Somerset: An Apology

Those of you, if any, who read "Cow Boys" may be labouring under the impression that Somerset is a little wet. I now wish to withdraw any insinuation or suggestion that it is in any shape or form wet, slightly damp, or even moist. I am now closer informed; further and better particulars (as mi' learned friends would say) have been furnished by courtesy of an end of season shooting visit to mid-Wales.

Approaching the Welsh borders in late afternoon in the dark it occurred to me that the drizzle that had been making itself gradually known was building up some force. The windscreen wipers were doing the final chorus of the can-can, and there was an awful lot of puddles lurking about, hurling themselves with a desperate despair across the bonnet whenever I least expected it.

"Just a heavy shower" I thought and drove on. An hour later, as the heavy shower continued in even greater torrents, I turned into an extraordinarily twisting climbing and plummeting lane. After ten minutes, I began to wonder if I had accidentally turned into a mountain stream system, the way old ladies turn onto railway lines at level crossings. No lights, no houses, just water falling from all angles, too much to proceed at more than about 15 miles per hour (which is not the speed the old girl likes to be driven at). If the Rangy had been a Riva motorboat I would have been immensely proud of the waves cresting from her prow and down either flank, but I was not so sure the having the V6 underwater for the bulk of the journey was going to prove terribly good for it.

I was considering stopping to get into my waterproofs when below me appeared a light. This either had to be the village of Pontyaffonflantccwmbach or the Eddystone lighthouse, so I sailed cautiously on and within minutes life was suddenly made good again by the remarkable vision of a long white building, lights at all windows, and the hugely welcome words "The Jones Arms" emblazoned across the front.

We will pass briefly over the complete soaking of self and kit as it was transferred from car to chintzy bedroom, the ruination of a fine pair of brogues by repeated immersion in puddles that elsewhere would have fenced off as dangerous flooded mineshafts, a car that within seconds of the hatch been opened was as wet inside as out.  Let us move to the sinking of the first pint of a fine local brew, and the prompt arrival of its twin. Which was made even more enjoyable by the arrival in the bar of various other drowned rats vaguely resembling my shooting syndicate mates.

Let us also pass over the pleasures of pump and table, but do let us pause several times during the night to listen to rain beating against the tiny window and pounding on the low roof, water violently gurgling down some nearby drain pipe, and then let us meet again to the welcome sound of knife and fork tackling bacon, sausage, and egg. And to the door opening to admit a small dark dripping figure, clad in damp tweed and a big grin. "Good morning gentlemen! On your pegs in twenty minutes!"

Now, apart from sailing and diving, most normal people do not pursue their leisure and pleasure interests underwater. But shootists are not normal people and we had paid a lot of money for this day. So at 9.15 we were standing in what appeared to be a shallow lake with a wet wood in front of us and a wet wood behind. Wet spaniels, wet labs, wet pickers up, somewhere in that wet wood very wet beaters.

"They'll never fly in this" called Peter from my left.

"How will we know - we can't possibly see them if they do" responded David from my right. I kept my mouth shut; I had enough rain going down my shirt without letting it into my interior.

But do you know? Those damned Welsh pheasants, they must be specially bred for the conditions, little wiper units on their eyes,  tails that create an airstream to lift the raindrops away, waterproofed feathers so that all waterlogging is avoided. Out they came and high and fast they flew, lifting clean across the valley, curving as they went.

And do you know another thing about those Welsh waterproofed feathers? They are lead proof too. Nothing came down - except great cascades of raindrops from my hat. Maybe my cartridges were wet, maybe the force of that falling rain of the land of the red dragons bore my lead shot straight to earth, maybe the specific density of gunpowder is weaker in wet conditions.  Maybe when mounting the gun I didn't allow enough for soaked vest, shirt , tie, and waistcoat.  Somehow, these blasted pheasants just flew on. And over.  And across. And on several occasions around. But nothing came down.

Still the water ran down in great streams into my clothing. The only function of waterproof clothing seemed to be to keep the water in, so that everything squished and squelched as I swung. My boots were becoming heavier and colder by the minute and this was, I knew, because they were filling up from the water that was permeating down my plus fours.

Each drive merged into the next, as we peered into the black sky, blinded by searing wetness lashing across our pink faces. The faces of the pickers-up wore that expression that the failing shootist knows so well: "Soft bloody amateurs!"

Peter shouted down the line "And we do this for pleasure!"
"Try owning a football club!" shouted back the richest syndicate member.   Soggy silence fell again.

Finally, we came to the last drive. We lined up, creakingly soggy at the bottom of a steeply sloping grass field. Above us a old wood, dark twisted shapes of wind blown trees. The wind driven rain lashed across into our faces. We stood, water running off sodden clothing, the only solace the thought that next would come a warming lunch and a decent red. We had much time to contemplate the possibilties of pork or beef or wet Welsh lamb as the beaters seemed to take an hour to get into position. Well, maybe it was ten minutes.  The birds flew hard and fast. The lead went up behind and below them. My boots slopped and slurped.

Then at last it was over, the spaniels and labs gambolled about pretending to look for birds that they knew were now falling about laughing in Powys. We sheathed our soaking guns in damp sleeves. Then one of us, the richest member I think, turned to the west, and silently pointed. We followed his stretching finger and looked west. The last of the rain was drifting past, the sunlight was breaking on the distant ridge and behind it the sky was blue.

Gentlemen of the Somerset Sahara; my apologies. You don't know the meaning of the word "wet". But I do.

The Day of the Spaniel

Communist versus Fascist; Russia against America; the Labour/Tory divide; Gladstone and Disraeli; Manchester City vieing with Manchester United. These are nothing compared with that age-old endless debate: Spaniels or Labs?

Like living north or south of the Thames, every shooter, beater, and picker up is born either a spaniel supporter or a labrador lover. Only in matrimony may positions be compromised, where the household has to hold two or three of both. (Children are of course discouraged in such relationships, they are difficult in their eating habits, won't sleep in sheds, and cannot be thrown in lakes to retrieve the badly dropped pheasant.)  Out in the field the proud owner will stand back from the line, at his or her heels the chosen black or yellow (whatever happened to chocolate?) short or rough coats, sitting quietly and calmly, and looking snootily at the nervously shivering multi-coloured yipping piebald shaggy eared creatures who have dared to invade the field of dreams.  And as the day goes on, so does the endless argument, the bramble penetrating qualities of the spaniel ventilated against the gate scaling abilities of the lab, the anarchistic independence of the spaniel compared with the adoring loyalty of the labrador.

Your correspondent does himself have a firm preference, which he will not reveal for fear of death threats and sneering remarks (but he has a deep admiration for long floppy ears).

So last week, finding a Fellow Gun who had been allocated the family Golf so Mrs FG could take the Range Rover on a difficult and demanding trip to J Sainsbury, I naturally offered him a lift and was only a little taken aback when he opened the Golf front passenger door and a black and grey spaniel got out.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course, not, wonderful dogs. Charming chap, what is his name?"

"SHE is Bonny. Twelve years old. I'm afraid she doesn't like sitting in the back, I'll keep her under my feet, if that's alright"

"Of course. What a lovely girl"

She was indeed a lovely girl and in spite of her advanced years sat neatly through each drive and dashed about in a very professional manner when instructed to find and fetch.  After each burst of activity she hopped into the front footwell and looked at me with those adoring spaniel eyes.  By the end of the third drive, and after the third sloe gin, I was wondering if I could get a dog basket in my tiny kitchen and what the boss would say to the odd yelp from under my office desk.

The final drive was on the very muddy bank of a winding stream and Bonny's owner was delighted to receive a pheasant from the reeds. He was not so delighted to find that his black and grey girlfriend now was mostly brown, including those big floppy ears. "Well," he said, "she's going to have to sit in the back now" and I slipped quickly out of the drivers seat and went round to the back door to clear a space and break out a cartridge carton for her to reside on.

"Oh Christ, out, out, Bonny" came from the front and I looked through just in time to see a whirlwind, an Amazonian storm, of hairy legs, heaving body, and flailing ears surrounded by a spray of wide splattering mud.

It is astonishing, the mud carrying capacity of spaniel hair. A liberal coating was applied to my beautiful leather seats, to the dashboard, to the windscreen, my multi-function steering wheel, the door panel, the audio unit. The valet company are taking the car in for the third time next week and this time hope to get the deep residue out ("Next time, try not to let it dry in, sir") . Not that I knew what post spaniel valeting would cost as I watched the Golf drive away, those loving spaniel eyes adoring me out of the back window.

 .

Exotic Bird

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......

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.

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.

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.