Interview: Belinda Rapley
My latest interviewee is Belinda Rapley, author of the Pony Detectives series. It's about a group of four girls: Rosie, Alice, Charlie and Mia who keep their horses at Rosie's farmhouse home. It’s a solid and well-
Can you
tell me something about how you came to love the horse?
The honest answer is that I’m not quite sure how it
came about, it crept up out of nowhere! None of my family had ever shown any
interest in anything remotely horsey, and I grew up in suburbia with very
little greenery anywhere near. I used to share my name with an ancient donkey
on the Isle of Wight, and whenever we went over there on holiday I was allowed
to lead her out for some cow parsley, which she loved. But I don’t think I ever
crazed my parents for lessons, or a pony. On one holiday though my parents
organised a hack and I sat on my first ever pony at the grand old age of 10. My
sister went too, and we both had fairly regular lessons after that but for some
reason she lost interest while my obsession with horses just grew and grew. At
16 I ran away from home to fulfil my dream of working with them. My parents
became very supportive once they knew I was serious, even if they couldn’t
accept it necessarily as a sensible idea. After a while I did return to London
and an office job but once horses get into your blood, you can never fully
leave them – thankfully. I moved to Suffolk / Norfolk border five years ago
simply to be back in the countryside and to give myself the option to finally
live the life I’d longed for. After sharing a friend’s horse, Pinto, last year,
I became the immensely proud owner of an even more immensely proud, yet equally
comic, Andalusian. I adore him.
When you
left school, you worked in yards and as a riding instructor. Were there any
particular experiences you squirreled away, thinking that one day they’d be
good in a book?
Not consciously, no. In fact, I wish I’d squirreled
away more but my memory’s so appalling that if I did squirrel something away
I’d soon forget where to dig for it anyway! But while I’m thinking up ideas something
in the foggy recesses often gets jogged and details emerge. One memory tends to
lead to another, which is always quite nice, if a bit distracting. Moonlight,
the stolen pony from Moonlight, Star of the Show, was based on my favourite
pony at the riding school I went to (also called Moonlight, funnily enough). I
used to dream incessantly about owning him and taking him to shows. He was
awesome and somehow I always knew he would live on in one of my books. Some of
the things that happen to Rosie have happened to me, too – like the cowpat
situation, I’ll say no more... And I got the idea for the ghostly goings on in
Puzzle, the Runaway Pony, from an enormous Danish Warmblood I knew called
Sprout (his breeder had a sense of humour). He had the spookiest neigh I’d ever
come across. If I was ever the last person on the yard in the dark and I heard
him whinny it used to give me the willies and I’d end up running up the lane to
the road, scaring myself all the way!
What made
you decide to write a pony book series?
I’ve always, always wanted to write. I’m a bit of a
dreamer and tend to think in stories rather than live in the real world most of
the time (it’s a happy place to be). And because I love horses and could talk
about them endlessly all day, every day (and I do....!) it seemed like not just
the natural, but the only place to start.
Which
books (pony or not) have influenced you most in your own writing?
I love humour, and my favourite author is PG
Wodehouse – the way he juggles so many balls, keeping them effortlessly in the
air before catching them all at the end so neatly, is genius. I like catching
all the balls in my stories, too. I know that doesn't necessarily reflect real
life, but I think in these stories and for this age group it’s possible. Any
humour in my stories tends to arrive courtesy of Rosie. I love her for the way
she can lighten a serious situation, saving it from getting maudlin. I wish
she’d been my best friend growing up. I'm also a huge fan of Alexander McCall Smith's The Ladies Number
One Detective Agency. I love its attitude of simplicity, even when the darker
crimes are being investigated. It feels like a very gentle world and that’s the
kind I like! Apart from that, any detective books are definitely my cup of tea
(and I love tea very much!).
A lot of
modern pony series tend to take place in large livery yards. Yours is on a much
more domestic scale: it’s four girls and their ponies. What made you decide to
give your characters a relatively small-scale background?
I think a few things. First, I didn't want lots of
adults hanging around, watching over the girls, checking out what they’re up to
and being restrictive. If you have a large livery yard, the adults are pretty
much unavoidable and it would be strange if they didn't step in now and again
when the girls make mistakes or need help. Second, I wanted to inhabit a yard
that I would have loved to have kept a pony at when I was younger. A large
livery yard would need the odd unsavoury character in there, and clashes of
personality, to make it realistic; I did'’t want that within the stables
themselves. I wanted Blackberry Farm to be a cosy, fun yard for the girls, with
the bad characters lurking elsewhere...
You write
very movingly of the struggle one of your characters has with her new horse:
she’s going backwards, and whatever she tries, things get worse. Is this
struggle something you've seen at first hand?
This is something that’s really quite odd, with
fact reflecting fiction. It wasn't written from first-hand experience, although
as I've got older it increasingly bothers me that horses are a pet, yet are
often subject to many changes of ownership during their lives. It’s easy to
sell a horse on if things aren't quite working. I had a session with an
Intelligent Horsemanship coach last year with my friend's horse, Pinto. It was
so incredible to see the way horses can respond when treated in a certain way;
it’s all about trust, leadership and trying to see things from their
perspective, rather than our own human one. Classic Black Beauty. I wanted
Phantom to be a dark force, but also to have a really understandable reason for
that.
The odd bit is that, after writing this story, I
got my horse, Jerezano. He came over from Spain at 6, having just been gelded
and allegedly well schooled. He then stood in a field for 2 years before I
stumbled across him. It was meant to be a straightforward case of bringing him
back into work and away we go. It’s been anything but. Instead I've been on a
journey of discovery, including the revelation that he probably hadn't done
more than a few months worth of work in Spain before coming over here. It was
like having an overgrown Bambi to begin with, and when he lost his confidence
he began to throw his (unco-ordinated) weight around. But, after working out
how some of the jigsaw pieces fit together we’re beginning to get somewhere. It
takes time with any new horse – moving yards, moving owners. Suddenly
everything’s new. The owner can rationalise it, the horse can’t. Jerezano
brought that home really hard, which is why I ended up dedicating book 4,
Phantom, One Last Chance, to him.
You
tackle some major themes in your books: death and grief. Was it a deliberate
choice to include them, or did your characters take off and land you in
surprising places?
I concentrate on trying to get the best plot I can and
I'm not very conscious of the themes which develop around that. If I set out consciously
to put some kind of theme in my writing it normally kills creativity. But I
knew that I needed a bit of a lost soul to link into Phantom and Neve just grew
from that. I do love the 4 main characters, though, they’re like best friends
to me and they lead the way in the books. I simply follow.
Do you
think the pony book has a valid role in a society where most people are never
going to be able to have a horse?
Absolutely and whole heartedly. I didn't have a
hope of owning a pony when I was younger, so any contact with horses – from a
glimpse out of the car window, a picture in a magazine or my fortnightly lesson
– was special. That’s what made pony books so precious to me. They allowed me
to take a step into this amazing, ‘other’ world, giving me detail far beyond
what I knew to imagine. It was the ultimate in wish fulfilment. So to flip the
question round, I think that precisely because most people might not get to own
their own pony, books about ponies have the potential to hold a special place
for children. When I started writing the Pony Detectives it was exactly that
kind of reader I had in mind.
What do
you want people to take away from your pony books?
Very simply, whatever they chose to. Each book’s
individual and personal to each reader, I’d hope, so I’d never like to put any
expectations on anyone. Although, if everyone gets enjoyment from them, that
would make me immensely happy!
Are there
plans for more books in the series?
Yes! There will be two more coming out next year –
I'm so excited about writing them, I can’t wait to head back onto the yard at Blackberry
Farm for some more adventures and to solve pony crimes... Although, in a bit of
a scoop, I can reveal that in one of the books the girls leave the Farm as they
head off to summer camp.
You’re
written on your favourite pony books for the Guardian. Was it
difficult to pick your top ten books? What almost made it?
It was difficult to just pick ten, but I sneaked
round that by choosing one book from a particular series, or author and
mentioning the whole series or other books by that author. The book I would have loved to have included
was The Pony Book by Nancy Roberts. It’s not a novel, but a book on pony care,
which my parents gave me one Christmas years ago. I read it cover to cover
countless times and I must have read the chapter about riding holidays about a
thousand times. Just looking at the pictures now evokes such a strong memory. The
book that I haven’t read yet, but am desperate to, one that I'm sure I would
have put on the list if I had, is Fair Girls and Grey Horses, the Pullein-Thompson’s
biography. I just love them. Blind Beauty, by KM Peyton, was another that
nearly made it. Oh, and then there’s Ryan’s Master, about John Whitaker and
Ryan’s Son. Ryan’s Son is, to this day, my favourite horse of all time. Well,
at least equal with Desert Orchid and Kauto Star.
If you
could press just one pony book (other than your own, of course) into the hands
of a pony-loving child to encourage them to read, what would it be?
Lordy, I don’t know. Hmmm, just one...? Really...?!
In that case, it would have to be a Shantih book, and I’d probably pick Jump
For The Moon (by Patricia Leitch). So many strands, so well realised – it’s
heart-breakingly wonderful.
What do
you think are the differences between pony books now, and the ones you read as
a child?
I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer that, or
at least answer it fairly. When I picked up a pony book as a child the desire
to be immersed in the world I was reading about was all consuming. That enabled
such a deep connection to a book that, years later, just reading the opening
lines transports me back to that time. For that reason I don’t think that I can
compare pony books now to the ones I used to read, not because of the content
but because I'm approaching it with such a different mindset. I did love the
sound of the old fashioned life, though, that’s something I do miss!
And
lastly, as it’s Olympic year, what were your golden Olympic moments?
So so many!
In fact, this year has just been amazing full stop for horsey moments. With the
Olympics it has to be watching the dressage – it was so gripping and edge of
the seat stuff that I was watching through my fingers. The tension was unbearable
right to the last rider. Charlotte Dujardin is just an absolute hero to have
held her nerve. Personally, sitting in front of the laptop, I boiled over
completely! Show jumping was always my first love – I think because it was
covered so much on television when I was younger - so I was a bit emotional
about the team gold, but especially for Nick Skelton. I visited his yard once
and stuck coloured stickers all over his horses and took pictures of them for a
project I was doing during my Diploma in Horse Studies. It was all about
angles. He was very welcoming, if slightly bemused. I remember making the phone
call to ask him if I could visit his yard – I was totally awestruck and to this
day can’t quite work out how, as a very shy 18 year old talking to one of my
heroes, I even managed to get a word out!
I
desperately wanted Lee Pearson to get his three gold medals, but thought that
bagging a bronze, silver and gold was pretty legendary, as well as completing a
neat full set. I felt bereft when the Olympics finished, not just for the
equestrian sports but the whole occasion. Clare Balding excelled herself too,
she was fab.
But, aside
from the Olympics, it’s been a great year for racing, too, and I can’t not
mention a certain horse by the name of Frankel. He’s hit the headlines this
year and has been another horse that I could hardly bear to watch. My heart
almost crashes out of my chest from before they set off to when they cross the
finish line. I love horses, but they do put me through the mill! Still, they’re
worth it a million times over.
Thank you Belinda!
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Belinda Rapley's website
Belinda Rapley writes on her favourite horse books for The Guardian
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