One Horse and Two Dogs, by Meg Rosoff

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I'm here on the beach in Suffolk instead of in London because it's half-term in England -- an extra week's holiday three times a year that makes up for the fact that kids don't get off school until halfway through July.  My daughter (11) is here on sufferance, because if you go and buy an idyllic shack on a beach where your kid can play outside surrounded by nature all day, she'll only hate you for dragging her away from London where she can get on a bus and go to Starbucks with her friends.

Parenting is hell.

Never mind.  In my continual pursuit of my own private second childhood, I had a riding lesson yesterday.

My horse is called Tom and he looks a little like this one by Stubbs.  When I say "my horse", of course I mean the horse I ride, not own.  He's what they call a schoolmaster, which, in plain English, means that no matter how badly I approach a fence, he still clears it.  This is a good thing when you're my age and no longer bounce.

I love riding.  I always did.  But for thirty-five years I subjugated all those teenage sexual urges into...I dunno.  Sex, maybe?  And drugs and rock and roll.  Now I wonder why I went to all that trouble when horses seem so much simpler.  All that "hope I die before I get old " stuff was wrong.  Being 52 is much easier than being 32.  No one sits around waiting for a horse to call.

My next book (The Bride's Farewell, out in August) involves horses.  And lurchers (see below).  Members of my family are quick to point out that for a suburban Jewish girl from Boston to own lurchers, that most quintessential 18^th century English dog, is just plain ludicrous.  I can't argue with that, but love is love.  And I fell in love with them because they're like me - mongrels, wild and unkempt, and very very lazy.  My two are half whippet, half Bedlington terrier, but we refer to them fondly as kitten murderers.

Lurchers is kind of a generic name for a cross of greyhound/whippet/saluki and any working dog - but usually a terrier or border collie.  They're sweet-natured, biddable and don't shed but they do like to eat cats.

So you're thinking, "Wow.  She sure has embraced the ex-pat life."  Well it has been twenty years.  But it's hard to believe I lived in NYC throughout the 80s and wore pink suede boots with four inch heels and sunglasses at 3am to look cool.  But that was back before Giuliani chased the muggers with guns out of New York City, or as we like to call it, the good old days.

Enough nostalgia.

I'm supposed to be working on a new book, entitled "There Is No Dog."  But unfortunately there is two dogs, and they require long walks, even today when there's a howling wind off the North sea and it's really cozy here by the fire.  And there's something about being stared at intently for hours that disrupts my ability to work. 

So I'd better get walking.

Meg Rosoff, What I Was, Plume, Penguin Books