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The cherry tree failed to produce a single fruit this year, ditto the pear which admittedly surpassed itself last year with a veritable orchard's worth on its own, and the apples have been poor. The plums - those that were not hijacked by wasps - were good, but yet again the hedgerows are where the real treasure is to be found.
I have been on my first brambling expedition of the year this evening. One bag for me, one bag for next door and ten stung and scratched fingers. The bramble and apple crumble, which I intend to smother in custard, will be worth it though.
Little gold and striped spiders have spun their webs in the bramble bushes and I felt guilty when I accidentally knocked one from his home. In the morning the webs will dazzle with dew.
The arrival of spun silk in the hedgerows adds to the whiff of autumn. The Grey Mare is readying herself for winter too and is starting to look slightly fluffy.
I remember summer. It's just a shame it hasn't deigned to delight us with its presence for a couple of years.
The majority of what I did on my holidays involved copious amounts of mud - both of the Northumbrian and Scottish varieties.
My week off started with a smile when the Grey Mare delighted me with her dressage. The competiton had been forced inside because the field where it was due to be held was wet, boggy and muddy.
My mud-free moment occurred when I bade farewell to my old Corsa and swapped him for a green machine. My new car is diesel, which I hope will cut the fuel bills. I had emptied the Corsa the night before going to the garage. The garage man still said: "Horsey girl are you?" I don't know if it was the Grey Mare hairs clinging valiantly to the upholstery or the pervading pong of eau d'cheval. I have been ordered not to turn the new car into a horse equipment depositary.
More mud was in order when I accompanied a friend who was showing two ponies at a big horse event in Scotland. We were towed onto the lorry park by tractor and towed off again the next morning. The lorry park henceforth became known as 'the swamp'. My friend did marvellously well and not only won her class but won the championship against the first and second-placed ponies in three classes.
And today, I returned to the muddy showground of Glendale. This year, I was under cover, serving tea and coffee to horsey folk for a couple of hours.
My holiday is over, the summer - such as it was - is drifting on towards autumn and it's back to work tomorrow.
I have always thought I had the Grey Mare pretty well sussed. We have a good relationship and a fabulous bond. I usually know what will worry her and what she will take in her stride. But sometimes she surprises me.
Today was one of those days where she surprised me big time - and in a fabulous way. Today we went to our second dressage test. And we came second!
After the fiasco of our first attempt a couple of weeks ago, and her naughtiness and 'I'm not listening' while schooling this week, I was prepared for more of the same. I was even more concerned about our chances because due to the sodden ground, our test was in an indoor school. The Grey Mare has been in an indoor school once in the six years I have owned her and that was three or four years ago.
However, she was in a gorgeous huggy mood yesterday and seemed pretty happy this morning. She warmed up well in the field outside at the venue, I managed to stop her seeing the pigs near the school (many horses have a pig phobia) and we went into the indoor arena, complete with its scary white boards. An initial circuit of snort-snort-snort while we dandered round before the test began, then suddenly, she switched into soft, lovely dressage horse mode.
She behaved beautifully, worked well and I was utterly, utterly delighted with her. And we got a lovely big blue rosette.
I adore that wee horse!
The Grey Mare and I have a new hobby.
No, not her dropping me in the long grass when birds fly out of it unexpectedly (which has happened twice in the last month, the first of which necessitated me hobbling around with a stick for two days)... but dressage.
Dressage is something I have thought for some years that the Grey Mare should be able to do. She has resisted. However, we entered a competition and with grim determination (on my behalf) we practised. And we practised and we practised.
In the week or so leading up to our debut, I thought we had just about got it. I thought we might not make such fools of ourselves after all.
The day dawned, I was up at 5.30am, industriously plaiting her mane and tail and polishing her to perfection. She did, if I say so myself, look rather splendid. However, that is where the splendidness stopped.
Having not competed for four years, going away to the competition was just a wee bit too exciting. New place, new horses, and the horror of the white boards - and flowers - around the arena were all a bit too much.
The lovely soft dressage horseness we had almost achieved at home went out of the window and my grim determination returned - to complete the test. Which we did, with a couple of spooks, and a step or two outside of the dreaded white boards when she thought she was going to be able to escape.
However, it has now filled me with a desire to do it again - and keep doing it again until she performs away from home as well as I know she is capable of doing.
In our little pocket of coastal Northumberland, the snow rarely lingers. It has a tough battle against the salt air and needs to come fully equipped with reinforcements if it is to win the right to settle. It did - briefly - overnight but the roads are again wet and grass is peeping through the temporary dusting on lawns and fields.
It's a different story inland. Drive along an uncovered Beadnell Straight towards Swinhoe and before you reach the top, there will be snow. A definite line marks the end of the salty dominance. Looking out from my garden, the Cheviots have been white for a few days. And it's supposed to be spring.
I have a love-hate relationship with snow. Currently, I'm happy to be smothered in the stuff: I am off work for a week and the Grey Mare has a stable to be tucked into. But when I have to drive through it, and in previous years when she lived outside all year round, I hated it. Then, I was glad of our special little ecosystem.
Sometimes, though, the snow beats the salty air. At school, I prayed for snow, because it meant we would be sent home. The thickest I have ever seen was in February of 1987. We were all but blocked in for about a week. I loved it. The Grey Mare's predecessor (another grey mare, natch) lived at a dairy farm in the next village. I would trudge through the snow to feed her and be brought home by the tractor that had been called into service to deliver the milk.
The grey mare # 1 is long gone, and so is the dairy: houses occupy the field where the ponies grazed adjacent to black and white cows. I still think of them every time I pass by.
I don't like running at the best of times. And 6.15 in the morning is certainly not the best of times.
To be honest, I don't think any time is a good time for chasing chickens. It puts me in quite a fowl mood. But as there are only three left, I wouldn't like to be responsible for losing any more. Once, there were four brown chickens, six Black Rocks and a cute white one that looked like a snowball. But over the course of the winter, Mr Fox has been picking them off one by one.
The chickens, which roam freely during the daylight hours, have a perfectly fine hen house to sleep in. But they rarely do: why should they when there is the luxury of the stables to enjoy? The American barn with its sliding doors, electric lights, bales of hay, convenient stalls to roost on and horse feed to plunder must be a chicken's idea of a luxury hotel. And that would be all well and good if they didn't decide to sneak outside when you arrive to muck out in the morning.
The fox massacred one on the lawn the other week; today I thought her sisters would be going the same way after I stupidly forgot to close the main door when I took the Grey Mare the few yards to her field. Suddenly, they were clucking around my feet and I was able to quickly shoo two inside. Chicken number three, however, was made of sterner stuff. She was outside and she was not going back in.
I sprinted round and round after this feathered blur, shocked at her turn of speed. If her legs were longer, I would have sworn she was a decendant of the Road Runner. Finally, I managed to corner her near the hen house and fortunately the door was open. I bolted it smartly behind her, and leaving her in solitary confinement, I almost collapsed in a heap with the exertion.
"Are you all right?" asked my friend, arriving to feed her horse. I explained what had happened. "Oh, you should've just put some grain in a bucket and shaken it for them," she said when she stopped laughing at me.
"No, what I should have done," I gasped between pants, "is left the f***kers for the fox!"
The Grey Mare is sulking.
I thought yesterday's "I'm really not pleased with you, mother" attitude was because she had spent the day inside. With the worst storm since 1987 forecast and the gale starting to gather momentum when I fed her in the cold light of dawn, I thought she would appreciate it. She loathes spending the day with her head down, bum to the wind, simply surviving the elements, and I loathe the thought of it. However, the great storm did not hit Northumberland: by the time I arrived home there was an eerie calm of the kind where you find yourself breathing quietly, listening, waiting for something to happen.
I took her out for some grass, I chattered away inanely as is my wont, sorted out her bed, her dinner, her hay and her magnetic boots. I then sorted out the dark prince, who along with my sister's other three is my responsibility while she is off Nessie-spotting for a couple of days. The poor lad is lame and is staying in through necessity rather than non-arriving storms. I gave him some carrots and had a chat with him.
The force of the evil eye assailing me along the line of stables compelled me to turn around. "What are you doing, giving him my carrots!" she seemed to be saying. I had forgotten just how possessive the Grey Mare can be. She gets rather upset if I have anything to do with another horse in her sight as she thinks - quite rightly - that she is the centre of my universe.
She spent today outside, came in when I called and ate her tea while I went down the field to feed more of my sister's horses. But once I returned, I was searched thoroughly for carrots (in case I was hiding any for him) and watched intently while I sorted him out for the night.
I don't know how my sister manages to have four horses and keep them all happy. One spoiled little madam is quite sufficient for me.
It was the squashed frog that started it.
Still moist, it lay spreadeagled on the road where it had met its sticky end. I thought the frogs were all still hibernating, but it would seem not. Instead, they are awaking from their elongated winter sleep and sallying forth to seek sex, mind and body obeying instinct's instruction to find water and a mate. It probably never heard the car; I hope it didn't feel anything. I have a soft spot for frogs.
But it was the first signal I have seen this year that spring may not be so far around the corner. Every year, it seems impossible that the dark dampness will end, and every year I am amazed anew. But the light is gradually winning its battle and this weekend it crowed its superiority. Today, the sea was turquoise and the beach was packed. Beyond, the castle was masked by a diaphanous veil. Only the greyish wash sullying the blue showed it was a February not a June sky and the beach people wore coats rather than T-shirts.
Riding the Grey Mare, I spotted snowdrops beneath a naked thorn bush. The Grey Mare too, is naked - afterwards, I turned her out without her rug so she could enjoy a couple of hours of sunshine on her back. Of course, the first thing she did was roll in the mud before sallying forth to see her boys.
Like the frog, she is currently being driven by instinct. It is her first season of the year and it would be fair to say she is quite the definition of a saucy mare, as she shakes her booty at the boys, then sniffs, snorts and arches her neck. Thank god none of them have any balls.
If I had the Grey Mare's ability to attract the opposite sex I would not be sitting gathering dust on my spinster's shelf. Everywhere she goes, she inspires devotion. The latest horse to fall under her spell is one of my sister's thoroughbreds - the dark prince who was once entered (but didn't run) in the Derby. Following her recuperation alone in a little paddock adjoining the dark prince's field, she has now joined the big boys in there.
I watched her entry back into society with some trepidation; I am an incredible worrier when it comes to her welfare. She stood for a while staring at the other horses down the field then began trotting towards them. The dark prince cantered up and met her half way, then brought her to join the group. With minimal fuss, she was welcomed into the herd. The following day, I received a text from my sister after she'd turned the dark prince out. "It's pathetic," she said, "he's totally in love with her."
Two days later, her other boyfriend who had been on box rest due to lameness was allowed out for the first time in three months. He is now inhabiting the little paddock where the Grey Mare had been. They kissed over the fence and that night, when she went back inside, he spent hours shouting for her.
"I think she's even more of a mummy's girl since she's been staying in," said my friend (until she was ill, the Grey Mare lived outside 24-7). The Grey Mare put her head on my shoulder and cuddled in. She knows I always have carrots in my pocket.
After a month of walking, the Grey Mare's ridden rehabilitation programme has progressed to trotting. Although she is free to canter and buck in the field (and she does), we have been taking things slowly on the ridden front. Admittedly, I had tried a few strides of trot 'just to check' last week but that was all.
On Saturday, we set off on our familar power walk around the stubble field. I asked her to trot and she was off at a smart pace, legs going like pistons. I think she was overjoyed to be allowed out of a walk. She wasn't too keen to slow down again either. "Now you've let me trot, I'd like to carry on for a bit longer," was the message she was sending me. We walked for a while longer then tried another trot. This time the overriding message was: "Sod this, I want to canter! Can I? Oh, please!" Although the answer, for now, is no, it's fabulous to feel her so full of life and exuberance.
"I'd get really bored if I had to walk for a month," said one of the little girls at the stables. I am inclined to think the Grey Mare agrees with her. Me, I'm just happy to be riding my horse again.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as the festive season hoves into view, I am struck down with a lurgy of some description or other. In 2006, I had flu from hell which left me basically bedridden for a week, only crawling out to tend to the Grey Mare's needs and to drink Lemsip. This year, it was a cold which has morphed into a dry, hacking cough. One of the girls at the stables asked me if I had kennel cough the other day; I don't think she's that far from the mark.
I have been woken night after night, coughing up my guts as they (don't) say in polite society. My stomach muscles are aching with the effort. During the day, I have had to stop and catch my breath after doing anything vaguely energetic. The Grey Mare has been literally running rings round me in the morning when I take her down to her paddock. She is supposed to be the invalid but I am the feeble one. And I hate feeling feeble.
I have dosed myself up with hot lemon drinks, two varieties of cough medicine and little pills that boast they are 'flu strength' at stamping out the symptoms of coughs and colds. However, I don't think any of them work; cough medicine tastes nice but what does it actually do? I would love to find one that was as effective as the Drambuie my Grandad gave me last night. Unfortunately, I can't spend my life sipping Drambuie for medical reasons.
This morning, I awoke after an undisturbed night's sleep. I think I may be on the mend: typically, it's back to work tomorrow.
The Grey Mare has been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in one of the bones of her foot. Her treatment was a steroid injection into the coffin joint in her foot to bring down the inflammation, plus an expensive joint food supplement for life. Being the sort of horse mother I am, I have also bought her some magnetic boots.
She has been sound now for around six weeks. She was sound when she went into the vet for her injection three weeks ago. My vet had warned me there were certain risks associated with this procedure, not least the nasty things that can happen if infection gets into the joint because of the injection. I closed my mind to this, and thought happy thoughts.
Fortunately, my Horse and Hound was delivered a day later than usual that week. I think the fates were being kind to me, because hours after the she'd been for the treatment I sat in the bath reading that week's veterinary article which just happened to be a very frightening rundown of what happens when such a procedure goes wrong.
Luckily, it didn't go wrong. Madam is now out in the field during the day and in the stable at night. Last weekend, I started riding her. We will have to walk for around a month to build up her muscles again. Today, we have been for a power walk around the adjoining two fields.
On Wednesday, we had the farrier and because the Hunt was in the area and liable to send her doolally, she only had a couple of hours in the field. Consequently, on Thursday she did go doolally when I turned her out: cantering, squeaking (you should hear her squeak) and bucking with excitement. No one, it seems, has told her that she has arthritis.
The cherry tree failed to produce a single fruit this year, ditto the pear which admittedly surpassed itself last year with a veritable orchard's worth on its own, and the apples have been poor. The plums - those that were not hijacked by wasps - were good, but yet again the hedgerows are where the real treasure is to be found.
