A HANDFUL OF WIND

I went to the stables today to help my friend plan her music for dressage. That place is a whole new world to me: huge muscular horses on spindly yet powerful legs, uneven, dusty earth and stones, and the gentle aroma of hay and horse poo on the breeze.

I wore my trainers and felt as out of place as Marty McFly in Back To The Future Part III. I was alright though - I was there to time the walk and the trot in beats per minute, and work out what would be comfortable for the routine.

Practising equestrian sport must be one of the most difficult things to do. A snooker player can spend hours potting balls around a lamplit table, an athlete just needs a track. Meanwhile team games can be practised with just a field, a ball (usually) and a scheduled training session, which must be so easy to arrange. But eventing, show jumping, dressage? You don’t just need a place, a team, and a time; you need the cooperation of a member of another species! 

I clicked around with my metronome, finding the natural pace of the horse’s gait. It occurred to me that the order in which each hoof strikes the earth is important, but that the pattern was always the same. It was magnificent to watch, as the shoes glinted in the setting sun, and the dust was caught by the long beams of light.

The horse, a rich chestnut brown with a smooth black mane, is an ex-racehorse who still manages to look sleek, elegant, and powerful. I always forget how big horses are until I see one again.

They are truly splendid. Thousands of years of domestication and evolution, from the desert horses that were described in Arabic as a ‘handful of wind’ to those strong work horses that pulled us into the age of steam; from the war horses that terrified the plains and battlefields, to the radiant carriers of kings and princes, here we are - in harmony with these gentle, magnificent, noble creatures of old. It’s a thing of wonder really.

I could have pondered the history, the elegance, the sheer magnificence of these animals a lot longer of course, but on one of the last passes round the ring, while I stood there clicking a metronome and thinking it through, this particular horse lifted its tail and loudly broke wind at me.