BACKWARDS IN HIGH HEELS

At the beginning of 2020, I resolved to write every day about gratitude. I would keep a gratitude journal, counting all my blessings, one by lovely one. It relapsed, as these things often do...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/03/cheltenham-gratitude-redux.html

The gales blew all day and Scotland looked dour and cross. So today I am extremely grateful that the electricity is still on and that a tree did not fall on my head.

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-fourteen.html

Today, I am grateful that I have excellent gumboots. I’m especially grateful that my excellent gumboots do not have a hole in them. I’m grateful that I’ve got a hat that keeps of...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/p.html

My gratitudes are very simple today.  There are two of them. First, the red mare gave her young friend Cara the most gentle, gracious, tender ride this morning. ‘That,’ said Ca...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-eleven.html

This experiment is revealing some fascinating things, even just ten days in.  There have been moments when I have resisted gratitude, which feels bizarrely weird. Surely it should be a j...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-ten.html

Today, I was grateful for the Scottish sunshine. The gales of yesterday blew themselves away, and, after some early cloud, the sun came out and shone down on the land, lighting it with a kin...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-nine.html

All right, I give up. When I started this Gratitude Project, I was determined that it would not all be about horses. Even though it’s a private experiment, I knew that some people out ther...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-eight.html

Today, I am really, really grateful for my children. The funny thing is that I don’t have any actual children of my own. I never wanted to have any. This is often presented in the media...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-seven.html

I hit some kind of weird wall yesterday, which I can’t quite identify. A lot of people I know are struggling a bit at the moment. The news seems so overwhelming just now, and even if you t...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-six.html

I had a great big gratitude ready to go and then I went home and got cross and refused to write it. There it was, waiting for me, ready to make my life better and improve my mental health an...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-five.html

I’m grateful today for patience and belief. Just over a year ago, I took on the training of a Connemara mare for my great-niece. The sweet pony was christened Clova and we all adored he...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-four.html

Today, I am grateful for the weather. The British famously talk about the weather. Even though I know this is the most terrible cliché of Britishness, like queuing, saying sorry, and enj...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-three.html

Today, I was profoundly grateful for the internet. I had been asked to do a podcast with my friend Jane Pike on creativity. I’m a bit late to the podcast party, but I’ve been catching...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-two.html

I’m absolutely hopeless at New Year’s resolutions. I have a cussed streak which makes me kick against anything obligatory or mandated. But this year, I would like to make a change. I’m...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2020/01/gratitude-day-one.html

The day after Christmas, I did something wrong. It was also pretty stupid. I do wrong and stupid things all the time, but this one was in public.  I idiotically waded into a fox row.  ...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/12/embracing-wrongness-or-life-lessons-can.html

A Russian philologist wants to be my friend.  I stare at the request on Facebook. The first thing I think is: mafia. Isn’t that terrible? I don’t think War and Peace, or The Cherry O...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-russian.html

I call, merrily, ‘Goodbye, Gilly. Lovely to see you.’ I wasn’t at all merry an hour earlier. I woke up, as I sometimes do, with a sense of pressure and portent. I usually put into a...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/10/an-unexpected-poet-and-meeting-in-woods.html

One of the things I really enjoy in life is thinking that I am a pretty decent person. I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me. I sit about and say to myself, ‘You know, you reall...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/10/in-which-asda-man-teaches-me-life-lesson.html

Last night, on an American racecourse, a bold and beautiful Irish horse died.  Wicklow Brave was well named. He was brave. He was also supremely idiosyncratic and wonderfully characterfu...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/10/farewell-to-wicklow-brave-or-thoughts.html

Out in the world, far away from the Brexit shouting and the political shenanigans, there is a horse called Enable. Today, she is going to go out onto the smooth green turf of Longchamp to tr...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/10/enable.html

I had thirteen hours of sleep last night. Thirteen hours. I can’t remember the last time that happened. I woke briefly in a windy, blue, bleary dawn and rolled over and went back to sleep....

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-joy-of-sleep.html

The Gold Cup six years ago was one of high emotion and high drama. I wrote it all down, and I’m so glad I did. I’m reproducing it here, because the story of Estimate always deserves to b...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-story-of-estimate-or-in-which.html

Today, my darlings, is my Day of Jubilee. It is my Independence Day. I have finally decided to set myself free. I realise, at the dear old age of fifty-two, that all my life I’ve been s...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/05/my-day-of-jubilee-or-in-which-i-finally.html

Today, I sent off a manuscript to my agent. I’ve had so many crashes and smashes in my writing career that I had almost given up on the traditional publishing route. I could not deal wi...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-big-day.html

One of the oldest and dearest friends rang this morning. She is the Indispensable Friend. There are a very few that I absolutely could not do without and she is one of them. We talked abo...

http://taniakindersley.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-gift-of-helpless-laughter.html