August

August came and went in a sweaty, blurry haze of siestas, rose wine and far too much fun. Days merged into one long month of early mornings with the horses and late nights around the BBQ. People came and went, we screamed with with the demons, we moaned about the heat, we read books and watched TV, we learned to paddle board and messed around on boats. We moaned a little bit more about the heat, swam, drank gin, had headaches and then complained just a little bit more about the heat.

We stared at the telly with the shutters shut. We lay around in our pants in the air con commenting on the heat, comparing it to yesterdays heat and how hot it would be tomorrow. We rode before the heat, through olive groves and dried up torrents, sweat poured down the side of our heads and the horses foamed between their legs. We drank litres of cold water and lemonade and undid all that hydration with chilled white wine, beers, gins at sunset and hierbas to digest. We watched Mama Mia 2 twice to lie in a dark, air-conditioned cinema, we lived in the pool and ordered tanks of water every week.

A reprieve was had in a trip to Wales and Somerset where we wore hoodies and jeans, trainers and socks - and commented on the cold and damp, glad to get back to bikinis and onesies...and commenting on the heat of the day. We went to Nikki beach and posed with the selfie-takers, we climbed the hills in Deia observing the beauty and the weather, we swam in the sea and found jelly fish, sea cucumbers and parrot fish. Still the heat, the oppression, the stickiness and the discussion with everyone you met.

Pfffff! Hace calor! (Pfff, it's hot)

Roll on September, August you've been a blast.... but I really need to change my topic of conversation.

I had a dream

I had a dream. Not a world changing one but I do dream of those things too. My dream was to live in Spain, to buy myself a horse and to ride to a bar, tie the horse up casually over a hitching rail - drink my beer and ride home.

And as this week has proved, dreams can come true. After two years of hard work, training, consistency and determination - I rode to a bar in the little pueblo of Calvia, had a beer and wobbly rode home.

My mare didn't have the best start in life. Me being the seventh owner in her five short years, she couldn't trust. She was feisty and hungry, manic and insane, she would stare for hours into the distance and pace her stable, she shook with fear at plastic bags and logs out of place. She couldn't stand still to be brushed, she galloped down the road into on-coming traffic with me on board, her legs buckled at barking dogs, she snorted at over-flowing bins and absolutely would not let me stroke her, especially on her face. She fought me every single day.

Slowly, slowly, without me really recognising it was happening, she became less scared about the world around her. She whickered to me every morning, she would always gallop over to see me when my car arrived at the end of the day, she opened her mouth in eagerness for the bit to go in, she seemed pleased to be brushed and for fly spray to be squirted all over her. Her eye softened, her muscles less tense, her balance got better and she finally started to trust.

That's why it was such a big day. The day we rode to the pub, had a beer and rode home.

It must be summer

The cicadas are screaming.

The cats loll about on the tiles hoping for a reprieve.

Schools out and the Playmobil is up.

Siestas happen daily.

We ride before 8 in the morning or after 8 at night.

Clothes are optional.

Sundowners compulsory.

The festival of San Juan celebrated the official start of summer, a couple of days after the solstice. Lights, candles and lanterns were scattered over the beaches of Mallorca and wishes were floated onto the sea - not always in the most environmental way. At midnight, we rushed into the dark waves, to wash away any winter-ness and sins - except it was too cold for me and there have been many sightings of jellyfish, sea snakes and great white sharks. The kids enjoyed it though, and shivered their way into summer in the early hours of the morning.

The beginning of the summer stretches out in front of us; all sweaty and lazy, all unstructured and bare-footed, all hectic and wild - it's what we look forward to all year. The build up has been slow, the school term never-ending with frazzled kids getting hotter and sweatier by the day. To be dumped excitedly into 10 glorious weeks of freedom that is summer, at last.

Ibiza

She never lets me down, Ibiza. With her magnetism and hedonism, with her charm and delight, with her wild nights and serene days. She always inspires me, leaving me with wanting more - leaving me exhausted but full of love, she ages me and takes years off my age.

Ibiza is Mallorca's little sister, just a couple of hours by boat - we can even see her from our house. I was insanely excited to be going to Ibiza for the third time, knowing what the island holds and how she affects me, to be celebrating a 50th birthday.

The first time I went to Ibiza was to celebrate a wedding of two beautiful friends - on a yoga platform, dressed in Indian clothes and overlooking the sunset of Beneras beach. There followed a week of parties and yoga, of booze and cleansing, of veggie food and Sunday drumming sessions.

The second time I went to Ibiza was to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the wedding. We were all older, richer and much more badly behaved. Having been let off mothering-duties for 6 whole days the parties seemed more intense, never wanting to sleep knowing that real life was just around the corner.

The third time I went to Ibiza, last weekend, was a blast. We are nearing 50 now and perhaps should have been heading for a group walking holiday rather than Pacha, or maybe a tour of a vineyard rather than staying up until 8.30 in the morning.

She was fantastic this time - giving us local Spanish restaurants and crazily-priced ones, we chatted by the pool and partied in clubs, we wandered along seaweed strewn beaches and cuddled at dawn, we mooched around hippy markets and ate a BBQ with new friends. We were grown-up and childish, we felt love and peace as well as banging brains, we danced just like everyone was watching and no one was. It was out of this world.

Every time Ibiza, every single time.

It's never 'Just a horse'!

She wasn't mine, but the shock was there - she wasn't supposed to go.

I didn't even know her long, but the tears flow.

She wasn't even human.

Just a horse.

With the kindest heart and deep chestnut eyes, which weeped each spring. With dinner plate feet and hard muscles telling a story of times past, with a slowness of gait and a promise of speed, with a gentleness so great with those little and new - and a feisty-ness so alarming when you thought you knew best.

A horse who knew only love, who's time just wasn't up.

Dear Poppy, I wish you could have lived a little bit longer so I could kiss your velvety nose again, touch your face and tell you how much you meant to me. Just one more time.

We all feel so very alone without you.

Run free big girl - wait for us on the other side.

Cats of Mallorca

Our fattie catties are approaching old age, sleeping plenty and looking a little haggard around the edges. Spring sunshine encourages them outside for a roll on the warm terracotta tiles and a mooch around the garden. They have plenty of cat spots on our mountain hideaway in Mallorca, places to snooze, in between gecko hunting and keeping the locals out of our property. I think they are pleased with their move abroad, having fitted in well to the customs and differences on the island, although I doubt they have learnt the language or got used to the foreign food - I wonder if they remember their Sussex beginnings.

And then there's the strays in our lives. They all live down the stables. There's Podge who turned up without a tail and full of tapeworms, there's Hairy Cat and Flash. There's the black and white one who is an irreguar but welcome visitor. Lavender who died. And our favourites - Teegy Babes and Jazzy Poo. They all hear the sound of my loud deisal engine and come running, demanding food before school and almost tame to cuddle.

Podge without a tail

Tiger Lily / Teegy Babes

Jasmine / Jazzy Poo

And because we feed them they have settled into the yard as though it's their own - despite the owners minor protestations. I therefore felt it was my responsibility to spay the girls and castrate the boys - if I could catch them. Teegy Babes was tamed by my youngest daughter who spent the entire summer with a piece of straw, playing with the curious kitten, slowly gaining her trust until they were the best of friends. The others were wild - but liked food.

The morning of the operation was upon us - the kids were apprehensive, the cat cages ready, the meat for enticing and some good thick gloves for me. Like a ninja cat catcher I got the two girls and shoved them unceremoniously into the cages and flung them into the back of the car - them yowling and leaping around their prisons with furious indignity. I did feel a bit bad, maybe they would have liked to have been cat - mamas. And off we drove.

"Mummy, the cat is out of its cage!" squealed the eldest.

I peaked a look in the mirror and the grey kitten was sitting on the back seat before flying around the car and landing on the dashboard. Indicators, mirror, break, pulled over - hazard lights on. Calm down kids please, Mummy needs to think here. Cat piss was going to happen any time soon. I hauled my stiff old body onto the back seat and prepared the cat cage for the second time that morning. By luck, Jazzy Poo was sitting, terrified, on the drivers head rest. Preparing the kids for some cat screaming and bleeding arms, I leapt on the kitten and hurled it into the upturned cage and locked it for sure this time.

All before dropping the kids off at school.

The hack

She moves off as I mount, keen to get going. Keen to march down the track and out of the farm where she stays, keen to look at everything around her in the spring sunshine. She takes in all the differences of the walk today, from how it was yesterday - noticing rubbish in the hedge, a fallen log in a field, egrets standing on the back of the sheep and the puddle on the road which has never, ever been there before. She spooks, she runs, she snorts, she looks left, she looks right - she rarely settles on our walks out into the big, wide world.

Kira is my feisty horse who has had a rough start in life. Despite her nervous ways I have learnt to sit still and let her have a good look at all around her. We walk past the donkeys who gallop over to say hello, she strains her neck to look at them and decides they pose no threat, long eared and beneath her - she walks on. The dogs to the right don't even get a look in, we know their barks and their non-threatening waggy tails. Hello doggies I call, they ignore me completely - not speaking any English I suppose - and continue their frenzy at the passing horse.

There is no greater smell than orange blossom; it beats freshly brewed coffee, baking bread and just-mown grass. The orange orchard to our left engulfs our olfactory senses, the heady sweetness lingers in the air while the uncollected oranges lay fallen and abandoned on the ground. She uses all her body to naviagte the steep hills and she baulks at the group of cyclists who whizz at speed, making the air whistle as they pass. She tenses as we approach the dog she hates, spooking predictably as he runs along the fence - every time dear Kira - every time.

She stands patiently as I talk to a new friend over a fence, in potted Spanish and plenty of gesticulating. I like him, he always admires my horse, as wonky and nutty as she is. We negotiate pigs, bouncy lambs, hectic hairy ponies in herds and the fiercest German Shepherd's who pounce against the fence - rattling it menacingly.

Tourists point at us, old men begrudgingly say 'bon dia' as they forage for wild asparagus in the hedges and walkers avoid us as she side-steps up the road to avoid a murderous plastic bag.

Her body relaxes as we walk the familiar mile back to her stable, I feel as happy as I have ever felt in my life. Just me, my horse, the spring sunshine and beautiful, beautiful Mallorca.