He’s called Tommy Shelby and Cillian Murphy doesn’t have a patch on him. We went riding, or rather Blake and Sophie rode and I walked - I needed to see how they both were, neither of them had ridden for a while. It reminded me of when Blake and Jacobi were little, hours and hours on determined ponies, difficult to handle, the smaller they were the more headstrong, the less willing to behave. If you want to learn to ride, ride a Shetland, which they did, followed by tough little Welsh B’s and tiny draught cobs, no shoulder, their chests as wide as their behinds, easy to fall off, the saddles always slipping. It was with them through beating sunshine and pouring rain that my sons learnt the gift of horse love, now graduated onto actual horses, bigger and easier apart from having further to fall. But today it was Blake and Sophie, Jacobi being two and a half thousand miles away, and it was Tommy with Gully beside him, my friend’s enormous war horse as gentle as a summer breeze. Last winter we spent two weeks riding in Patagonia, the high pampas, the mountains that towered, the turquoise seas that appeared when least expected. It was the rhythm of those hours, horse tempo, that entered our bones and slowed us down, our brainwaves aligning with the steady moves and I saw it again today. Two young people with much on their minds made quiet and easy, their expressions softened by a walk along a country lane, a view over the hedgerows, hands reaching out for blackberries. Gully and Tommy behaved admirably, like gentlemen mostly, their sweet eyes aware that on their backs were people regaining their horse legs. They’re so wise, so wicked, so mighty. They cure everything. And I was reminded too, having read something by
this morning about missing the community of co-workers, that the stables is where I get my chit-chat, my social in an otherwise solitary writer’s world. And if there’s no one to talk to I talk to Tommy. And he talks back. Does he ever. Oh boy.Discussion about this post
No posts
I've never enjoyed being on tall animals. It freaks me out. In '97 I took the last kilometer or so up Mount Sanai on a camel. It was pitch dark and we were on the edge of the mountain and I thought I was a goner. On our honeymoon, husband and I rode horses and I vaguely remember nearly falling off and bruising my vagina. It was terrifying and also inconvenient when on a honeymoon. The way you describe horseriding with such loving joy makes me almost want to believe you.
🐴❤️