Manoeuvres

There is nothing like the Christmas round in the country. Time to relax, to call on the neighbours, linger in the village shop and especially in the butchers (how is it you meet everybody in the butchers?), and best of all, the round of pre-Christmas parties. Good cheer and the odd glass of mulled wine (some very odd), mates not seen since the same event last year, the chance of a last minute invitation - shooting or supper, either very satisfactory - and maybe the chance of new friend; or perhaps not.

The Musgraves were kind enough to ask me for a couple of nights to stay whilst they had their usual village party. They do this most years and the deal is that I do vegetable peeling duty, and in the afternoon frighten the pigeons a bit, preferably not at the same time. I usually perform to satisfaction on the vegetables but less so on the pigeons - which have yet to fall victim to my dubious skills in this area.  Very flighty, the Musgrave pigeons.

But the Christmas Eve party is something else, and worth a lot of peeling and scraping. Half the county is there, and thats's a lot of shooting acres - and they are all fascinating amusing people, of course. My old mate Geoffrey last year gave me a day he couldn't do, so when he turned up this year with the additional benefit of his two gorgeous daughters, well, a chap has to be polite. In this I made a major strategic error, in that homing in on this triple magnetic attraction in the drawing room, I rather overlooked that there was a battleship laid upstream ready to engage all comers with full firepower.

But as soon as I helloed Geoffrey and grappled both lovely daughters with kisses on each flank, Geoffrey executed the fancy footwork for which he is famous in both shooting and accounting, swung round and said, "Ahaha, B...., I don't think you have met my mother in law, Mrs Double-Barrelled" and exposed me directly to a full broadside from the approaching battleship.

"Mr B...." came the first salvo "My son in law has mentioned your name".

I had the distinct impression that this might be in relevance to dubious accounting procedures or for keeping an unruly house. But no:

"I understand you are a shooting man?"  I noticed that Geoffrey and daughters were somehow in full sail across the room toward the door and exiting rapidly.

"Yes, I do a little, you know"

"Indeed!" said Mrs D-B. Somehow I had the impression that she felt my skills and personality might be best suited to shooting rats in a bucket.

"My late husband, Admiral Double-Barrelled, was very much a shooting man. He was a noted shot. He was stationed at Plymouth for many years, don't you know, and shot in many places."

No doubt, anything that got him out of the house, I thought. She now had all turrets firing.

"He shot on many of the great estates in his time, especially in Scotland. Grouse you know."

I nodded, speechless at this specialist knowledge.

"He had many good friends with very fine shoots, they greatly admired his skill in the field"

And then the torpedo, delivered amidships:

"Of course, he was asked to shoot as a guest. In his day, one was asked as a guest. Not as now, when anybody gets to shoot who can pay. Do you shoot much, Mr B....?"

I sank, gurgling, as she weighed anchor, in search of further unarmed rowing boats.

Paradise

There's a place I manage to wangle an invitation to nearly every year, a sporting estate in the Cotswolds. It's an invitation I look forward to and relish.

If you ask any American tourist, or City chap looking for a country cottage, or indeed member of the Royal family, where the most desirably beautiful area of English countryside is, they are very likely to say "the Cotswolds".  But this part of the Cotswolds is not what they are thinking of, not at first sight anyway.  Straight fast roads run across a high flat chalk plain between decaying stone walls, big empty arable fields, sparse remains of old hedges, a few scattered wind bent trees.  Here and there, a decaying farm. A couple of houses, hunched up against the westerly winds. An empty, barren, almost abandoned, landscape.

But on one of those straight roads, slow down and look carefully, take a side road, a single strip of tarmac marked by a elderly wooden signpost with the one word - well, no, I'm not going to tell you what that signpost says.

This is one of my cherished bits of England and I don't want you lot going off down there for dog walking and picnics. But if you find it, and steer the Rangy down that narrow lane, you will come to a pair of cottages, stone built, many signs of dogs and children and home grown vegetables. Follow the lane round a corner and it suddenly drops into a narrow valley, through a wood, and over a cattle grid into a steep grass field.

And there, just there below you, is a dream of England. On the valley side, a Tudor manor house, gables and mullions and tall barleysugar curved chimneys. Cautiously chugged about, with wings shortened and lengthened, windows enlarged, a gothick porch, as successive owners tried to balance comfort and aesthetics. (This is rural England, comfort always wins.) Terraced lawns with woolly lawn mowers keeping them economically tidy.  A small chapel, of the same stone and with a few leaning tombstones in a tiny graveyard. A architecturally perfect little stable block of the same date as the house - no messing about with this of course, it honours the horse.  A few elderly cottages and buildings, everything of the same light greyish yellow stone, dug out of that very hillside.  Across the valley glorious specimen trees above which the fake battlements of a regency castle create almost a fairy tale apparition. The owners built this from their 18th century agricultural profits, and when the chill winds of the late 19th century blew too hard and too long they went back to their comfy old manor and let their ersatz castle; and when the 20th century tightened things still more they sold it to a City boy - you see, we have our uses.

Rolling grassland which is grazed by charming black cows, old woods, ageing fences, wooden gates, a suggestion of a lake down to the south. Some big hedges, wild coverts, a stone shelter up on the hill, well built of that same stone with a cheerful cow peering out. A brook in the valley bottom, half choked with reeds and thorn and bushes.

Here it is, perfect England, much much loved, not too well kept up, not too tidy, not too polished, not too tasteful. Beautiful. The English dream crouching below the level of the bitter winter winds.

Of course, there is a cracking good shoot here.  The landscape is perfect for it. Indeed, the shooting man will recognise the subtle management of it for that glorious purpose. Pheasants and partridges are driven off the stubbles and cover crops on the high flat tops, for the sport or, more truthfully, to the endless frustration and chagrin, of the guns deep in the valley bottom. Nothing commercial or overdone, a family shoot in this hidden perfect valley. A few days sold each year to ease the burden of the costs of family pleasure, help pay the keeper and keep the Hilux running for a few more years. The birds are not so high that you cannot hit them, or just wound. They are in reach, but you have to be fast and fluid and accurate to be on them; if you are, down they come. As I say, endless frustration and chagrin, but each one down is a source of reflective pride.

It is what shooting should be, a natural part of a wonderful landscape, a little piece of theatre running each year for a few days only, the family hosting a few appreciative guests.

In this case, a very appreciative guest., One who, when he looks out of the office window down the concrete canyons, is often seeing a hidden green tree-laden valley; not great slabs of glass and steel, but an old grey stone house that has sunk into the landscape like an elderly oak letting down its winter branches into the earth; who sees not the police helicopters overhead, but a little covey of partridges suddenly rocketing over the trees; and in whose misted eyes there are not protesters milling about with tatty banners, but cheerful weatherbeaten faces with sticks and dogs.

You know who you are, ladies and gentlemen of this bit of glorious England, thank you for your entertainment of one endlessly grateful guest each autumn.

Cock of the Moor

My friend Don has the great good luck (marrying an earl's daughter probably helped as well) to be invited sometimes to shoot on a ducal grouse moor. Very grand, my dears, those gates do not swing open for corporate  types such as your correspondent.

He pitched up one day early in September to find that the assembled multitude was a very mixed bag - unlike the days' bag, which was to be driven grouse. In particular, his, and everybody's else's, attention was drawn to a regular turkey cock - an American millionaire - or maybe billionaire - who had done well in flat pack furniture and decided to enjoy the fruits of plastic faced chipboard, and how. Somehow he had managed to get through the ducal vetting process by chumming up to his grace's nephew. Messrs P and Messrs H&H and other establishments had been paid proper attention during a frantic 6 hours shopping (and no doubt Christmas bonuses adjusted as a result).  Even though he had considerable experience in stalking elk in Canada and boars in Hungary he had even troubled to visit one of those wonderfully smart clay grounds to the west of London for a two hour lesson, and knew these grouses (grice?) would cause him no problem.

The old Scottish keeper also knew a thing or two, and promptly dispatched his laconic but experienced under keeper to load for Mr Melamine. They took up position in a stone butt, a safety lesson was growled briefly through ("Dinna shoot either side of these wee sticks; raise your gun if you turn; nae ground game") and the action began.

Whatever the clays did, the grouse had not been trained to the same rules. The moor was blasted with lead to front and back of butt 6 whilst the picker up (safely crouching in a ditch very well back) enjoyed a small cigar and his spaniels giggled and looked down the line for rabbits.

Our American novice was not a man to be deterred by initial failure and continued to blast away and the grouse continued to sail by.  The loader continued to work his way through box after box of ammunition with occasional grunt of "behind, sor", "left, sor", "high and reet, sor".

Finally a perfect single bird appeared in front, approaching fast, rising a little, the perfect presentation. Our American raised his gun, reflected on all he had been taught, and fired one barrel, and then, to make sure, the other. "That one must come down" he shouted.

The loader squinted at the sky: "Only if he's hungry, sor"

Legally Blond

Some days, I really think I am going to give all this up. You spend weeks and months setting up complex structures, make huge efforts to get buy-in from all your fellow professionals, punt vast amounts of money to get everything in place on the target date, and then finally the date comes, the meeting begins, and you realise nobody is on your side. Indeed, you are being ritually humiliated. Shooting this is, of course, not derivatives structuring.

It was a syndicate day yesterday. Each year we get an invitation to a wonderful place where the twentieth century has been overlooked and it is still run as though Tum-tum were expected to join the guns.  So it is on with the old tweed plus fours, hip flasks, proper boots, and loaders.

A few years ago I was allocated a highly competent loader and such are her skills I have retained her services for our day each year since, having to pay more each year to fight off competing offers from my fellow guns. Yes, I did say "her". She is a highly competent loader. I think. The gun usually seems to have cartridges in it anyway. Diana is, as it happens, very pretty, very blond, and very curvaceous. She gives big hugs for skillful shooting on high birds and warm kisses for downed pigeons. Not something I would normally encourage from a loader, but here it seems to work for me.

So for this year I once again upped the daily rate - she is earning almost as much per day as I am now - and arranged to meet at the first drive.

Scene: a woodland clearing. Ancient and dirty Land Rovers and beat up Toyotas are scattered around. Dramatis Personae: A large group of men in various combinations of ageing green and brown country clothes, mainly briar and water-proof.  Eager spaniels and snooty labs. A hairy fox terrier. Enter stage centre: A procession of shiny Land Rovers and Range Rovers.

Yes, you read that right. "A large group of men". No women. No shapely bubbly pretty blonds; no Diana, to be precise.  I - for it is I - struggled out of the back of the Rangy, looked around and behind and even under the assembled multitude, but no blonds.

Various men in various shades of woodland mud made their way to my fellow shootists, shouldered their guns and their cartridge bags. Your hero stood alone, conspicuously blond less.  The shootists gathered together, ready for their briefing.

Dick, our team captain turned - if only he could execute such an elegant pirouette in pursuit of passing high pheasants - and said, smirking, very positively smirking "Ah, B...., I suppose you heard  that Diana twisted an ankle yesterday, but never mind, we know your special tastes, and have got you the perfect substitute".  Good man, Dick.  He waved at the line up of bashed beater's vehicles and a door opened. I stood a little straighter and got ready to raise my cap.

But it stayed firmly on the bald patch.  Out of a Toyota Hilux got a pretty blond, long legs, snug fitting jeans, rouged cheeks, eyes wonderfully made up.  Very snug fitting jeans, so snug, that if I had had any doubts, it was clear that this blond was male.

He strolled over to me and extended a hand which, even at this moment of crisis, I noted to be perfectly manicured. "Helloooo, I 'm going to be handling your double barrelled today". A little flick of the long blond forelock.

"Erm...oh, well, to be honest, I don't really need a loader today, just brought the one gun, don't you know"

My new blond blinked and shrugged and looked down, then looked up, straight into my eyes "But I could be so useful to you in the woods".  O-my-god.  "Er, well, I think maybe you might be more useful picking up." O-my-god; what have I just said? "Or with the beaters". Aaagh, stop digging B.

Suddenly a howl of laughter from my so-called mates behind me. "Not so keen on blonds after all, B?" Downright guffawing broke out. "Meet Damian, he's Josh the underkeeper's brother, and he is at acting school.  Diana will be along in a minute and you're paying her double rates today. You've been framed, matey."

Like Drawing Teeth

A far distant tapping, sticks against tree trunks. Whimpering from an eager spaniel behind, more tapping in the wood in front. Check foot positioning, check next pair of cartridges in the belt, check the line hasn’t spotted something. Don’t fiddle with safety catch, just relax and be ready.

Jamie’s cigar smoke drifting down the line. A few more falling leaves create a momentary frisson. But it is just drifting golden leaves. Relax. More tapping, nearer.

Now utter silence and then the spaniel whimpers again.  Everything is in suspense, apart from that damn dog. High grey cloud moving slowly across, but furious black skies building up behind. It will rain before lunch and we will be drenched. But just now all that matters is waiting for the beaters to reach the bracken and scrub on the centre of the wood. The tapping has stopped.

They must be in the open now, moving towards the oaks that fell in some storm years ago and have lain there ever since. Any minute the action will start. Feet; cartridges; check the line, check the sky.

Any minute and there will be shouts, tapping, the birds will be rising. Please don’t let the first one come over me.

Jamie has thrown down his cigar and his toe is twisting it into the grass. What has he heard? What has he seen? His gun is in both hands. Mark, next to him, slings his old side by side off his shoulder and adopts the same posture.

More tapping, but with a different beat. They must be at the fallen oaks. A shout of “Ready!” Clicks, a call of “Now!”  A flurry of fiercely beating wings, crashing through the branches, a familiar double screech, then the bird is rising through the filigree of naked branches; to me. Straight to me.

And the drill enters the tooth, the jaw is forced down. Not even the memory of one of last year’s most perfect days can overcome the noise, the screaming, the vibration, the sheer bloody ghastliness of having a tooth drilled.

A Sporting Gentleman

One of Stuffer’s little sidelines to keep the (stuffed) wolf from the door is taking out rich sportsmen to the great estates of the southern and western Home Counties to bag a deer. On this particular occasion he was rung by Lord M who had as his guest an Italian count who was, so Lord M understood, of considerable sporting prowess and would like to bag a roe deer, and as his visit was brief, this to be before dinner the following day.

Stuffer smelt the merest whiff of trouble but business is business and next day at 4.30pm he turned up at M Hall to collect his new disciple. He seemed very charming, and as befitted an Italian sporting gentlemen he was immaculately turned out, with wonderfully expensive equipment, shone, lacquered and polished. When he produced for Stuffer’s approval a handmade Italian sporting rifle obviously used with care and cared for to the highest possible standard, Stuffer decided his previous reservations had been wrong and he was indeed accompanying a true and experienced sportsman.

Stuffer had selected, given the time constraints and the need to impress his new Italian friend, and, even more so, Lord M, a place where a roe buck had the nightly habit of coming to a glade on the edge of a wood on the south side of the park, close to a gate into a field with views of the downs. If roe deer smoked, said Stuffer, he would have presumed that the buck was in the habit of enjoying the view across the downs whilst smoking his nightly cigar before dinner.

There was a high seat in position already, and the roe seemed to almost invariably visit between 6 and 7pm. So if for some reason he hadn’t turned up (with his light Corona no doubt) by 7pm, there was still a chance to move elsewhere in the wood for a second attempt.

The count was loaded into Stuffer’s Toyota with his kit and his unloaded gun across his knees, and they set off. As they drove down the park drive Stuffer was slightly disconcerted as the count, espying a rabbit, pointed the rifle out of the window at it and shouting “Bang! You die!”  But when this deadly threat had also been visited on two pigeons, a jay, and a circling buzzard he was happy to put this down to amiable eccentricity.

They reached the high seat at 5.15pm and our sportsman was made comfortable with a bottle of water,  bullets to hand, and the lovely sporting rifle on his knees.

“Right” said Stuffer, “Sit quietly here, try not to move, and if by quarter to seven nothing has happened I’ll be back to move you”

“Hour and one half” exclaimed the count, “Two hours almost?”

Stuffer explained that deer were sensitive to change in familiar places so it was necessary to be well out of sight before the merest scent of human presence might alert him to danger.

The count raised an eyebrow but said nothing more, and Stuffer bounced away across the park to a quiet place where nobody would disturb a little slumber. This he was into when he was aroused by a bang, the unmistakable sound of a rifle shot, not far away. He looked at the Toyota clock, not believing he could have been asleep an hour or so, and found he hadn’t; it was 5.30.

It seemed unlikely that the deer had changed its habits so dramatically, but you never know, so he started the engine and drove back across the park and down the wood drive, where he was very startled to meet the count running towards him, arms up, red faced, looking panic stricken. Stuffer stopped, leapt out, and put his arm on the count’s shoulder and said some calming words.

When the count’s breathing was under control he said “Now what is the matter? Did you get your buck?”

 "No” shouted the count. “The sheeps”.

“ The sheeps?  What sheeps?"

“The sheeps down there, behind the gate”

“The sheeps – er, the sheep – won’t harm you”

“No, come!” said the Italian beginning to walk back along the track to the gate. “I sit in my ‘igh seat. But is very boring. The gun, it is my brother’s, I do not know it,  So I practise at the aiming, and I quietly call “O sheeps, pfff, you die”.
“I do this and then, bang, the gun she fires by ‘erself, and, and, and...”

“And...?” said Stuffer.

“The sheeps, it dies”

By now they were at the gate and there on the other side was a motionless  sheep, on its side. Stuffer went up to it and gave it the quick once over. Its cause of death was immediately obvious. A perfect headshot, straight through the brain.


One, as Stuffer said, he would have been very proud of, at least if to a deer. And especially if, as the Italian confessed on the way back to M Hall, he had never fired a sporting rifle before. The sheep they buried in a woodland ditch. The buck, they agreed, had not turned up.

New Boots

A quick warning. Do not, DO NOT, get your teenage children into country sports. Especially if they are fashion conscious.The elder male is onto his second shooting season, with the benefit of an experienced slightly older top gun type to carefully guide and enhance his inherited skill. No, not Stuffer, me.

But this season the skinny cords and redeployed shirt will, so elder male tells me, not do.

Luckily my number three barbour is just nicely run in after 25 years careful use, so that has been cascaded.  I have also run to a pair of moleskin plus twos from RW's who also were able to supply a suitable shirt at not too painful a price. But a leather cartridge bag? Pshaw!  And  Du B boots?!  I can't afford Du B boots for me! In fact, the way business is, I'm not sure I can afford new socks at the moment, but that's another story.

Luckily though, remembrance of his sister's picking up day last season dissuaded him from the Du B's for this season. I took her to pick up for me last year, at a rather grand estate in the Midlands where the son and heir is four years older than her. Not, of course, that one would wish her to marry for any reason than for the honest call of her heart, but on the other hand a cottage and a few days free shooting from a titled and landed son-in-law might help out in old age, the pension isn't  going to pay for many high pheasants.

She is a pretty girl and the tweed mini skirt was an inspired idea.  Things seemed to be going along very nicely in the morning, even if I did have to pick up my own birds.  At lunch though, the vodka bottle seemed to get stuck at the young people's end of the table, and when she got on the shoot bus after lunch she was very giggly indeed and not entirely sure footed.

The long and bumpy drive to the top of the wood brought vivid and wretched, or rather, retching disaster. Most of it over the young heir's smart new Du B's. They don't clean well apparently. The dogs all flock to his shins still. So it will be rubber Hunter's for my boy for a few seasons yet.

Conspiracy Theory

Did I mention my partridge day on Tuesday? No, I thought not. Not a great day I’m afraid. First day new season on game is always a bit tricky. And the sun was in my eyes most drives. And I think the estate may have been breeding a new strain of partridges that fly twice as fast the traditional Frenchmen. And my socks kept falling down.

The host said to me on the third drive “Odd thing, but no one today seems to be able to shoot when I am standing with them”.  A small covey came over and flew on untouched. I reloaded and said nothing. But, I thought, maybe you should go and join the beating line.

Also, something had happened the previous afternoon which rather distracted me.   We are working on a very complex derivative instrument for a demanding and highly switched on client.  To assist with this and to negotiate all the fine detail (I do find getting bogged down in the detail distracts me from maintaining the core structure of the deal) the firm has brought in a top industry consultant. 

To make sure all was coming along nicely (you have to drive these chaps hard) I called my consultant about 4pm. “Can’t really talk” he said, “driving”.  Anywhere interesting I enquired, slightly sarcastically; that’s not what we pay him £665 an hour for. “Shooting in Somerset, back on the job tomorrow night, don’t worry, ooops, I think I’m going into a blackspot” and the phone cut off.

I rang the client to assure him everybody was hard at work to deliver what he needs by next week.  “Bit tricky to talk” he said, “on a train”.  “Coming up to town?” I asked. “No”, he said, “Off to shoot in Somerset”.  The phone went dead.

Obviously coincidence. Not good for steady concentration on superfast partridges though.

The New Recruit

The sporting life gives much pleasure, but never more so than when somebody else is paying for it. It is an odd thing that my mates who live in the country and have got the whole sheebang on their doorsteps generally have to pay for it themselves.  Yet those of us who live and work as far removed as can be from grouse moors and deep pheasant valleys, to say nothing of the wild woodcock ridden woods of Cornwall, misty snipe bogs in Ireland, and even the partridge stubbles of Norfolk, can usually swing a good proportion of the season at zero cost.

This is because of the vital City necessity of consolidating our client relationships by frequent and appropriate client entertainment.  “Appropriate” is now the appropriate word, certainly with the compliance department, who would not want any inappropriate expenditure on non-appropriate clients. The right sort of client is he (always "he", I am afraid) who would expect to be entertained in this way, in terms of his standing and normal life style.  This is fine by me, as those clients, if entertained to a day on high pheasants in a Devon valley, to say nothing of dinner, claret, and a comfortable ensuite the night before, are very likely to invite their generous host for a similar day in return. So a couple of days paid for by the firm, for seven guests a go, can result at least ten invitations back.

The recent unfortunate events have meant a new scrutiny on expenditure. We still have to keep our clients loyal, but budgets are been squeezed and guest lists checked for value. Golf and horseracing and a day at Lords are cheaper, not that I have any objection to any of these, and they do fill up the summer nicely, but they don’t quite yield the dividends of the winter entertainment.

Luckily, my old boss liked his cricket and Henley and Ascot, and even more luckily, keeping his feet dry in winter, so there was a tacit agreement that he did the summer stuff and I took the winter burden off him.  His retirement last year, early, after a slight accounting embarrassment on an unmatched trade, thus did cause me a little nervousness. If the new number one was a keen shooting man I could see my control of the shooting franchise slipping away; still worse, if he were an anti, the whole programme might get junked.

As it happens, he seemed to be just perfect – he had never shot, but believed it to be good marketing.  And is a complete workaholic, so was most unlikely to find the time. Bingo! So this years’ programme – two days, one in the west, one in the north, was approved without demur.

And then this week, out of a clear blue sky, a rocketing pheasant straight on the bowler hat: disaster!  Number One came in on Monday morning to tell me he had a shooting lesson on Saturday morning and loved it. His tutor told him he was a natural shot (don’t they all). He was changing his diary so he could come with us next week. He would have another lesson on Saturday and buy the appropriate kit; perhaps I could lend him a gun and cartridges.

Aaaagh. Is this the end of the good times? Or at least the free times?

Get Stuffed

Time to introduce Stuffer. Any successful soap opera needs its stars and characters.  Stuffer is certainly a character; maybe we can even make him a star. And he will pop up in these ramblings quite a lot, as he does in the glades and coppices of the southern Home Counties.

Why, might you ask, Stuffer.  Well, there are at least three reasons why a country sportsman might be known to his mates as Stuffer. 

Stuffer qualifies on all of them. His profession, a strange one, but no less strange than sitting in a hot room calculating basis points on derivatives, is that ancient and bizarre art of taxidermy. Cats and dogs, pheasants and salmon, Siberian goats and Egyptian crocodiles, all find their way to his door – to his backdoor, Mrs Stuffer does have standards – and emerge immortalised for ever in attitudes of resistance, or flight, or peace.  This esoteric spinoff from the undertaking profession is also a demonstration of the basic laws of economics – there are not many stuffers around now, and there are surprising numbers of rich folk who want to keep above ground their fireside comforters or wilderness triumphs.  This imbalance of supply, and demand backed by overloaded bank accounts, is considerably to Stuffer’s advantage.  Any City boy understands the equation perfectly.

Much of Stuffer’s business comes from the sporting gent, and Stuffer knows to keep closely in touch with his clientele.  Usually available at short notice to fill a gap in the line, he is a reliable gun, a friendly guiding hand to the novice, a raconteur of considerable wit and taste, (the taste carefully matching that of the audience).  He can be trusted with the beginner, with the low shooting foreigner whose previous experience is only with wild boar or walked up quail, and with the experienced rich sportsman who needs somebody to load his pair of Purdeys.

Hence his second stuffer qualification. The amiable quick fingered gimlet eyed flat capped obliging countryman who slips the cartridges quickly in and exchanges guns in one fluid swing is, of course, your stuffer.  For Stuffer it’s an opportunity well spent; sixty or eighty quid cash in his pocket and the ideal marketing opportunity. Many a high pheasant felled by a Stuffer loaded cartridge finds itself in turn rapidly stuffed, a permanent reminder of Stuffer’s skills to his new client and friend.

The third Stuffer designation?  That easy charm, cocky self-confidence, dirty laugh, and grinning handsome face should give you a clue. If not, a number of lovely ladies in the southern Home Counties could enlighten you further. Certainly, a surprising number of these ladies turn out to be well acquainted with the quieter parts, the green lanes and old woodlands, of several discreet sporting estates.  And not because they have taken up poaching.  

Heavy Keepering

The season has begun and the wildlife is starting to get nervous. Out in the fields of East Anglia the partridge coveys stir uneasily at the sight of men in strange green clothes. On the steps of the cathedral the dreadlocked protesters stir uneasily at the sight of men in strange blue clothes. Both of these species have a very limited season and both worry that the sombre steadily strolling men might be armed and on a mission.

There’s a lot to be said for sport which can be enjoyed from the high-backed chair in air-conditioned comfort. Outside the protesters move around in a nervous flock, whilst a few traditional London bobbies (mostly of more advanced years, a few bearded, some female) stroll between them, smiling and relaxed. The protesters offer them organic biscuits, strange coffee, and free hugs.

But what I can also see from my chair is four police vans hidden in a back-alley, windows steamed up, but not enough to conceal dozing police in heavy jackets with night sticks stacked by the door. These police are young, clean shaven, and very male. Occasionally young officers appear loaded with Subways or Big Macs which are passed into the vans. With the boredom and the diet they must be spoiling for a fight.

In the sun it is warm and comfortable, both amid the tents and along the hedges. The quarry sit tight and hope the threat will pass and they can go back to feeding and yawning and squawking to each other.

But if I were a protester I would ignore the friendly coppers and worry about those hidden police vans in the alley, and if I were a partridge I would wonder about the departing keepers and worry about tomorrow’s convoy of Range Rovers in the lane...

This Sporting Life

Sunday; northern France; Eurostar Premier Business at 200kph.  Flat neat farming country, a hot morning, bright sunshine, and a busy railway line. But nothing deters the sporting French gent.

Every couple of kilometres a row of battered cars on the edge of stubble (not a Range Rover Sport amongst them, no style these Frenchies). And nearby a line of men, various in shape, size, age and dress (no plus-fours of course), all holding shotguns at dangerous angles, pushing their way through sugarbeet or maize.

Every couple of kilometres I say, but in some places every half a kilometre. No doubt they were all out over the same land yesterday and last weekend and probably Wednesday afternoon as well, having played hookey from the office or workshop or bakery.  How can there be anything left to kill in these flat empty intensively farmed fields?

Except each other of course.