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I was listening to the radio while I drove back from Walmart on Easter Sunday, when an analogue buzz interrupted the music. Three sharp...

At the age of six, I remember being given a small book to read. I was at school in France at the time, and the book was called something like Le Weekend Extraordinaire. It was about a little girl who is home alone, and finds various exotic animals inside her house: a giraffe in the shower, an elephant in the fridge, and so on. Each time she finds an animal she exclaims, “C’est extraordinaire!” It becomes a kind of refrain in the book, like Alice’s repeated “Curiouser and curi

You see, life is going on all around you. Even in isolation, we are never really alone. This is what I saw on a single afternoon, around...

Gayle’s a friend of Van’s from way back when; another joy who I’m now blessed with the time to meet. She’s a neighbour of sorts, living deep in the countryside, far away from everyone, but less far away from us. I went, cautiously, to meet her over the weekend. Her grey hair is simply cut, short and practical. Her face is beautiful. We didn’t shake hands when I arrived. The reason we didn’t shake hands hung heavy and unspoken in the shared air.

When my flight out of Little Rock was cancelled, my world felt tight and small, as if life had pulled the drawstring on its horizons and...

There’s a small bottle of hand sanitizer in Russell’s car with a white label on it, reading ‘Rugged Cross Cowboy Church, Magnolia, Arkansas.’ They were giving them out at last week’s service. Ask and thou shalt receive, I suppose. The Cowboy Church’s slogan is ‘Come as you are’, and people do. Apparently the pastor preaches wearing a button down shirt and blue jeans. He owns cows. Genuinely pastoral, for once. The Wednesday evening service was cancelled, but the preacher than

The door swung open on the rickety white pickup truck as it turned into the ranch. A dark hand reached out and held it shut through the open window. The track up to the yard is so gnarled that the door bounced open twice more anyway. “That’ll be Earl,” said Russell. Earl’s yellow-toed rubber boots stepped out of the truck and, for the first time since I got to the States, a cowboy hat didn’t follow. Earl’s fairly short, and seems shorter for the narrow brim of his faded bucke

My first day at Hi Lo Pro Rodeo started at sunrise. Russell and I drove together in the dark. The tall boles of wet trees began to stand out from the mist, staying black as thin stripes of night against the brightening clouds. Soon, the grass is green and the earth is red. The white sky hangs blank and still. Russell’s jeans are clean. I know that because he taps his finger on his leg while he talks. He works on the ranch, with Earl and Joe, and has been friends with Van sinc

Meeting the host of my Airbnb in Oklahoma was a dystopian chess game of staying a metre apart. She took me to buy food, and, as I fumbled with the unfamiliar coins, I apologised to the check-out boy, “Sorry about this, I’m English, I’ve only been here for a day.” Back in the car, my host scolded me in a whisper. “You can’t go around saying things like that! These’re country people. They crazy ‘bout the virus. You never know what they’re gonna do, you being British’n’all.” We

* Free subscriptions here * Read about Uruguay here Video from my Facebook page: Out of the Library, into the Saddle...

When Carlos walked into the stable yard this morning, he gave me a soft but meaningful look and said nothing. It was our last day working...

Published here by The Oldie Green leaves, dried and crushed. A simple cup – a carved-out gourd – cured through years of use. Hot water....

This afternoon, Carlos taught me how to tie up a horse’s tail using hair and spit alone. Mateo stood back, hands on hips, and admired the...

It’s a funny feeling; missing things I used to call ‘strange’. I’ve been in Uruguay long enough for the unfamiliar to become familiar,...

Horses are sociable creatures; when they’re loose on the Estancia, they always hang out in the same cliques, munching away on their favourite patches of grass. My first task in the morning is to round them up over 200 hectares of open pasture and push them into the corral near the stable yard. I tack up Tobiana, a doe-eyed skewbald, and set off at a gallop to the herd’s usual spots.

Mateo and I spent the afternoon sitting on the fence of the corral, watching Carlito break in a young bay called Rayo, Lightning. As...

Uruguay is the kind of place where you’ll find a frog in the shower and a firefly in your wine. It’s a rustic kind of magic that makes...

Arriving at El Rincon Polo Club, near Punta Del Este, Uruguay, really meant arriving at the home of Sofia and Mattias, with whom I’m...

Read "Night Riders" for Part One The morning held maté, and dulce de leche on a bread roll for breakfast before we set off on horseback...

If all went according to plan, Guayito and I were to ride to El Foyel together the day before ‘La Fiesta de Caballos’ (the horse party)....