A slight divergence. Permit me to introduce a very exotic bird indeed. Christopher Allsop, or Allsop of the Nile, as he is known in northern Africa and various west London bars. Mr Allsop is one of the last great explorers, currently back in London, whilst equipping himself with cleft sticks and pith helmets for his next great trek into unknown parts, and then on from Heathrow Terminal 3 to central Africa.
He and I share a common problem. Well, several, but the one we should like to share with you relates to our visibilty, or, a psychologist might explain, our self esteem.
Which boils down to this. Are we alone? Or, are there others out there? Or, to put it another way, is anybody else reading our stuff? Now, Allsop of the Nile's stuff is really worth reading, even given an over emphasis on perfect English grammar, as he is a visitor to the most extraordinary places, a wanderer amongst fascinating people, and an acute observer of all around. Find him at his best at www.whingeingbanker.blogspot.com (which, be warned, is coloured by, but not about, modern banking).
I know people are reading his lyrical account of travels in northern Africa, as various persons have come up to me, in a field in East Anglia, in a large house in Worcestershire, in a pub in Sussex, a restaurant in the City, and in several bars, (some of which Mrs B.... would not be happy about), to say how wonderful his oeuvre is. But he, and I, both of us, have received several complaints that it is impossible to make comments on our sites, and tricky to become a follower.
On the comments thing, this might be for the best, but both of us are prepared to risk the brickbats and rotten eggs of the public. I have employed a 14 year old technologist of the utmost skill and even he can't get his comments posted, and that is after offering him a rolo if he succeeded and the rest of the packet if he made a nice comment.
Any ideas, anybody out there? If there is anybody out there......
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Tuesday 10 January 2012
Cow Boys
Late last October I found myself standing on a peg in a Somerset wood. It's different down there. Wetter, for a start. My boots do leak, I suspected this last year but now I had clear and damp confirmation. Damn. The grass is - er - well, greener. And longer. And wetter. Much much wetter. In fact, I have a suspicion that Somerset may be a detached part of the Saragossa Sea, grass floating on water. A significant quantity of which was now inside my boot.
And another thing. The cows. Serious cow country this. There's an awful lot of cows in Somerset, leering over gates at you, greasing the lanes as they pass from wet field to milking parlour, idling slowly along narrow roads flicking those curious tails, steaming heavily in open yards, their silage clamps reminding your olfactory organs of their dominant role in the local economy.
But cows are not what this is about. Birds are what it is, obscurely, about. And that is why I was standing in a line of farmers in a damp field.
I had a very nasty shock on the second drive. I was standing down by a stream, wondering if it was a bit early to have a small cigar. It was in fact 11.25am; this is a Somerset farmers shoot, a group of neighours who pool (pool! hah!) their land (or bog) and ask along a few mates. One of whom was the local auctioneer, who I happened to have been at school with and who thought it would be amusing to leaven the cow talk with a City perspective. Prompt starts and tight timetabling do not seem to be the Somerset cow farmers' way.
So there I was, all lined up in a glade by the stream, a sloping meadow in front up to a high hedge; left to grow high, thick, and toppy for the benefit of the shooting. The hedge had grown out at the bottom, leaving a large number of bare branches and trunks. I stood, watching and listening for any sign of life, fiddling with my little cigar lighter, knowing the minute I got one alight the birds would start flopping over the hedge. Then I noticed the hedge was busy walking off to the right.
I had been warned that Somerset scrumpy could do very odd things to the brain, but I had had only the one before dinner last night, and stuck to the beer after that. Maybe the combination could bring early onset Alzheimers? Not only was the hedge walking out on us, it seemed to be on fire as well. I vowed never to touch zoider again.
I was just about to draw my neighbours attention to this unusual activity when a cow's head appeared at a gap in the hedge, followed by forty or fifty more, and the Confused of the City moment passed. The hedge remained in place but the cows legs ambled along and carried them into the next field, or more likely, onto the lane with a large amount of Somerset mud, ready for the next cyclist.
Lawks, this drive was taking a long time to start. I lit the small cigar. I became aware of a distant shouting, getting ever nearer. My neighbouring gun started walking toward me, and then, out of the undergrowth like a Japanese survivor of the Second World War, appeared a farming type from our jolly group.
"Bill's blown it again" he said, in broadest scrumpy. "Some bugger's lost in the wood; he never pegs it properly"
I now worked out the shouting: "Number foive; where the bleeding hell is number foive?" My neighbour raised an eyebrow at me.
"Come on, yee can't 'ave forgotten yoiur numbers already; who is number foive?"
The shouting now joined us in the clearing, sweating and red in the face, gun under arm, various pieces of card and paper gripped in hand, followed by two more of our sporting number.
"Got a problem Bill?" one of them asked.
"Why can't you lot ever recall your pegs?" Bill replied "Number foive, any of you gents?" We shook our heads.
Another Bill bellow, honed by years of directing cows, no doubt: "Number foive, where the fxxx are you? Who is foive? Who is foive?"
My erstwhile neighbour looked thoughtfully at his boot and rubbed his chin.
"Well, Bxxx here is seven, and I am six, so...er...um...I think you are five, Bill"
We maintained stiff upper lips until Bill vanished into the wood, but the racous laughter after that must have startled the cows several fields away.
And another thing. The cows. Serious cow country this. There's an awful lot of cows in Somerset, leering over gates at you, greasing the lanes as they pass from wet field to milking parlour, idling slowly along narrow roads flicking those curious tails, steaming heavily in open yards, their silage clamps reminding your olfactory organs of their dominant role in the local economy.
But cows are not what this is about. Birds are what it is, obscurely, about. And that is why I was standing in a line of farmers in a damp field.
I had a very nasty shock on the second drive. I was standing down by a stream, wondering if it was a bit early to have a small cigar. It was in fact 11.25am; this is a Somerset farmers shoot, a group of neighours who pool (pool! hah!) their land (or bog) and ask along a few mates. One of whom was the local auctioneer, who I happened to have been at school with and who thought it would be amusing to leaven the cow talk with a City perspective. Prompt starts and tight timetabling do not seem to be the Somerset cow farmers' way.
So there I was, all lined up in a glade by the stream, a sloping meadow in front up to a high hedge; left to grow high, thick, and toppy for the benefit of the shooting. The hedge had grown out at the bottom, leaving a large number of bare branches and trunks. I stood, watching and listening for any sign of life, fiddling with my little cigar lighter, knowing the minute I got one alight the birds would start flopping over the hedge. Then I noticed the hedge was busy walking off to the right.
I had been warned that Somerset scrumpy could do very odd things to the brain, but I had had only the one before dinner last night, and stuck to the beer after that. Maybe the combination could bring early onset Alzheimers? Not only was the hedge walking out on us, it seemed to be on fire as well. I vowed never to touch zoider again.
I was just about to draw my neighbours attention to this unusual activity when a cow's head appeared at a gap in the hedge, followed by forty or fifty more, and the Confused of the City moment passed. The hedge remained in place but the cows legs ambled along and carried them into the next field, or more likely, onto the lane with a large amount of Somerset mud, ready for the next cyclist.
Lawks, this drive was taking a long time to start. I lit the small cigar. I became aware of a distant shouting, getting ever nearer. My neighbouring gun started walking toward me, and then, out of the undergrowth like a Japanese survivor of the Second World War, appeared a farming type from our jolly group.
"Bill's blown it again" he said, in broadest scrumpy. "Some bugger's lost in the wood; he never pegs it properly"
I now worked out the shouting: "Number foive; where the bleeding hell is number foive?" My neighbour raised an eyebrow at me.
"Come on, yee can't 'ave forgotten yoiur numbers already; who is number foive?"
The shouting now joined us in the clearing, sweating and red in the face, gun under arm, various pieces of card and paper gripped in hand, followed by two more of our sporting number.
"Got a problem Bill?" one of them asked.
"Why can't you lot ever recall your pegs?" Bill replied "Number foive, any of you gents?" We shook our heads.
Another Bill bellow, honed by years of directing cows, no doubt: "Number foive, where the fxxx are you? Who is foive? Who is foive?"
My erstwhile neighbour looked thoughtfully at his boot and rubbed his chin.
"Well, Bxxx here is seven, and I am six, so...er...um...I think you are five, Bill"
We maintained stiff upper lips until Bill vanished into the wood, but the racous laughter after that must have startled the cows several fields away.
Monday 9 January 2012
Birdie Par Two
You do get to see the world with a shotgun. Britain anyway. Last week I was not far from home, but in an empty Chiltern valley that I had never visited before. An hour's drive from central London, but as remote as a Northumberland fellside. Except for those big birds going into Heathrow. Rather you than me, I thought, looking up to the distant droning cigar tube, standing on a little cutout on a steep chalk hillside, looking across grass meadows to ancient beechwoods on the other flank of the valley.
Here, of course, you have to be careful of those other big birds as well. Also circling above, but in silence, wheeling around high above you, just catching the corner of your eye so that you flick the gun halfway up, then relax it again. Massive outstretched wings and that characteristic forked tail.
The red kite. A floating wheeling soaring object of great beauty, brought back here by an American billionaire after they became extinct in these hills. They obviously have an affinity with rolling high chalk downlands and beech woods, they are everywhere now. In the last ten years red kites here have multiplied from the rare to the commonplace. They, allegedly, do not interfere with the pheasants, though with those hooked bills and the sheer numbers of them, I would think it must take great forbearance on their part not to nick a pheasant chick or twenty in the spring.
And it does take a little forbearance not to swing the gun around that enticing circle. Just joking, RSPB members.
My host, a man of these parts, told me that one of his syndicate guns, a local farmer, (a proper one, a lot more rare than red kites now that the Chilterns are an easy commute to Marylebone) had a corner of the eye problem, swung a little too quickly, and the trigger finger connected with the deadly accuracy that only a farmer's can.
After a little discussion and without drawing too much attention (they thought) the kite went into the back of the farmers Shogun under a pile of sacks. "Take it home and bury it" was the host's clear instruction. Fortunately for lovers of justice, at least one of the beaters was an upright citizen and bird lover. Next morning the constabulary arrived at the farm gate and our farmer confessed.
He might have been best advised to hire a PR firm before his time in the dock at Aylesbury magistrates court. The sorry saga was frankly related to the glaring and appalled magistrates.
"And Mr Smith, what did you do with the bird once you had removed it from the scene?" one enquired.
"Took it home"
"And then?"
"Skinned it, cut the breasts off, and pan roast them, madam"
Once order had been restored in the court, the questioning was resumed:
"Ate it, my god, Mr Smith, ate it; what was it like?"
"Somewhere between a golden eagle and a buzzard, madam"
He is using a solicitor for the appeal hearing.
Here, of course, you have to be careful of those other big birds as well. Also circling above, but in silence, wheeling around high above you, just catching the corner of your eye so that you flick the gun halfway up, then relax it again. Massive outstretched wings and that characteristic forked tail.
The red kite. A floating wheeling soaring object of great beauty, brought back here by an American billionaire after they became extinct in these hills. They obviously have an affinity with rolling high chalk downlands and beech woods, they are everywhere now. In the last ten years red kites here have multiplied from the rare to the commonplace. They, allegedly, do not interfere with the pheasants, though with those hooked bills and the sheer numbers of them, I would think it must take great forbearance on their part not to nick a pheasant chick or twenty in the spring.
And it does take a little forbearance not to swing the gun around that enticing circle. Just joking, RSPB members.
My host, a man of these parts, told me that one of his syndicate guns, a local farmer, (a proper one, a lot more rare than red kites now that the Chilterns are an easy commute to Marylebone) had a corner of the eye problem, swung a little too quickly, and the trigger finger connected with the deadly accuracy that only a farmer's can.
After a little discussion and without drawing too much attention (they thought) the kite went into the back of the farmers Shogun under a pile of sacks. "Take it home and bury it" was the host's clear instruction. Fortunately for lovers of justice, at least one of the beaters was an upright citizen and bird lover. Next morning the constabulary arrived at the farm gate and our farmer confessed.
He might have been best advised to hire a PR firm before his time in the dock at Aylesbury magistrates court. The sorry saga was frankly related to the glaring and appalled magistrates.
"And Mr Smith, what did you do with the bird once you had removed it from the scene?" one enquired.
"Took it home"
"And then?"
"Skinned it, cut the breasts off, and pan roast them, madam"
Once order had been restored in the court, the questioning was resumed:
"Ate it, my god, Mr Smith, ate it; what was it like?"
"Somewhere between a golden eagle and a buzzard, madam"
He is using a solicitor for the appeal hearing.
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