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.