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.
Friday 30 December 2011
Thursday 8 December 2011
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.
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.
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