Dispatches From The North

The snow comes barrelling in again, this time, rather oddly, on gales blowing up from the south. There is no warmth in them, whatever their origin, and wind-chill now becomes a subject of intense importance. I try not to moan about the weather, and fail. An amber warning is out for the region, and many conversations now revolve around the correct application of layers. Layering is the only way to keep warm, at this stage, and must be taken very seriously.

Working with horses in these elements means that all vanity is fled. It really is what the business types call a Zero Sum Game. Either I can keep my equines warm and fed and comfortable, or I can look respectable. There is absolutely no way to do both. Clothes, boots and often face are spattered with mud; every woollen article I own has little bits of hay clinging to it. Due to the crucial application of a hat to fend off the blizzards, my hair has become unspeakable.

My current sartorial look, seen when giving the mares their morning haynets. The hat, of which I am rather fond, came from the tremendous N. Armison and Sons of Penrith, established in 1742. I'm not sure the hat was designed for feeding horses in the snow, but it does the job very well.

In the equine brochures which now thump through my letter-box, people who have clearly never been through a Scottish winter show off all kind of horse-wear, in varying states of pristine immaculateness. I gaze at them with a hollow laugh. My default mode now involves low-level dirt at all times.

Funnily enough, I think this is rather a good thing. It’s nice to brush up well, every so often; to put on one’s lipstick and get out a velvet coat or a shiny pair of shoes. Occasionally, I do manage to graduate from mildly damp socks. But so much of the media seems devoted to telling women that they should aspire to impossible levels of loveliness. We must be willowy and elegant and perfectly dressed, like this film star, or that model. It’s rather lovely when that simply is not an option. I do not have to feel like a failure in the glamour stakes, because there is no question of even making an entry.

I do dream of spring, when I no longer shall have to tog myself up like the Michelin man. It shall be rather charming to cast off the exclusive scent of wet horse. (Not exactly Chanel No 5.) But in the meantime, I quite like that fact that there is no room for vanity. I am a creature of the earth, just at the moment, stomping through the mud, head bowed against the wind, getting the important things done.

About five months ago, I started volunteering for a local charity. I did not just wake up one morning and think: I must now do Good Works. It all happened quite organically.

Three miles up the road from me is a remarkable organisation called HorseBack UK. I have mentioned it here before, but it bears repeating. It does the rather amazing thing of using horses to rehabilitate wounded servicemen and women. It works with people who have everything from double amputation to acute post-traumatic stress. I run out of adjectives when I think of what it is they do there. I want to shout and hang out flags. They are absolutely bloody brilliant.

A veteran working with one of the American Quarter Horses

I met the people who set up the charity, quite by chance. I liked them; I was interested in what they did. I went along to visit. I started thinking that just sending a donation was not enough. I wanted to do something. I know a bit about horses, but they did not really need that sort of help. In the end, I offered them the one thing I can do, which is words.

It turned out, by happy chance, that they really did need words. They have to do grant proposals, produce promotional and informative literature, develop a website, and a myriad of other things that require sentences to go with them. Oh yes, I said, not a problem; of course I can do that.

The law of unintended consequences is something in which I have an enduring interest. This blithe offer had two, for me. One is that it turned into easily the most challenging writing I’ve ever done. It’s one thing writing a book or doing a blog or producing an article, in your own name. That is just about personal success; I’m afraid to say it is almost all ego. It’s quite another to produce words for an organisation which touches the actual lives of actual people.

If I get the words right, they may translate into cash, for a new project or a further programme, which may have a material effect on a person who has been blown up by an improvised explosive device. This is a very serious thing indeed, and I frown and struggle and squint over each sentence; each phrase really matters.

The second consequence is that I have become obsessed. I am in danger of becoming a charity bore. I understand now why there are those people who devote their whole lives to guide dogs or the RSPB or Amnesty International. I am like those old ladies in Agatha Christie, who are always going round the village asking for subscriptions for the church roof fund. I think about HorseBack all the time; everything else seems a tiny bit insubstantial by comparison.

It may also be my time of life. As I motor into middle age, I am falling into the platitude of wondering what it’s all about. Time is rushing past me, and I must decide what mark I wish to leave on the world. I’m not a Nobel Laureate or a stateswoman, so it will only be a tiny scratch. But I’d like it to be a good scratch.

Last year’s plan was to plant a lot of trees. I thought that would do. Someone, years after I had gone, would sit under the shade of a rowan or a beech I had planted, and take their ease. I loved the idea of that. Now I think, there is this other thing, that will mean something.

Charity is an interesting paradox. Giving to one or helping one is seen as an act of generosity or altruism. In my case, I cannot claim goodness or selflessness at all. Quite the opposite. It is they who are giving something to me. I get to feel as if I am doing something that counts a bit, even if it is only in my very small way. I get the glorious gift of feeling that my days are not wasted. And that, it turns out, is worth more than diamonds.

My life is not exactly stuffed with event. I used to live quite a rackety urban life. I ran around Soho and sometimes drank in places where one might observe the odd household name. I still remember the night I watched in awe and wonder as Charlotte Rampling stalked down a long bar. Many famous people are a crashing disappointment in the flesh; not she. She was quite mesmerising.  It was as if she carried her own private lighting director with her.

Now I am rooted in the far north-east of Scotland, almost two hundred miles beyond Edinburgh. It’s not quite all the way up. I do not watch the ferry for Shetland from my window. But it’s quite far from the twinkling lights of old London town.

Now, I worry not about my membership of The Groucho, but about getting my horse shelter finished. I lie awake at night, listening to the gales which have blown in after the big snows, hoping the equines will be all right. They did indeed have the wind in their tails this morning, and put on a fine bronco display of galloping and bucking. I think about fencing, and the tree-planting programme I have planned for the spring, and whether I will ever get the outside tap done for the feed shed. It is not exactly an existence filled with front-page glamour.

Easily my biggest decision this week was the purchasing of a new pair of gumboots. After ten years of dogged service, my battered old Le Chameau boots finally gave up the ghost. An actual hole developed, and the rubber down one side was perishing.

Le Chameau is the absolute Queen of the Boot. It is what all the keepers wear. When I bought my first pair I thought the dull green a little sickly, but for design and comfort, nothing comes close. But they are now almost three hundred pounds, and I suddenly could not bring myself to spend that kind of money, even though I live in my gumboots. I get more bang for my buck from them than from any other article in my life.


Still, we are in the New Austerity now, and my thrifty side revolted against such extravagance. After a lot of Googling, I finally found an acceptable alternative. They are called Aigle, and they too have the crucial neoprene lining, which makes you feel as if you are walking on air.

It was a moment of jubilee when they arrived. Brand spanking new boots; this now counts as an above the fold headline in my house.

They are very nice, and half the price, but of course they are not the same. I mourn my old keeper’s boots. I suddenly feared the replacements were a little bit mimsy, even slightly girly. I cannot be walking about in girly boots.

Tentatively, I consulted my stepfather.
   ‘What do you think?’ I said.
   He thought for a moment.
   ‘Well,’ he said. ‘They are very butch.’

I almost fainted with delight.
   ‘I don’t mean that in a rude way,’ he said.
   ‘No, no,’ I cried in delight. ‘That’s the best thing you could have said. I was worried they were a bit mere and girly.’
   ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘That’s a man’s boot.’

I practically skipped home, I was so happy. This is what it has come to, with me. I am forty-six today, and my life has gone from Charlotte Rampling to the farmer in the dell. No more Groucho and high heels, but weather and earth and horses and manly boots.

I think this is the first proper big snow we’ve had for two years. It is a foot and a half now, and more gathers in the western sky like a mustering army. The roads that go up into the hills are all closed, and the village is empty and silent. One intrepid gentleman slides by on skies, pulling his small son behind him on a scarlet sled. According to the chemist, the only ones out and about are the old people. ‘Nothing stops them,’ she says, smiling.



Those same doughty old people will tell you of the winters of their childhood, when they were snowed under for three months at a time. The Scottish weather has changed dramatically in the last forty years. The ski stations at the Lecht and Glenshee have had to rework their business models, because they can no longer rely on a full season of good powder. So even though we are over five hundred miles north of Hyde Park Corner, we don’t get this kind of severe weather very often any more.



After four solid days, it gets a little wearing. I stomp through the drifts to take the horses their hay, and spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with the frozen water trough. The equines, who take the weather on the chin, watch in polite interest as I faff about with water bottles and buckets and urns. The snow means everything takes huge amounts of time. Even going down to the Co-op for bread and cheese is like an Antarctic expedition. This morning, it was so frigid that all the doors on the car were frozen shut, covered in a thick layer of frosted snow. I trudge about in my boots and gloves and hat, mildly grumpy, hoping that the power lines will not go down.

Stanley the Dog, on the other hand, thinks it is the most fun he has had since the old queen died. He romps and leaps and gambols in the white stuff like a puppy. I think I should take a leaf out of his book, and not grouse and grumble simply because the elements are not clement.



It does have a powerful beauty. All the trees look like ice sculptures, and the distant wooded hills take on a misty aspect, as if they are something from an old water-colour painting. There is a great stillness about, as if the world has stopped, and the air smells clean and sharp, like metal. At night, when I take the dog out for his last walk, the whiteness means that the landscape is almost as bright as day. The snow clouds gather all the light from the street lamps in the village and spread it over the sky, so there is a diffused effect of low amber. It is very hard to describe, but it makes me catch my breath each time I see it.


It is a time when I keenly appreciate the joys of being self-employed. My office is my house, so I do not have to get in the motor with spades and chocolate and prepare to be stuck on some snowy commute. I am all stocked up like a Montana survivalist and have made enough chicken soup to last for three more days. I have logs and candles and extra blankets, in case the electricity goes.

I wonder how the Nordics do it. They still have those old Scottish winters; what is weather shock to us is daily life to them. Come on, come on, I think; if the Scandinavians can do it, so can I. What about the great British virtues of stoicism and phlegm? I must summon up my Churchillian self, and fight them on the beaches. It’s just that occasionally, in my weaker moments, I do dream of sunshine. I can’t remember what warmth feels like or what green fields look like. My feet are permanently slightly damp, and I spend half the day with no feeling in my fingers. (This makes typing difficult.) Still, I must not complain. There is no bore worse than a weather bore. It’s just a little bit of snow. The sun will come again.

Snow comes, stealthily, in the night. I stomp down through four white inches and dole out extra hay rations for the horses. They are amazingly warm and chic in their new rug technology. When I was young, rugs consisted of a bit of jute, or the familiar thin green of the New Zealand rug. Now they are made of the kind of stuff that people wear in space. My mare’s ears just peep out of her high neck cover, and she looks so ridiculously sweet that I do not know what to do with myself.

Out in the world, people are dressing up in frocks and winning things. It is a million miles from my muddy boots and the straw that is literally in my hair. (The other day, I went round the entire Co-op with a small nest of hay tucked into my scarf. I only realised when I got home. Everyone was far too polite to say anything.) I catch a quick précis of the Golden Globes on the BBC. Damien Lewis wins, and is charming and touching and thanks his late mother, but in a humorous, ironical British way, rather than the lachrymose manner that is sometimes obligatory at such ceremonies. Daniel Day-Lewis wins, and makes a little joke about the Queen. Adele wins and is just adorable.

I find myself oddly proud. National pride is an absurd thing on its face. It’s the most random thing in the world, where you are born. I did nothing to be British; my mum just happened to be in London at the time I arrived. If I track back through my family tree, there are French, Danish and American antecedents, along with the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English blood. Yet, almost every morning when I sit down to write, I get a little glow of delight that I am doing it in the language of Shakespeare and Milton, even though they are old dead fellas, who really had nothing to do with me.

As I watch the Brits being clapped by a roomful of successful Americans, I flush with a bizarre patriotism. Look at our lovely girls and boys, being good at stuff. It makes no rational sense, yet there is a keen delight in seeing the excellent Britons being lauded on the international stage. As always, I attempt to make sense of this in my head. But I can’t, really. I hear the old voices, sternly rebuking me. Patriotism, after all, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Nationalism has led to as many wars and arguments as religion. Lines drawn on a map get armies on the march.

Yet, however nutty it is, pride in one’s place of birth and one’s compatriots can be a benign article. It does not need to be a defensive thing, or a swaggery thing. It is not a zero sum game: all nations have their marvellous points. It does not have to be an imperial idea of mine is better than yours. I get a little uncomfortable when I hear otherwise perfectly sensible American commentators referring to the United States as ‘the greatest country on earth’. National pride can merely be a simple pleasure, so that when the British Olympians triumph, or Andy Murray wins at the tennis, or Damien Lewis is sweet about his mum, one may feel a warm wash of affection for dear old Blighty.

As a country, we are greatly prone to moaning and groaning; we are used to bad news. The economy is a mess, and the forecasts are gloomy. Only this week, John Humphrys was berating the Prime Minister over the mare’s nest that is our relationship with Europe. In the face of all this, it’s rather a relief to remember that there are Britons who are good at things, that it’s not all hell in a handbasket, that just occasionally, in a most diffident and polite manner, one may stand up and say three cheers for us.

Usually, at this moment in January, I say something like: well, we got through Christmas. In my family, the tradition is that someone goes into meltdown. The cliff-hanger is that each year no-one knows who it will be. (Quite often, me.) But in this dreich festive season, as the rains fell and the gales blew, the entire clan generated collective internal sunshine. Everyone was wreathed in smiles, excellent and useful presents were exchanged, the lunch went without a hitch. I even gave a little party.

I was thinking about quite why it was so delightful this year, and I came to slightly odd conclusion. From my own point of view, it was because I read no magazines.

I do not mean interesting generalist publications, like the dear old Lady. I mean what are horribly called Lifestyle Magazines. I object, on about eight different principles, to the very term lifestyle. I think one has a life, not a lifestyle. The very use of the word suggests something superficial, competitive, meretricious and commercial. It’s all about keeping up with the Armstrong-Joneses. In my darker moments, I think it as part of the great conspiracy to make the women sad.

I used to think that the lifestyle mags were very helpful, especially coming up to the yuletide season. Here would be another cunning recipe for stuffing, there would be a charming way of decorating the house. I would buy them all, and try to copy them, in my small, paltry way.

The problem with this is that failure is built in. Life will never, ever look as seamless and shining and lovely as a picture on a glossy page. Your own ham will never be quite as gleaming and glazed (mostly because it is not covered in brown shoe polish); your own house will never be quite as inviting and box-fresh. The rational brain knows quite well that the photographs are as alluring as they are thanks to lighting and stylists and tricks of the trade. The sane brain knows none of it is real. But the irrational brain wails: why, why, why is my life not like that?

I’m not on a jeremiad against the mags. They can entertain and divert. I just think it’s really important to remember that they exist to sell things. In order to be put into a buying mood, people need to be riled into a mild state of discontent. There must be the sense of something missing. Then – le voilà! – there is the solution. This frock, that standard lamp, this pair of shoes is the ultimate solution to every existential ill that ails you.

This year, I had no time for discontent. I was worn out from work, coming up on a tight deadline, and fragile from mourning my beloved dog, who had to be put down in November. I needed a really happy Christmas. So, for once in my life, I did not give a bugger about what Nigella was going to do, or which stuffing Jamie was going to use. I had no use for the faintly smug decorating tips of the famous. I was not going to compete against the impossible standards of the magazine version of life or style.

After a frenzied moment of Christmas panic about three weeks out, I calmed myself,  went to the village flower shop, and with the happy feeling of supporting a local business, bought armfuls of eucalyptus and holly and ivy. I flung it all about and felt amazingly happy at the cheering vista of green. No one would come and photograph it, but it was real and it was mine and I loved it. I was not doing the ideal Christmas, I just did the authentic, slightly muddly human version.

And now, in the same novel tradition, I am not looking at the January features about detoxification, and cleansing diets, and losing those festive pounds. I have invented my own new year health plan, which involves stomping round a muddy field in pursuit of a very determined little Welsh pony. I am free-schooling her, and it is the best and funniest exercise either of us ever had. We are both going to be fit as a butcher’s dog by the end of it. Then I come in from the weather and eat some chicken soup. It is the Pony-and-Chicken-Soup Plan. It doesn’t really trip off the tongue, and you will not find it in any lifestyle section. I shall not be able to spin it into a best-selling book and retire on the proceeds. But it is, without a doubt, the best January regime I ever found.

I decide that this is the day to start the Christmas gravy. I like doing this early, so the flavours may mature. Then it’s just a question of adding all the lovely juices from the bird, on the actual day. This is such a domestic goddess plan that I practically fall over.

I run to the village shop to buy Madeira and Marsala. I’m not taking any chances. Actually, I can never quite remember which of them tastes more delicious so I generally throw in half a bottle of both. This year, I may also add some tawny port, for a certain je ne sais quoi. I explain some of this to the man in the shop. He seems marginally less fascinated by the subject than I.

All the time I am running around the village, the following things are running through my head:

Must get present for great-nephew. Can a boy have too many tractors? Answer, in his case: almost certainly not.

Must write Christmas cards. Must find out last posting day. Why am I even writing Christmas cards? I never send Christmas cards. I am up against a hard deadline, for the 3rd of January. Why I agreed to that date I do not know. I shall be writing chapter eighteen first thing on Christmas morning. There shall be no getting drunk on dry sherry and lying in. What was I thinking?

Parcels for the godchildren. Have to do parcels for the godchildren.

That present I got for my sister suddenly seems all wrong. I thought it so marvellously clever and delightful at the time, but now it looks somehow not quite right. This is the problem with doing Christmas shopping in advance. I did mind in November, believing myself to be gloriously organised and what my mother calls Ahead of the Game.

In fact, it is fatal, on two levels.

First of all, it lulls one into a false sense of security. I think, because the presents are bought, that I have got everything done. Then I end up running round the village in a panic, buying Madeira and thinking about tractors. Second of all, the object that looked so shiny and alluring a month ago may, with the simple passage of time, appear gimcrack and shoddy. Bloody hell, I think, what have I got in the present cupboard? (I will do anything not to go into Aberdeen which is, according to all reports, a zoo.)

Should I get a nice holly garland for the mantelpiece? I’m not having a tree so perhaps a garland will give the feeling of decking the halls. But what if one tiny spark from the fire shoots upwards and sets the thing alight and then the house burns down? I realise that, far from being in the proper Christmas spirit, I am catastrophising wildly.

Must make a special Christmas list. The To Do list is spawning itself in my head like one of those creatures on nature programmes which may have eight hundred babies at once. At least if I write it down, it might seem more manageable, and less like a hydra. But then I have to decide which of my forty-seven notebooks the Christmas list should go in, and this creates another impossible decision of its very own.

Must, for no known reason, buy panettone. I am suddenly convinced that Christmas is not Christmas without special Italian cake.

Must: write book, do blog, tidy house, feed horses, walk dog, wrap presents, go to post office, buy red roses (again, nobody knows why), get a ham, make watercress soup for strength, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and generally go faster.

Christmas, I think, I am exhausted just contemplating it. And all this is just me and a horse and a pony and a dog. I do not have four over-excited children, or a gaggle of parents-in-law, or even a husband to worry about. I have created this insanity in the privacy of my own head. I do not even read those publications which insist that if your house and your Christmas table do not resemble something in a glossy magazine you are officially a Bad Human. I have absolutely no idea where it all comes from. Perhaps it is a lady thing; perhaps I am biologically programmed, after all. Still, I suppose that at least it keeps my mind off the weather.

I scan the horizon, looking for weather. I scan the internet too. I am old school and new school. After many days of investigation I have found the best weather forecast, with helpful two hourly reports and a seven day long-range prediction. The only problem is that it changes from moment to moment. Yesterday, the seven days were: sleet, sleet, light snow, fair, light snow, rain, fair. Then it changed to mostly fair. At one point, someone at the meteorological centre got a bit giddy and put up some yellow sun, admittedly hedged with cloud.

All this is because of the horse. In my old life, I did not worry about the weather. It was wet or cold or frosty, or it was not. It only meant that I might have to wear a hat. Now, the weather is stitched into the very sinews of my life. It dictates how much hay I need, and what rugging programme should be implemented. The detachable neck, the under-rug, the mediumweight, or the serious winter heavy?

There are people who are frightfully butch about rugs, and insist they are the work of Satan, and that horses should be allowed to revert to their natural state. The animals will grow good long coats; they will build up a clever insulating barrier of oil against the skin which acts as a waterproof. It is unnatural, even unkind, say these zealots, to cover the poor animals in heavy clothes.

I see photographs on all the absurd horse sites I follow on Facebook of glorious equines, quite rugless, frolicking in the snow. But these are usually native breeds, hardy Icelanders, sturdy mountain ponies or the Highland strain. My darling mare is descended from three Arabian sires; her ancestors started out in the high, dry desert plains. Admittedly, the thoroughbred foundation sires were sent to good Irish mares, who must have had a bit of bone and toughness about them; that is where you see the strong steeplechasing horses come from. But still. I am not sending my delicate lady out naked into the Scottish winter.

I think that I am a bit like a farmer now, reliant entirely on the whims of weather. It has been bad lately; I struggle through wind and ice and snow to get the outdoor work done. People talk doomily of Siberian fronts bringing the most bitter winter for a hundred years. How shall the mare and I get through that, I wonder?

There is a faint hysterical edge to the meteorological reports. Channel Four is even running a whole programme about whether the weather is going to hell in a handcart. It’s not just that there may be no respite till March; there may be no respite ever. It’s all going to be freezes and floods and every kind of disaster. The way people are talking, you might think that poor Britons shall never see an ordinary sunny day ever again.

Sometimes I give in to the doom. As I skitter and skid and strain every muscle not to fall over, I wonder if no-one shall ever rid me of this turbulent ice. Then I remember the old men round here, who will tell you tales of their childhood winters, when they were snowed in for three months at a time. Now, our snows last for a week at most. Last season, there was a three week snow, which was regarded as very remarkable indeed. It was nothing compared to what those old-timers lived through.

There is a seam of granite which runs through these north-eastern Scots. It is in the landscape, where that stone is indigenous, and it is metaphorically in the character. There is a doughtiness here that astonishes me still; it is nothing like the soft south where I grew up. It took a bit of getting used to, when I first moved up here. It can come out as curtness; strangers sometimes think it almost rude. But it is just a very splendid attitude of getting on with it. Historically, merely surviving in these parts required a gaunt steeliness, and that strain lives here still.

I like it. I can learn from it. Even my highly-bred duchess is toughening up, taking this hard northern weather in her stride. Even if it is the worst winter ever, we shall stock up on hay, and rug ourselves up, and put our heads down, and bash on through.

The snow is absolutely belting down outside. I just got over the hills before it came in; looking at it now, I wonder if I would have made it back if I had driven a day later. As it was, I roared home yesterday in a glittering minus six, with only the high mountains covered in white. Now the sky is a dirty dun colour and we are in blizzard conditions. I am making traditional Scottish mince for warmth and strength and praying that the lights do not go out.

Home is wonderfully comforting and familiar. But it has one new thing in it. It has a four-year-old brindle lurcher called Stanley.

I was not going to get another dog for a while. I thought I needed time and space for my heartbreak. A few years ago, I would have been shy about using such a word about a canine, but I discover that dogs crack the heart just as much as humans do, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. I thought too I might like a moment of liberty, of not having the responsibility, of being able to travel on a whim. I was going to get my passport renewed and go to St Petersburg and Copenhagen and perhaps to see the Fjords.

What a lot of nonsense that idea was. A house without a dog in it turned out to be a thin, sad place. I kept seeing the ghost of my darling old girl in every room. I hated not having anyone to walk. And there was Stanley, staring out at me from the internet, as if pleading for a good home. I have a good home; it seemed rude not to take him. So I went to Somerset and got him and put him in the car and drove him to Scotland, and now he has his first big northern snow, which he seems to regard as a tremendous joke.



He is different in every way from my soft lab-collie crosses. He is lean and fast and compact, like a racing dog (there is greyhound in him), and he is comical and playful where they were elegant and gracious. He has their same talent for making friends, though. As we stopped overnight at the motorway miracle that is Tebay, complete strangers came up to speak to him and stroke him. He has such a nice face that people see him and smile. This gives me profound delight.

It’s funny, having a new dog again. I have to get to know all his quirks and habits, his loves and hates. I have not yet found his sweet spot, although it is not for want of looking. I have to invent a routine that shall suit him, and work out exactly how we shall fit together. I shall map his character, from day to day.

Despite being a rescue, he is quite independent, not nervy or needy as I had feared. My last dog would lie down next to my feet as I worked, as close to me as she could possibly get. She would follow me gently from room to room, like a faithful shadow. This one has taken himself off into the next room, clearly regarding the writing of words as a thing of no interest. He is curled politely on his special new sheepskin rug, which I bought from a nice man in Tetbury market whilst I was in the south, quite happy on his own, waiting until I should see fit to take him out again, into all that larky snow.

The rescuing of a lost dog is not what I thought would happen to me now. It was a sudden, imperative whim. I am gladder than anything that I followed it. I have a dog for Christmas, and for life.

It’s strange how one changes, as age marches on. When I was younger, I was a careless traveller; I thought nothing of leaping on an aeroplane at a day’s notice, and running off to Manhattan or Cochin. Now, leaving home is like a physical wrench. I like to imagine I am a citizen of the world, but sometimes I think if someone told me I would never again be able to leave Scotland, it would come as a slight relief.

As I come to the end of the first week in the south, staying with the cousins I visit twice a year, there is the usual sense of bittersweet. It is enchanting here: a charming house, a happy family, delightful dogs, green fields to walk over, a rambling garden to explore. I have all possible love and comfort; there is good conversation and good jokes and good food and fine wines. There are even horses to divert me, since the cousin’s husband runs a polo yard. I go outside to see his summer stars, all dopey and furry and relaxed in their winter coats, enjoying their lazy months off.

The things I am missing. Number one: the mountain

Yet the sight of them makes me miss my own mare, and my own field, and my own equine routine, which has become such a defining part of my daily life. Getting out before breakfast to do the feeding and grooming and riding and groundwork has become the most meaningful part of my day. Writing, which is my job and my love, obviously gives its own definition, and I could not exist without it, but, oddly, it is the hard physical work, out in the mud and the air and the elements, which currently gives me the most joy. It’s not necessarily what I would have expected.

Slowly, slowly, for all the joy of being here, I feel the homesickness build. I am so dug into Scotland, I even find myself missing the mountains. There are no mountains in the south; I scan the horizon fruitlessly. I miss the glacial valleys and the dark Scottish woods and the blue hills and the weather coming in from the north-east. I did not grow up there; I had almost no knowledge of the place until I moved north, on a complete whim, fourteen years ago. Belonging is such a curious and nebulous concept, but the very landscape has stitched itself so deeply into my heart that leaving it, even for a short time, creates a slight gap in me, as if something is missing.

The things I am missing. Number two: this face

This does all sound a bit flaky. It’s just a horse and a few hills, after all. One must get out in the world; I have hermit-like tendencies which should not be indulged too much. But then I imagine the thing as if it were the other way round - if I did not miss home, if I had no sense of belonging, if I did not yearn for the mountains - and I think how awful and arid and sad that would be. It might make my social life rather more complicated, but I wonder perhaps it is not a great piece of luck and privilege, to find a place where I am so deeply rooted. They really are my hills, and I lift my eyes up to them, and find my strength.