spring break part two: HORSES!

Oof, I just had a painful expe­ri­ence. We had been pay­ing our rent here at War­bur­ton House via direct deb­it, which enables us to live here while blithe­ly pre­tend­ing it isn’t cost­ing us the same as stay­ing in a real­ly high class hotel every night. But some­thing went wrong with the deb­it this month and John just asked me to go round to the estate man­age­ment with a cheque. There was some­thing vague­ly, odd­ly out of place in the whole sce­nario: I was met in the impos­si­bly chic and intim­i­dat­ing lob­by of Grosvenor Estates by a young woman dressed in clothes much fanci­er than what I wore to John’s boss’s din­ner par­ty, snooti­ly lend­ing me her biro to make out my cheque, and there I was, soaked to the skin from the typ­i­cal April rain, wear­ing nasty jeans that are more famil­iar with the Bronx than with May­fair. Very odd.

Oh our trip to the British Open Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onship was SO COOL. Many of you may know that as lit­tle as a year ago, I was not exact­ly a horse per­son. But maybe it took absence to make my par­tic­u­lar heart fonder, because for what­ev­er rea­son, it was real­ly touch­ing to see hors­es again! We arrived a bit late due to a train stop­page, and being tak­en to the wrong hotel in the taxi, but got to the are­na in Sheffield just in time for the mas­sive­ly enter­tain­ing, light­ning-quick 4‑minute polo match­es. There was Jack Kidd, he of Hel­lo! mag­a­zine fame, on the “blue team” and some oth­er gor­geous Eng­lish­men in the “red team,” and the crowds all scream­ing and eat­ing nasty things like tuna on jack­et pota­toes. That’s a sub­set of the Eng­lish obses­sion with mix­ing tuna up with odd stuff like sweet­corn: then they have to do some­thing with it, and one of the pecu­liar things they do is to pile it on a baked pota­to and wrap it in foil so peo­ple can try to bal­ance it on their knees at polo match­es. That and chick­en cur­ry. On a pota­to, truly.

Polo is much more excit­ing than I would have thought, most­ly because the ponies are so beau­ti­ful. And, too, there is absolute­ly no wast­ed time, the thing that makes most sports bor­ing to me. In fact, there’s a penal­ty for stand­ing still. So it’s con­stant flash­ing action, with the ponies seem­ing­ly as involved in the sport as the men. And cute uni­forms! After polo came… the phe­nom­e­non that is… Loren­zo. He’s this cute lit­tle French dude who appar­ent­ly in his long ago and not at all mis­spent youth gath­ered more ponies on his farm than he could man­age to exer­cise per day, so he invent­ed a sys­tem of stand­ing on the backs of two ponies while run­ning around with two more ponies on each side. White gor­geous crea­tures, per­fect­ly matched and with an obvi­ous ado­ra­tion of him. The per­for­mance (unhap­pi­ly marred by a real­ly scary poly­ester ruf­fled out­fit for Loren­zo, how un-chic and un-French, but I guess the sort of ice-skater men­tal­i­ty out­weighs his nat­ur­al cool­ness) pro­gressed from just can­ter­ing around man­ag­ing not to fall off the ponies’ backs, to actu­al jump­ing over rails and then he him­self jump­ing over poles to land per­fect­ly on their backs again. Total­ly entertaining.

After Loren­zo was the best thing of all, the show jump­ing itself. As I vague­ly knew, but had nev­er real­ly stud­ied, the con­cept of show jump­ing is that it’s against the clock. Noth­ing mat­ters but speed, and not knock­ing over the fences. The first event was the Young Rid­ers’ Com­pe­ti­tion, which is the under-23 crowd. Both men and women, all slim, per­fect­ly turned out in white show breech­es, red or black coats and fan­cy stocks at their throats, knee-length shiny boots and vel­vet hel­mets. These peo­ple and their hors­es man­aged to get over some­times 11 or 13 jumps, in a real­ly arcane and pre­cise order, in under 70 sec­onds. Amaz­ing. There was one fam­i­ly whose reign over the sport was such that they war­rant­ed a whole page in the pro­gramme, devot­ed to their fam­i­ly tree. Avery was famil­iar with the young woman of the fam­i­ly, Ellen Whitak­er, from her “Young Rid­er” and “Horse and Hound” mag­a­zines. I have always won­dered how there was enough to say to war­rant a month­ly mag­a­zine, but now I am begin­ning to see the light. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it was not poor Ellen’s day. Every time she came out the announc­er made a huge fuss, shout­ing, “It’s the one, the only, York­shire’s own young eques­tri­an super­star, the newest mem­ber of the Whitak­er dynasty… ELLEN WHITAK­ER!” And then she pro­ceed­ed to knock down all the fences and come in over the time lim­it. Appar­ent­ly she was rid­ing a green­ish pony who’s not been ade­quate­ly apprised of Ellen’s pub­lic image.

Then there were the adult show jumpers, whose aplomb was impres­sive. To my fem­i­nist cha­grin, I noticed a dis­turb­ing pat­tern. At Avery’s barn in New York, and in ever barn I have ever been in, it’s near­ly all lit­tle girls. John is always say­ing that if he had known as a lit­tle boy what he knows now, he would have tak­en up rid­ing. It’s where all the cool girls hang out and NO BOYS. How­ev­er. You get to the lev­el of the Young Rid­ers in show jump­ing and it’s per­haps half boys, half girls. The girls do well, mind you, but where did all these males come from? And then, at the top, just like in the food world, it’s vir­tu­al­ly all men. Avery and I were frus­trat­ed by this to the degree that we did­n’t know whether to cheer for an Eng­lish male rid­er (sure­ly the patri­ot­ic thing to do), or just ANY woman, no mat­ter her nation­al­i­ty. That makes me crazy. How many men pro­duce din­ner for their fam­i­lies every night, com­pared to how many women? And yet, when it comes to being famous for cook­ing and mak­ing lots of mon­ey at it, all the heavy hit­ters are guys. Enough rant­i­ng from me, but it was notice­able and I won­der what the expla­na­tion is. Can’t be pure ridicu­lous sex­ism, because the fact is it’s all judged by a clock.

Any­way, male mem­bers (I don’t mean that as it sounds!) of the Whitak­er fam­i­ly scooped lots of events. There was so much excite­ment in the air over a tenth of a sec­ond here or there, and the tee­ter­ing of a fence — would it stay and be for­got­ten, or fall and cost the rid­er four points? — that I near­ly did not notice when I could no longer breathe com­fort­ably. I had for­got­ten my inter­mit­tent aller­gy to hors­es, but indoors, with no fresh air, sur­round­ed by hors­es, horse poop, horsey dirt, etc., it got real­ly bad as the evening wore on. We emerged dur­ing one of the inter­vals to try to find first aid and see if they had anti­his­t­a­mines, which they did, and it helped after a bit, but not enough. By the time we left I was pret­ty mis­er­able. But it’s a mea­sure of how much fun it was that I did­n’t insist we leave. By far the most excit­ing event was some­thing called the “accu­mu­la­tor,” in this instance as in most sport­ing events, named after its spon­sor, the “Eas­ibed” horse bed­ding mate­r­i­al com­pa­ny. So the “Eas­ibed accu­mu­la­tor” works like this: the first jump is worth one point, the sec­ond two points, and so on. Except that if you knock a fence over, you don’t get any points, and you’re back to what you would have earned on that one, on the next. Then at the end there’s a HUGE jump that’s called “the risk,” and you can either jump it suc­cess­ful­ly and gain 25 points, or jump it unsuc­cess­ful­ly and lose 25 points, or not risk it and stay neu­tral. It was won­der­ful to watch, and try to fol­low the addi­tion of points, because just when you got used to the point sys­tem when the rid­er did­n’t knock any­thing over, some­one did knock some­thing over and all the scor­ing changed. Plus there was the roar of the crowd when the over­head mon­i­tors blared out “CLEAR ROUND,” mean­ing that no fences had been knocked over. So exciting!

We went back to the hotel in a haze of hors­es, points, rid­er names, and in my case, a com­plete­ly inabil­i­ty to breathe through my nose or stop cough­ing. But I loaded up with Benadryl, and after a dis­gust­ing room ser­vice piz­za and a hor­ri­ble pack­aged fruit crum­ble for Avery (“there’s KIWI!” she moaned in revul­sion), we were out like lights.

Up first thing for the meal that even the most aver­age of Eng­lish cooks can con­sis­tent­ly get right (sor­ry, adopt­ed coun­try): break­fast. Scram­bled eggs, sausages, pota­toes ros­ti, bacon, grilled toma­toes, hot tea. Yum. We ate as much as we could, Avery adding pain au choco­lat and crois­sants, know­ing that it would a real­ly long time before any­thing that was­n’t a jack­et pota­to came our way. Off again to the are­na, for anoth­er round of all the same stuff, and also a dis­play of dres­sage, which is sort of horse bal­let. This young girl had trained her horse not only to do tra­di­tion­al high-step­ping, pre­cise dres­sage moves, but had set it all to music. The horse’s feet actu­al­ly stepped in time to music, and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent songs. Very impres­sive. Our last event was one more per­fect polo match, and Jack Kidd was on our team. In the last few sec­onds he scored, and our team won, suit­ably, for our last day. I swear when he came gal­lop­ing by on his vic­to­ry round, he raised his hel­met to ME.

Home on the train in a love­ly sun­set, and to John in May­fair! He brought our present after present from his trav­els, a gor­geous orange shoul­der bag for me, and a beau­ti­ful lux­u­ri­ous leather suit­case, and Chi­nese paja­mas for Avery, with one embroi­dered pat­tern on the out­side and a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent pat­tern on the lin­ing. And Chi­nese can­dies! So good to have him home. He man­aged to stay up to a rea­son­able hour, and get back in synch with Lon­don time.

Sun­day after­noon found us on the train to Wim­ble­don Vil­lage Sta­bles, all in the horsey spir­it, to try one more les­son at one more barn. The walk up the hill was a chal­lenge, and it was rest­ful to real­ize that it would be down­hill on the way home! An impromp­tu lunch at the Cafe Rouge in the Wim­ble­don High Street, watch­ing more babies in pushchairs (not called strollers here), and more preg­nant women walk by than we have seen since leav­ing zip­code 10013 in New York. Some baby boom. Gor­geous steak frites for John and Avery, and I had a love­ly mesclun sal­ad with goat cheese rounds on baguette toasts and roast­ed toma­toes. With some yum­my Bel­gian straw­ber­ry beer, more like a fruit soda than a drink.

To the sta­bles, where a huge mass of would-be rid­ers were even­tu­al­ly paired off with ponies, Avery being assigned to one “Rolo,” a love­ly lit­tle guy. They head­ed off to Wim­ble­don Com­mon, and John stayed behind to read a book, while I cruised the High Street for din­ner sup­plies. An amaz­ing (and amaz­ing­ly expen­sive) deli called Bay­ley and Sage, where I want­ed one of every­thing, but con­tent­ed myself with sev­er­al pun­nets (lit­tle con­tain­ers, don’t know where the word comes from) of straw­ber­ries to make Avery’s favorite straw­ber­ry cake. A vil­lage with no few­er than three inde­pen­dent book­stores, love­ly. Avery came in an hour lat­er, talk­ing a mile a minute as always to her instruc­tor, and dis­mount­ed say­ing it had been “won­der­ful.” I’m cer­tain­ly will­ing to try it again, since the loca­tion beats a rainy field in the mid­dle of nowhere. So she’s booked for Thurs­day and we’ll see after that.

Yes­ter­day Avery’s friend Sophia came over, and it’s always enter­tain­ing to see two only, much-dot­ed-on chil­dren work out who gets whose way. Nev­er nasty, but a far cry from the peace that reigns when the com­pli­ant, easy­go­ing Anna comes over, mid­dle child of three! Sophia and Avery each know exact­ly what they want, and it does­n’t come easy to nego­ti­ate it all through. They wad­ed through fish fin­gers, straw­ber­ry cake and apple juice, and ate their weight in can­teloupe, and then pro­ceed­ed to com­plete­ly tear apart both my room and Avery’s, in search of dres­sup clothes. I would­n’t have thought I had any­thing wor­thy of the cat­e­go­ry, but in the fash­ion show that ensued for Susan and me at pick­up time, out came cloth­ing I for­got I had: Dolce e Gab­bana, Comme des Gar­cons, high heels, even my hon­ey­moon vin­tage silk night­dress in peach lace! Won­der­ful to watch them put out­fits togeth­er with more of an eye than I cer­tain­ly ever had, hold­ing up waist­bands with long cos­tume jew­el­ry gold bead neck­laces. I had decid­ed to give Susan a real cream tea as a treat, so we had tiny crust­less turkey and ched­dar sand­wich­es, and toma­to sand­wich­es with gar­lic but­ter, and my favorite, shrimp but­ter. That is a divine and wicked spread made by pul­ver­iz­ing, in a Cuisi­nart, tiny canned shrimp with cream cheese, may­on­naise, lemon juice, minced onion and Tabas­co sauce, and of course a huge amount of but­ter. It’s one of John’s moth­er’s stand­bys for enter­tain­ing, and always a win­ner, hard not just to eat it with a spoon. With these we had, for the girls, scones with clot­ted cream and hedgerow pre­serves. Heav­en­ly, and such fun to gos­sip with Susan who always has an excel­lent New York or Lon­don gos­sip sto­ry or two. Yes­ter­day her big rev­e­la­tion was a report of their din­ner par­ty with Lord and Lady Some­body or Oth­er, the Lady hav­ing been the inspi­ra­tion for Antoine de St. Exu­pery’s “The Lit­tle Prince.” Can you imag­ine? She has all the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions framed on her walls, what an irre­place­able thing. Her hus­band told Susan and her hus­band a hilar­i­ous sto­ry from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in the days before World War II. He and his friends came up with an idea for a cock­tail par­ty: why not invite every­one they could think of whose named end­ed in “Bot­tom”? A very com­mon suf­fix to upper-class names in British soci­ety, as it hap­pens. So they sent out invi­ta­tions, and then when the time for the par­ty came around, they sim­ply slipped away, so that all the guests had to intro­duce them­selves to each oth­er, and every­one’s name was “Bot­tom.” Only in England!

Today I have a bit of a cold, mixed with the rem­nants of all that pony dust, so we have been qui­et and peace­ful, emerg­ing in the rain only to take the bus to “Rid­ers and Squires,” a gor­geous shop for all things eques­tri­an, in South Kens­ing­ton in Thack­er­ay Street. A love­ly, atten­tu­at­ed, ele­gant young man helped us find new boots for Avery, as well as a warm and fleecy vest, gloves and a crop. Now she’s ready for her next les­son. Unless she gets side­tracked by her new accom­plish­ment: gar­gling. Her ever-help­ful father taught her this use­ful skill last night, and she imme­di­ate­ly came in to my bed­room where I was read­ing, to demon­strate. “Can you gar­gle, Mom­my?” So I had to demon­strate as well, and it was one of those love­ly moments of child­hood where you’d just as soon they stayed nine-going-on-ten for­ev­er. “Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Mom­my is real­ly GOOD at gargling…”

Last­ly, I have made a lit­er­ary dis­cov­ery, some­one you may all know already but I just found out about: Car­ol Shields. Her lat­est, and as it turns out last (she died in 2003) nov­el is called “Unless,” and if you are up for a ter­ri­bly sad, sear­ing­ly hon­est sto­ry about moth­er­hood and watch­ing your chil­dren grow away from you, it is a mar­velous read. One of her ear­li­er nov­els won the Pulitzer Prize for fic­tion, so obvi­ous­ly I am behind in this appre­ci­a­tion. Beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, occa­sion­al­ly very fun­ny, but with pas­sages that make you say out loud, “Exact­ly!” and real­ize that you have often had a ker­nel of her wise idea, but haven’t tak­en the trou­ble to artic­u­late it, and there it is for you. One of the bits that sticks with me today is her account of the main char­ac­ter’s inter­view with a jour­nal­ist about her lat­est nov­el. “And, Ms. Win­ters, can you tell me, what is the worst thing that has ever hap­pened to you?” She stops in her tracks and real­izes that, what­ev­er it is, it has­n’t hap­pened yet. I love that, not in a cheer­ful way, but in recog­ni­tion of one of the basic truths of par­ent­hood, at least for me. If, at the end of the day, one’s child is safe in bed, healthy and safe and hap­py, all is right with the world. And the flip side is, once your child has been born, you know in your heart of hearts what the worst thing in the world would be. You can’t say specif­i­cal­ly, but it would be some­thing that hap­pened to your child, not to you. A life-chang­ing moment. Get “Unless” and tell me what you think.