Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

In one of the Jills, though I can't remember which one, she says that if she has any children, she's sure they'll like sordid things like Alsatians or ballet. Or at least I think she does. The moment I read that as a child, it was as if a bell pinged and I saw my future, and sure enough, my daughter is a ballet girl. She's read the Sheltie books, but she's a grown up girl of 11 now, and has left Sheltie well behind. Alas she hasn't replaced them with any of my lovely pony books; not one. I've made subtle, and not so subtle, efforts to interest her in Jill but it hasn't worked. Sigh.

Not really terribly pony related this post; though I am having a brief break from proof reading Six Ponies . I've had a few manic days recently as I've been organising a drama course, of which the first day has finally happened. So far it's going well, though I am absolutely shattered. Why though do I have such broken nights beforehand, suddenly waking up and adding something to my vast list of things to do? I wish there was a way of training my brain to think of these things at a sensible hour, but it seems to prefer to do it at unsocial hours when I'd really much rather be asleep. The children are doing really well, and we've nearly got to the end: just frantic rehearsals tomorrow before the performance for parents. Hopefully by then I'll have recovered some voice - having been singing what seems like every part apart from the main one to teach them to children who aren't used to learning parts at speed my voice is in need of rest. As indeed is ...

At last, after weeks of getting submerged by a myriad of other things, I have finished my Caroline Akrill article: it's here .

I can cry at pretty much anything (I was never good, but became far, far worse once I had the children.) My family are now very used to my welling up at emotional moments in films, and they all turn round expectantly at particularly mushy moments, whilst I gulp and try (and usually fail) to give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Again. When I read Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate , I so sympathised with Linda, who is endlessly made to cry by being taunted about the match by her tougher siblings: - 'A little, houseless match, it has no roof, no thatch, It lies alone, it makes no moan, that little, houseless match.' My absolute prime weepy moment isn't actually a pony book at all: it's E Nesbitt's The Railway Children . Even typing it is enough. It's the "Daddy, my Daddy," bit at the end. But pony books do their bit too to add to the dampness. I have great difficulty reading Black Beauty when he meets Ginger again, and then the cart with...

I've had a very interesting email on pony books, heroines and wealth, and I'm going to quote from it directly - it was in response to my earlier post about a poor but nasty pony book heroine: ... an impoverished pony-owner being resentful and bitter and never reforming is the obnoxious Charlie Dewhurst in Three Ponies and Shannan. This seems to me to be the exact opposite of the classic pony book. Charlie Dewhurst should be the heroine; she has a lot in common with other pony book heroines. Like Misty in Jackie won a Pony, Jingle used to pull a cart before taking up a career as a riding pony. Charlie is the daughter of a country parson, and they are always poor, although the families are generally happy (as in A Stable for Jill and any number of Lorna Hill novels). In a traditional pony book, the fifteen pound Jingle would triumph over the three hundred pound Serenade. Although Christina does not win the jumping she does prove herself to be as good as any poor groomless child ...

I was let out from my office yesterday and went on a garden visit to Docwras Manor : a lovely garden: not immaculate enough to be depressing, but with enough interesting plants to make it a garden where you didn't quite know where to look first. I went with a local flower arranging club - I cannot arrange flowers to save my life, bunging a few things in a vase and hoping being more my style, but I have friends who are brilliant at this arcane art, and they invited me along. So, the Flower Club outing, you would have thought, would have been a staid thing, filled with the middle aged. Filled with the middle aged it was. We went in a coach (having always been sniffy about coaches, I have now come to love them - so lovely not being the parental taxi service and able to see what passes) and were told firmly by our leader to be back at 9.15. Well, 9.15 came and went, and several of our number were not there. They carried on not being there. They must be still in the garden, w...

I do agree with the comments on my last post: if the characters, dialogue and plot are good enough, then period trappings shouldn't matter. I wonder if the problem is rather more one of perception: Susanna Forrest says "If publishers are prepared to take a gamble and let pony books escape from the "posh gel" stereotype...", and I wonder if this is it. Ponies are seen as something beyond the reach of most people and if you stock a pony book you are in some way promoting that difference. That might be why it's the Heartland and the baby pony fantasies which are the ones stocked. Heartland is set in the USA, and therefore has the exoticism of abroad (albeit an abroad we're very familiar with) and you can excuse a lot of PC sins by combining them with fantasy - like Harry Potter and the boarding school. Maybe that's why the Jordan books are so pink and sparkly - it's the publishers' way of saying "This isn't real life: it's ...

Susanna Forrest has written an article for today's Daily Telegraph on pony books: it's here . Aside from the fact I am quoted (along with Caroline Akrill and Vanessa from Fidra), it's a good article, with whose conclusions I do of course agree! As I am a complete anorak, I was particularly interested to read about the 18th century book by Arabella Argus: Memoirs of Dick, the little poney. Of course, had I only given it a second's thought, it was highly likely that there would have been horsey stories pre-Black Beauty. I'm now all excited by the thought of a whole set of early books I knew nothing about, but will have to try very hard not to do anything about it until I have got a bit further down the to-do pile - including the Caroline Akrill article, which I have very nearly finished, I promise.

Here is the illustration. In some ways I quite like it - it's lively and has rather more character to it than the books, but the ponies look rather more like elks (and if I'm right, the one standing at the open door is supposed to be an Arabian), and it's the inaccuracy of it that gets me. I'm not usually a stickler for health and safety - my daughter often rode bareback, and you don't find that happening in riding schools these days - but in a situation like this where you have a lot of children, and loose ponies, and buckets and brooms..... I can see it being published in the Pony Club Annual entitled "What is wrong with this picture?" And if I was Vicki, owner of the riding school where this is set, I'd be scared witless of being sued when the inevitable happened. There are whole reams I could write, but I can feel myself coming over all moralistic, so I think I'll go on a nice harmless visit to the Bank to pay in the week's takings!

I've just been sent a set of Katie Price's (aka Jordan) journey into children's books: they're called Katie Price's Perfect Ponies , and well, they're pink. They are aimed completely shamelessly at girls: the covers are bright Barbie pink with silvery trimmings and a sub-Bratz character on the front. Katie Price I know does have horses of her own, and she knows her stuff. Random House, the publishers, have a Perfect Ponies website , and the pony care tips are accurate and sensible. The stories themselves are written competently enough (as always with these celebrity books, I do wonder who did the actual writing) but without any sort of heart - nothing to really engage the emotions, or attract you to the characters. Interestingly, the most popular character at the moment on the website is Cara - who is a nervy biscuit who doesn't like going fast or jumping, and the only one who is memorable for anything other than the way she looks. Even so, Cara's big bl...

I've just been reading Josephine Pullein-Thompson's Plenty of Ponies , which is one of her earliest works. It's the story of the Esmonds, whose parents have, contrary to usual pony book form, hit good times, meaning that they now have a pony each, a large house and plenty of staff. Lewis says: "It's much easier to be nice if you're poor." Charlotte, his sister, says "I should think it's extremely difficult to be nice if you're really poor and don't have enough to eat and live in a slum, but I agree that it's good for one to be poverty-stricken like we were." I wonder if it's the idea of noblesse oblige that JPT likes: it's alright to have money, but you must do the right things with it: treat your fellows, staff and horses well and live a life that doesn't focus simply on what you can buy. The main adult figures in the Noel and Henry books, Major and Mrs Holbrooke embody all these things. June Cresswell, on ...

I would think it has to be Myrtle Green's "A Pony - Doctor's Orders" which succeeds in sounding like a breathless Mills and Boon. I can see it now. The tweed suited vet, his dark face twisted in a handsome sneer, tells the beautiful but bedraggled groom, hanging on desperately to the head of the plunging thoroughbred, completely failing to hold him steady as the vet does something Extremely Important: "A pony - that's all you're fit for. You'll never be woman enough for a horse. Or for me."

A few years ago I bought some lily bulbs: I've always loved lilies, but struggled to grow them when we lived in London because of the lily beetles. Despite frequent night raids on them they had the better of me. So, I thought, after a few years had passed and dulled the pain, I'd try again. I bought some Madonna Lily bulbs, read the instructions, carefully dug holes, made little sand beds for the bulbs and sat back and hoped. In the spring, the lilies poked little green heads above the soil. Every day I went out and inspected them, and soon they were about 5 inches tall. One day I was looking idly out of the landing window, which overlooks the garden, and saw a squirrel (the grey kind of course). I don't like squirrels at the best of times: ours ate enormous amounts of bird food - and by the way if anyone tells you the way to deal with squirrels is to feed them, don't listen. If you feed them they just bring their mates to join in the bounty - dug endless ho...

Daughter did the first of her secondary school induction days yesterday. She is the only one in her class going to this particular school; it's where her brother goes, and it's a good long stretch away from where we live. Yesterday I dropped them both off at the station: with an excellent start as her brother shot from the car like a bullet, leaving her trying to get her bags together and catch up. Fortunately as soon as he was out of my sight he upped his act, and daughter spent all free time at school being beseiged by what must have been most of year 10. They told her she looked nothing like her brother (just as well as he is 6' 5", hairy and unshaven), and yes, they patted her on the head. I thought they might. She has made 1 1/2 friends; the half being one she met on the train coming home, and loved school. Oh phew. Oh the relief. Shall now put my guilt at whisking daughter away from all her friends, and thereby behaving in a thoroughly predicatable mid...