinkers are not easily fooled and the mood was turning ugly. Keen to avoid becoming unpopular or getting lynched in our very first season, Stephen performed a secular version of the miracle at Canaa: he disappeared in a cloud of dust and returned bearing reinforcements. Luckily the meet was conveniently close to a main road with a a shop.
Fast-forward two seasons and we are not taking any chances, especially as this time meet is a few miles off from the middle of chuffing nowhere. As well as the port, fifty pork pies, thirty-six sausage rolls and the same number of cheese and onion rolls arrived on my doorstep tomorrow last night - so as not to pollute my vegetarian fridge with dead piggy, the pies have spent the night in the car, ready for the journey. I have baked a banana loaf and a lemon drizzle. It has been a true test of character, having two perfectly nice cakes in my kitchen and resisting the temptation to do a "quality check".
Back to the opening meet, I was reunited with Geisha, the Very Large Mare from last season. A16hh2in Irish bright bay, aka The Pumpkin, she has spent the summer off games due to something obscure and unknown to veterinary science in her hind legs - which mysterious ailment has now vanished as weirdly as it first appeared. It came, I should add, a few days before what would have been our first one day event. Having looked forward and prepared for it for so long and at considerable expense, I was not to be defeated and insanely took the offer of a last-minute replacement, Alfie, 16hh3in thoroughbred bay gelding, having ridden him just the once. All things considered it could have gone a lot worse, when you think we'd hardly been introduced and his more recent sporting achievements were in the point-to-point track. Suffice to say we completed, not entirely without dignity and with only one minor injury (mine, a broken finger due to steering problems). We have since become firm friends and have been up to all sorts, including a few hunter trials, with one more to go this Sunday.
Which takes me back to the busy weekend ahead. Where on earth will I find the energy, riddled as I am with germs? The answer is: in the thrill and excitement of it all. Once out there the adrenaline will no doubt kick in, assisted by medicinal port, and if nothing else Geisha's early-morning enthusiasm is infectious and...um, invigorating. I must rise from my plague-bed and get going... onwards and upwards!
We have ordered no less than twenty bottles of port, on account of it being a joint meet and because we are still haunted by the memory of The Shortage. Two years ago, our first time as hosts, we seriously underestimated the drinking capacity of the small Wednesday crowd. When the port ran out (which happened all too soon) I panicked and started passing around glasses of raspberry juice, but seasoned drinkers are not easily fooled and the mood was turning ugly. Keen to avoid becoming unpopular or getting lynched in our very first season, Stephen performed a secular version of the miracle at Canaa: he disappeared in a cloud of dust and returned bearing reinforcements. Luckily the meet was conveniently close to a main road with a a shop.
Fast-forward two seasons and we are not taking any chances, especially as this time meet is a few miles off from the middle of chuffing nowhere. As well as the port, fifty pork pies, thirty-six sausage rolls and the same number of cheese and onion rolls arrived on my doorstep tomorrow last night - so as not to pollute my vegetarian fridge with dead piggy, the pies have spent the night in the car, ready for the journey. I have baked a banana loaf and a lemon drizzle. It has been a true test of character, having two perfectly nice cakes in my kitchen and resisting the temptation to do a "quality check".
Back to the opening meet, I was reunited with Geisha, the Very Large Mare from last season. A16hh2in Irish bright bay, aka The Pumpkin, she has spent the summer off games due to something obscure and unknown to veterinary science in her hind legs - which mysterious ailment has now vanished as weirdly as it first appeared. It came, I should add, a few days before what would have been our first one day event. Having looked forward and prepared for it for so long and at considerable expense, I was not to be defeated and insanely took the offer of a last-minute replacement, Alfie, 16hh3in thoroughbred bay gelding, having ridden him just the once. All things considered it could have gone a lot worse, when you think we'd hardly been introduced and his more recent sporting achievements were in the point-to-point track. Suffice to say we completed, not entirely without dignity and with only one minor injury (mine, a broken finger due to steering problems). We have since become firm friends and have been up to all sorts, including a few hunter trials, with one more to go this Sunday.
Which takes me back to the busy weekend ahead. Where on earth will I find the energy, riddled as I am with germs? The answer is: in the thrill and excitement of it all. Once out there the adrenaline will no doubt kick in, assisted by medicinal port, and if nothing else Geisha's early-morning enthusiasm is infectious and...um, invigorating. I must rise from my plague-bed and get going... onwards and upwards!
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Oh deer, oh dear!
The rutting season is upon us, and I don't just mean my brother in law's stag night last week. Of which, least said...
Hacking in Windsor Great Park, usually a gentle and sedate pursuit, is once again fraught with dangers as rival rutting stags are on the prowl. And the little blighters are lurking, everywhere. I'd swear they suss out your planned route and then go and position themselves in the most inconvenient of places. Turning back from the Deer Park (where, funnily enough, we had trotted and cantered happily, unmolested by deer) on to the sand track to head back home, our progress was halted as we came face to pointy muzzle with several honking, hooting antlered heads (sorry, I don't know the technical term for the terrifying noise a rutting stag makes). And their attendant harems of females, of course, who are too inquisitive and get far too close to one for comfort, the little minxes - arousing the suspicions of said stags, who then get upset.
It is not easy. They were parked all over across the track and spread out wide on either side of it, showing no intention to budge. I was keen to avoid a repeat of last autumn's emergency ditch-jumping escape (when the mare and I found ourselves dangerously close to the receiving end of stag rage and were forced to make a swift exit). The mare, you see, is not supposed to jump or gallop, by vet's orders, on account of her advanced years and frail legs, but she is always too keen to find an excuse to do precisely that. So on that occasion she was delighted with her own cleverness, and in fairness she did get us out of it, bless her. But several days of worry, Bute, rest and more worry ensued after the incident, so in spite of the lateness of the hour and the failing daylight, I decided to take the scenic route back home this time.
Tootling gently along a woodland path, pretending I'd intended to come back this way anyway, admiring the copper leaves and feeling quite smug for having circumvented the stags unharmed, I was shaken out of my contented state by another unmistakeable honk. As the path turned, there is was: another one of the little pests, peering menacingly from between the trees. Venison pie, anyone?
There was enough clearance between us this time, and no other deer around, so I instructed the mare not to make eye contact and we walked straight past it, heads held up high - we are not scared, they will not take our way of life! We even made it back to the yard with just enough daylight to untack and groom before it got properly dark. And with four working legs, this time.
Hacking in Windsor Great Park, usually a gentle and sedate pursuit, is once again fraught with dangers as rival rutting stags are on the prowl. And the little blighters are lurking, everywhere. I'd swear they suss out your planned route and then go and position themselves in the most inconvenient of places. Turning back from the Deer Park (where, funnily enough, we had trotted and cantered happily, unmolested by deer) on to the sand track to head back home, our progress was halted as we came face to pointy muzzle with several honking, hooting antlered heads (sorry, I don't know the technical term for the terrifying noise a rutting stag makes). And their attendant harems of females, of course, who are too inquisitive and get far too close to one for comfort, the little minxes - arousing the suspicions of said stags, who then get upset.
It is not easy. They were parked all over across the track and spread out wide on either side of it, showing no intention to budge. I was keen to avoid a repeat of last autumn's emergency ditch-jumping escape (when the mare and I found ourselves dangerously close to the receiving end of stag rage and were forced to make a swift exit). The mare, you see, is not supposed to jump or gallop, by vet's orders, on account of her advanced years and frail legs, but she is always too keen to find an excuse to do precisely that. So on that occasion she was delighted with her own cleverness, and in fairness she did get us out of it, bless her. But several days of worry, Bute, rest and more worry ensued after the incident, so in spite of the lateness of the hour and the failing daylight, I decided to take the scenic route back home this time.
Tootling gently along a woodland path, pretending I'd intended to come back this way anyway, admiring the copper leaves and feeling quite smug for having circumvented the stags unharmed, I was shaken out of my contented state by another unmistakeable honk. As the path turned, there is was: another one of the little pests, peering menacingly from between the trees. Venison pie, anyone?
There was enough clearance between us this time, and no other deer around, so I instructed the mare not to make eye contact and we walked straight past it, heads held up high - we are not scared, they will not take our way of life! We even made it back to the yard with just enough daylight to untack and groom before it got properly dark. And with four working legs, this time.
Friday, 14 October 2011
Horse hair and gin cocktails
Well, I just love the contrasts of my life. One minute I am all hot and bothered at the yard, wielding clippers and covered in horse hair, and the next I am in Sketch sipping tea-based gin cocktails from delicate china cups, courtesy of The Rare Tea Company. From baggy trousers and wellies to nipped-in waist, heels and red lipstick in under two hours. Not bad.
The occasion was the launch of a new collaboration between millinery goddess extraordinaire Katherine Elizabeth and singer Shingai Shoniwa from the Noisettes, a delicious, modern-day Josephine Baker. Headgear was obviously de rigeur (not that I need an excuse), and I wore a hat I'd designed and made myself at one of Katherine Elizabeth's vintage-style millinery & tea parties, part of a friend's hen festivities back in the summer. Said newly married friend came along too, her first unescorted outing as a married lady, which, as I poured champagne down her and kept persuading to stay later and later, made me feel like a thoroughly bad influence. In a good way.
Hats and tea (ok, and cocktails), now that is heaven in a nutshell. My forties-inspired little red felt number, trimmed with black feathers, lace and net and sitting at a jaunty angle over a pin-up-girl curled fringe, turned out to be just perfect for the occasion and drew lots of admiring comments, especially when I explained it was my own creation. I teamed it with a red silk dress with cute black Scottie-dog-and-ball print and pleated collar, seamed stockings, black Louboutins and a (fake, obvs.) fur shrug, toughened up a bit with elbow-length black leather gloves. Annoyingly, I am still sans my smart phone while it is being bureaucratically repaired, and I'm stuck with a clumsy old (dis)courtesy phone that can't take a decent picture - so no photos. Unless someone has taken some and cares to share.
After months of self-imposed seclusion, a kind of social fasting, this was feasting on a spectacular scale and almost too much excitement to bear. We were serenaded by forties-style girl band the Tootsie Rollers, with whom we bonded afterwards over the joys of all things vintage and the morally uplifting qualities of red lipstick, and red more generally. They were in gorgeous, figure-hugging scarlet dresses with cut-out necklines and show-stopping, forties-screen-siren hairstyles.
Another very stylish lady in red was Henrietta Lovell, founder of the Rare Tea Co., who told me all sorts of interesting facts about tea. (Did you know that there is a small tea plantation in Cornwall, anyone?) It is always inspiring to meet someone so passionate and knowledgeable about what they do, and a sustainable business too - so hats off (well, not literally, under the circs.) I will try her wares very soon and may just have to switch my loyalties from my usual tea-merchant, Jing.
In case you were wondering, none of this is product placement. None of the gorgeous people, places and things I name-check in my blog are giving me any freebies in return (although it would be rude to refuse if they did :). When I find something especially beautiful that I get excited about, I love to share it and write about it, and that's that.
Off to see the Degas and the Ballet exhibition at the Royal Academy, followed by a riding competition at Trent Park this evening. Just when girls all over town are changing into their frocks for the evening, I shall be doing the opposite and slipping into buff jodhs, riding boots, shirt and stock and a black jacket. A life of contrasts indeed...
The occasion was the launch of a new collaboration between millinery goddess extraordinaire Katherine Elizabeth and singer Shingai Shoniwa from the Noisettes, a delicious, modern-day Josephine Baker. Headgear was obviously de rigeur (not that I need an excuse), and I wore a hat I'd designed and made myself at one of Katherine Elizabeth's vintage-style millinery & tea parties, part of a friend's hen festivities back in the summer. Said newly married friend came along too, her first unescorted outing as a married lady, which, as I poured champagne down her and kept persuading to stay later and later, made me feel like a thoroughly bad influence. In a good way.
Hats and tea (ok, and cocktails), now that is heaven in a nutshell. My forties-inspired little red felt number, trimmed with black feathers, lace and net and sitting at a jaunty angle over a pin-up-girl curled fringe, turned out to be just perfect for the occasion and drew lots of admiring comments, especially when I explained it was my own creation. I teamed it with a red silk dress with cute black Scottie-dog-and-ball print and pleated collar, seamed stockings, black Louboutins and a (fake, obvs.) fur shrug, toughened up a bit with elbow-length black leather gloves. Annoyingly, I am still sans my smart phone while it is being bureaucratically repaired, and I'm stuck with a clumsy old (dis)courtesy phone that can't take a decent picture - so no photos. Unless someone has taken some and cares to share.
After months of self-imposed seclusion, a kind of social fasting, this was feasting on a spectacular scale and almost too much excitement to bear. We were serenaded by forties-style girl band the Tootsie Rollers, with whom we bonded afterwards over the joys of all things vintage and the morally uplifting qualities of red lipstick, and red more generally. They were in gorgeous, figure-hugging scarlet dresses with cut-out necklines and show-stopping, forties-screen-siren hairstyles.
Another very stylish lady in red was Henrietta Lovell, founder of the Rare Tea Co., who told me all sorts of interesting facts about tea. (Did you know that there is a small tea plantation in Cornwall, anyone?) It is always inspiring to meet someone so passionate and knowledgeable about what they do, and a sustainable business too - so hats off (well, not literally, under the circs.) I will try her wares very soon and may just have to switch my loyalties from my usual tea-merchant, Jing.
In case you were wondering, none of this is product placement. None of the gorgeous people, places and things I name-check in my blog are giving me any freebies in return (although it would be rude to refuse if they did :). When I find something especially beautiful that I get excited about, I love to share it and write about it, and that's that.
Off to see the Degas and the Ballet exhibition at the Royal Academy, followed by a riding competition at Trent Park this evening. Just when girls all over town are changing into their frocks for the evening, I shall be doing the opposite and slipping into buff jodhs, riding boots, shirt and stock and a black jacket. A life of contrasts indeed...
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Bad, mad and dangerous to know
Back from a busy weekend of hunting and horses in Wiltshire (no house-hunting this week, I'm taking a break). Straight into the office on Monday to pay for it all, with no time to unpack, and therefore drowning today in mounds of laundry - the inevitable aftermath of anything involving ponies, the great outdoors and husbands.
Everything aches. I thought I was fit and have been proved wrong by my hunt's so-called cross-country "fun" ride, more accurately described as a beasting over 10 miles of beautiful country with optional (optional? who are we kidding?) fences. I made life extra hard for myself by going as a pair with Stephen, aka Husband-on-Speed, a tough man to follow across country at the best of times. In the absence of such restraints as a field master one shouldn't overtake, or hounds one shouldn't run over, he was off at an alarming pace more or less from the start. We had set off with three girls from the stables but they soon expelled us from their group on account of my husband's horse being "too lively and upsetting the others". (Polite euphemism for: "Get away from us, you pair of freaks! We'd like a quiet, civilised time.").
Stephen was on his usual ride, Hindenburg, or the Burg to his friends, who are not many. This larger-than-life character is likely to poke his big black muzzle into this blog from time to time, and so deserves a proper introduction. A 17.2hh ex-Cavalry black, expelled from the Cavalry for causing more casualties than the Taliban, bold over fences but of a complex, Byronic personality: mad, bad and dangerous to know. (The latter description could well fit Stephen too, and it is no coincidence that they get on swimmingly.) I soon realised that, in such company, it was futile to try to set the pace across open fields, and decided to relax and enjoy the various full-tilt gallops on offer (ie, I simply could not hold Crabgate back when presented with an open stretch uphill and the Burg tearing off like a high-speed train crash).
Now, Crabgate: 16hh, 20-year-old bay gelding, ex-Kings Troop - fit as a fiddle and not a day over 7 in mind and body. He is not my usual ride (or my usual type for that matter) but we had been out hunting together the day before with some success. Salisbury Plain is his playground and he knows it like the...er, sole of his hoof, and I know him to be a sensible (if fast) sort, so off we went. He had the decency never to rush over fences, not once, so my arms had some respite whenever there were jumps. And boy did he fly over those fences, as neat as a button and as comfortable as an armchair. I think I've changed my mind about him not being "my type".
About two-thirds of the way through, however, I was flagging. We stopped to chat to one of the marshals, a Master whom we know from the hunt... and the pub. But mainly the pub. He made good his promise from the night before and produced a bottle of Hobgoblin and two glasses from the back of his car. I don't drink beer, except in emergencies, and this was an emergency. Suitably refreshed, we sauntered on, occasionally intersecting with the three ladies from earlier who would wave us off from a distance with cries of "please go away". You get used to this treatment when going out with the ASBO horse.
The last run of three fences along the racetrack is etched in my memory for life: blazing sunlight, just the right mix of balance and speed, the wind in my face and a sense of achievement at the sight of the finishing line. (Apart from the bit where I swore at Stephen and the Burg to keep the &@** behind us and out of the way - I shall photoshop that out as it was necessary but not very ladylike).
After the spell of unseasonally hot weather it is now well and truly autumn, duly marked by clipping (on which saga more next time) and the spiced squash, marrow and lentil soup that has been simmering in the kitchen while I write this and to which I must now attend.
For more pictures of the ride go to the Mudsports website.
Everything aches. I thought I was fit and have been proved wrong by my hunt's so-called cross-country "fun" ride, more accurately described as a beasting over 10 miles of beautiful country with optional (optional? who are we kidding?) fences. I made life extra hard for myself by going as a pair with Stephen, aka Husband-on-Speed, a tough man to follow across country at the best of times. In the absence of such restraints as a field master one shouldn't overtake, or hounds one shouldn't run over, he was off at an alarming pace more or less from the start. We had set off with three girls from the stables but they soon expelled us from their group on account of my husband's horse being "too lively and upsetting the others". (Polite euphemism for: "Get away from us, you pair of freaks! We'd like a quiet, civilised time.").
Stephen was on his usual ride, Hindenburg, or the Burg to his friends, who are not many. This larger-than-life character is likely to poke his big black muzzle into this blog from time to time, and so deserves a proper introduction. A 17.2hh ex-Cavalry black, expelled from the Cavalry for causing more casualties than the Taliban, bold over fences but of a complex, Byronic personality: mad, bad and dangerous to know. (The latter description could well fit Stephen too, and it is no coincidence that they get on swimmingly.) I soon realised that, in such company, it was futile to try to set the pace across open fields, and decided to relax and enjoy the various full-tilt gallops on offer (ie, I simply could not hold Crabgate back when presented with an open stretch uphill and the Burg tearing off like a high-speed train crash).
Now, Crabgate: 16hh, 20-year-old bay gelding, ex-Kings Troop - fit as a fiddle and not a day over 7 in mind and body. He is not my usual ride (or my usual type for that matter) but we had been out hunting together the day before with some success. Salisbury Plain is his playground and he knows it like the...er, sole of his hoof, and I know him to be a sensible (if fast) sort, so off we went. He had the decency never to rush over fences, not once, so my arms had some respite whenever there were jumps. And boy did he fly over those fences, as neat as a button and as comfortable as an armchair. I think I've changed my mind about him not being "my type".
About two-thirds of the way through, however, I was flagging. We stopped to chat to one of the marshals, a Master whom we know from the hunt... and the pub. But mainly the pub. He made good his promise from the night before and produced a bottle of Hobgoblin and two glasses from the back of his car. I don't drink beer, except in emergencies, and this was an emergency. Suitably refreshed, we sauntered on, occasionally intersecting with the three ladies from earlier who would wave us off from a distance with cries of "please go away". You get used to this treatment when going out with the ASBO horse.
The last run of three fences along the racetrack is etched in my memory for life: blazing sunlight, just the right mix of balance and speed, the wind in my face and a sense of achievement at the sight of the finishing line. (Apart from the bit where I swore at Stephen and the Burg to keep the &@** behind us and out of the way - I shall photoshop that out as it was necessary but not very ladylike).
After the spell of unseasonally hot weather it is now well and truly autumn, duly marked by clipping (on which saga more next time) and the spiced squash, marrow and lentil soup that has been simmering in the kitchen while I write this and to which I must now attend.
For more pictures of the ride go to the Mudsports website.
Sunday, 31 July 2011
In praise of idleness. Or, the Sunday night blues.
There has to be a (legal) way of earning a living that doesn't involve going through this utter dread and agony every Sunday night.
It is the end of a particularly fabulous weekend, so the contrast with what's to come tomorrow could not be greater. It was my birthday last Friday and I've three days of celebrations. The festivities kicked off with an outing to Hickstead with a friend and just kept going uphill from there, rounding things off with afternoon tea somewhere divine today with lots of lovely friends, and then a quiet hack with the mare in the evening. In between, there have been cocktails and dinner somewhere low-key but quirky with another crowd of friends, and open-air picnic opera with yet another lot. I am blessed with a motley and loyal bunch of friends and acquaintances, a really rather good husband, an interesting social life, an adorable and adoring if not entirely sound mare (on which sore subject there will be more later on, no doubt). I have a degree, a top notch one if I may say so, and from a decent university. I am presentable and throughly clubbable and can make a seamless transition from hunting field to ballroom in two hours flat (without the aid of hair and beauty professionals). I can read in five languages and communicate more or less fluently in three. And yet, and yet... I am a drudge in a badly paid and mind-numbingly tedious job that I hate with a passion, and I am seemingly unable to generate a viable alternative.
This, in a nutshell, is What Is Wrong With My Life, the reason I am awake blogging at 2am when I should be asleep in my high-thread-count bedlinen, tangled up with my toned and loving husband, and Counting My Blessings. I have given this pesky issue some thought over the years, and have come to the tentative conclusion that it is, perhaps, not entirely Something Wrong With Me after all. For one thing, there are too many articulate, intelligent and educated people in a similar predicament, as I found recently at one of the School of Life's seminars, entitled How to Find a Job You Love. (The clue, by via negativa, is in the title: a roomful of mostly bright, university educated-chaps and chappesses, from a whole range of age brackets and walks of life, who clearly were not feeling the love in their jobs, and felt this was enough of a problem to attend a course about it). Could there be something about our career-obsessed, linear-progression-fixated culture that is making so many of us feel inadequate? I'd go further to say that this culture, this way of thinking about careers and work and what constitutes success, is making people sick. Some of us look at it, this model, the very language of it, "a step up", "ceilings", "ladders", "getting to the top" - and we just get vertigo.
For a long time, something in me has been rebelling against this not entirely helpful model. Looking back, I have probably been kicking against it since childhood. And it has taken me a while to figure out what this rebellion is about, that it is not as simple as being a loser. It is about integrity, about refusing to spend one-third of one's time in a sort of tedium-induced coma for the sake of paying a few bills and conforming with what is expected. A nagging sense that there has to be more to life, that a person's worth must come from a more genuine place, surely. I am blessed and cursed in equal measures with a vivid imagination, which means I will not easily settle for what's put in front of me, being able to conjure up a million more attractive alternatives. (This is a source of constant worry for my husband, but that is another story.) And it is also about honesty, calling a spade a spade: except for those with a private income and land, we are all the modern equivalent of medieval indentured labourers, tied as we are to our mortgages and salaries. However large the figures involved, it is only a case of wearing a more or less elaborate harness, and some of us do not do well in harness. I, for example, am not built (physically or temperamentally) like a cart-horse or plough-ox, and cannot see why I should be expected to perform like one.
The bore of course, and the "challenge" also (euphemism for pain in the behind that must be somehow overcome without moaning), is that one must earn a living somehow. When I read articles on the subject by people who clearly do not need to earn a living, it fills me with rage. Not because I am jealous, but because it is unsporting: you can't complain about the drudgery of work and the bravery of chucking it all in to follow your dreams, when you are sitting in your Marylebone flat paid for by daddy/investment banker husband/inherited. Likewise, you can't hold up your cupcake business/lifestyle consultancy/online chakra realignment service as a practical example of an answer to the livelihood vs fulfillment conundrum, when your successful creative venture either does not really pay your bills or was funded by said daddy/invstment banker husband in the first place. Don't get me wrong: I don't disapprove at all. Given half a chance I'd take the investment banker husband option, but rather foolishly I married for love when I was too young and naive to give these things proper thought. I say, if you are lucky enough to have an independent income, enjoy it to the full, be grateful and be graceful enough to acknowledge your luck, do not pretend you have to struggle with the tiresome business of earning a living.
When I read about hugely "successful" people's lives (perma-busy, constantly chained to i-phones or blackberries, no time for this or that, five am starts at the gym, how much their careers mean to them, how much money they are making, how they can produce a baby and go to a meeting in the same morning, etc.) my first reaction is: I want to lie down. My second thought is "what a bore they must be, always going on about work". (My third thought is "when do they paint their nails?", but that is daft, obviously they have a minion doing their manicures while they clench a deal on the speakerphone.) It used to be considered vulgar, going on about work and being busy money like that. I don't know about vulgar, but it seems dreadfully tedious and uninspiring, and to me that is a far worse sin.
I hate getting stuck next to one of these overachievers at a dinner party, the one small consolation being that they are usually too busy tapping into their i-phones or looking out for someone more important to bore me with their tales of boardroom and budget sheets. Luckily for me, I don't tend to meet that many. Or perhaps they don't reveal themselves to me, since I advertise myself as an entrenched underachiever and conscientious objector to the busy career culture, a consumate idler with no easy job title or career label attached. That tends to do the trick.
I would discourage anyone from thinking this is an attack on hard work per se. On the contrary, I thoroughly approve of devoting long hours and disproportionate amounts of effort, sweat and tears to whatever activity you find meaningful and fulfilling, no matter how hopeless the cause. My budding attempts at eventing this year are good evidence of this, as is my ongoing saga with the permanently infirm mare-on-loan. When I was a student I would stay up all night deconstructing Chaucer, with or without the aid of a glass of wine and a willing interlocutor. What I rail against is busy-ness for its own sake, dull drudgery, particularly that of an office-based variety, and most especially when indulged in by people who put on airs of it being a worthy sacrifice, when they are quite clearly not saving lives. On the subject of which, I would never dream of addressing any of these musings to those whose jobs do, in one way or another, involve saving lives. They have a point, in a way that I don't, and therefore I have no point to make to them. When my surgeon friend comes out to see me after a 12-hour shift in theatre, I buy her a drink. I don't talk about work, and funnily enough neither does she.
All of which may seem a rather convoluted way of saying "arrrgh, I don't want to go to work tomorrow", which is what zillions of people are thinking right now on a Sunday night. But that, precisely, is my point. Some of those zillions will carry on for decades, muffling the voice of discontent on Sundays and then sleep-walking to the same job on Monday mornings. I won't. Others will answer the siren call in an unfortunate way and just go bankrupt, or end up on the streets, etc. I hope I won't, either. There has to be another way. Hopefully a legal one.
It is the end of a particularly fabulous weekend, so the contrast with what's to come tomorrow could not be greater. It was my birthday last Friday and I've three days of celebrations. The festivities kicked off with an outing to Hickstead with a friend and just kept going uphill from there, rounding things off with afternoon tea somewhere divine today with lots of lovely friends, and then a quiet hack with the mare in the evening. In between, there have been cocktails and dinner somewhere low-key but quirky with another crowd of friends, and open-air picnic opera with yet another lot. I am blessed with a motley and loyal bunch of friends and acquaintances, a really rather good husband, an interesting social life, an adorable and adoring if not entirely sound mare (on which sore subject there will be more later on, no doubt). I have a degree, a top notch one if I may say so, and from a decent university. I am presentable and throughly clubbable and can make a seamless transition from hunting field to ballroom in two hours flat (without the aid of hair and beauty professionals). I can read in five languages and communicate more or less fluently in three. And yet, and yet... I am a drudge in a badly paid and mind-numbingly tedious job that I hate with a passion, and I am seemingly unable to generate a viable alternative.
This, in a nutshell, is What Is Wrong With My Life, the reason I am awake blogging at 2am when I should be asleep in my high-thread-count bedlinen, tangled up with my toned and loving husband, and Counting My Blessings. I have given this pesky issue some thought over the years, and have come to the tentative conclusion that it is, perhaps, not entirely Something Wrong With Me after all. For one thing, there are too many articulate, intelligent and educated people in a similar predicament, as I found recently at one of the School of Life's seminars, entitled How to Find a Job You Love. (The clue, by via negativa, is in the title: a roomful of mostly bright, university educated-chaps and chappesses, from a whole range of age brackets and walks of life, who clearly were not feeling the love in their jobs, and felt this was enough of a problem to attend a course about it). Could there be something about our career-obsessed, linear-progression-fixated culture that is making so many of us feel inadequate? I'd go further to say that this culture, this way of thinking about careers and work and what constitutes success, is making people sick. Some of us look at it, this model, the very language of it, "a step up", "ceilings", "ladders", "getting to the top" - and we just get vertigo.
For a long time, something in me has been rebelling against this not entirely helpful model. Looking back, I have probably been kicking against it since childhood. And it has taken me a while to figure out what this rebellion is about, that it is not as simple as being a loser. It is about integrity, about refusing to spend one-third of one's time in a sort of tedium-induced coma for the sake of paying a few bills and conforming with what is expected. A nagging sense that there has to be more to life, that a person's worth must come from a more genuine place, surely. I am blessed and cursed in equal measures with a vivid imagination, which means I will not easily settle for what's put in front of me, being able to conjure up a million more attractive alternatives. (This is a source of constant worry for my husband, but that is another story.) And it is also about honesty, calling a spade a spade: except for those with a private income and land, we are all the modern equivalent of medieval indentured labourers, tied as we are to our mortgages and salaries. However large the figures involved, it is only a case of wearing a more or less elaborate harness, and some of us do not do well in harness. I, for example, am not built (physically or temperamentally) like a cart-horse or plough-ox, and cannot see why I should be expected to perform like one.
The bore of course, and the "challenge" also (euphemism for pain in the behind that must be somehow overcome without moaning), is that one must earn a living somehow. When I read articles on the subject by people who clearly do not need to earn a living, it fills me with rage. Not because I am jealous, but because it is unsporting: you can't complain about the drudgery of work and the bravery of chucking it all in to follow your dreams, when you are sitting in your Marylebone flat paid for by daddy/investment banker husband/inherited. Likewise, you can't hold up your cupcake business/lifestyle consultancy/online chakra realignment service as a practical example of an answer to the livelihood vs fulfillment conundrum, when your successful creative venture either does not really pay your bills or was funded by said daddy/invstment banker husband in the first place. Don't get me wrong: I don't disapprove at all. Given half a chance I'd take the investment banker husband option, but rather foolishly I married for love when I was too young and naive to give these things proper thought. I say, if you are lucky enough to have an independent income, enjoy it to the full, be grateful and be graceful enough to acknowledge your luck, do not pretend you have to struggle with the tiresome business of earning a living.
When I read about hugely "successful" people's lives (perma-busy, constantly chained to i-phones or blackberries, no time for this or that, five am starts at the gym, how much their careers mean to them, how much money they are making, how they can produce a baby and go to a meeting in the same morning, etc.) my first reaction is: I want to lie down. My second thought is "what a bore they must be, always going on about work". (My third thought is "when do they paint their nails?", but that is daft, obviously they have a minion doing their manicures while they clench a deal on the speakerphone.) It used to be considered vulgar, going on about work and being busy money like that. I don't know about vulgar, but it seems dreadfully tedious and uninspiring, and to me that is a far worse sin.
I hate getting stuck next to one of these overachievers at a dinner party, the one small consolation being that they are usually too busy tapping into their i-phones or looking out for someone more important to bore me with their tales of boardroom and budget sheets. Luckily for me, I don't tend to meet that many. Or perhaps they don't reveal themselves to me, since I advertise myself as an entrenched underachiever and conscientious objector to the busy career culture, a consumate idler with no easy job title or career label attached. That tends to do the trick.
I would discourage anyone from thinking this is an attack on hard work per se. On the contrary, I thoroughly approve of devoting long hours and disproportionate amounts of effort, sweat and tears to whatever activity you find meaningful and fulfilling, no matter how hopeless the cause. My budding attempts at eventing this year are good evidence of this, as is my ongoing saga with the permanently infirm mare-on-loan. When I was a student I would stay up all night deconstructing Chaucer, with or without the aid of a glass of wine and a willing interlocutor. What I rail against is busy-ness for its own sake, dull drudgery, particularly that of an office-based variety, and most especially when indulged in by people who put on airs of it being a worthy sacrifice, when they are quite clearly not saving lives. On the subject of which, I would never dream of addressing any of these musings to those whose jobs do, in one way or another, involve saving lives. They have a point, in a way that I don't, and therefore I have no point to make to them. When my surgeon friend comes out to see me after a 12-hour shift in theatre, I buy her a drink. I don't talk about work, and funnily enough neither does she.
All of which may seem a rather convoluted way of saying "arrrgh, I don't want to go to work tomorrow", which is what zillions of people are thinking right now on a Sunday night. But that, precisely, is my point. Some of those zillions will carry on for decades, muffling the voice of discontent on Sundays and then sleep-walking to the same job on Monday mornings. I won't. Others will answer the siren call in an unfortunate way and just go bankrupt, or end up on the streets, etc. I hope I won't, either. There has to be another way. Hopefully a legal one.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
In the beggining...
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.
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.
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