Deer Oh Dear

Several attractive ladies of various ages sat blushing in various alcoves, the pint of Black Sheep was settling on the counter-top, the hound was in his favourite place, and the familiar Stuffer cackle dominated the saloon bar.

The hand powered into the air in greeting: “B, you old bar-steward; what are you doing here? Nobody asked you grouse shooting – again?” He patted the empty stool next to him.

“I might ask the same of you” I said, trying to force a grin, “Shouldn’t you be away in the north parting rich Americans from hard earned dollars?”

“No, that’s your job B, ripping off the widows and orphans, that’s what you City lads are trained for – though in your case B, I should think it’s pretty instinctive.”

I worked harder on cranking up the unwilling grin.

“But,” he continued “As it happens, I have been with an American client and getting him an introduction to high society. And seeing you asked, he has rewarded me rather appropriately. Care for a Black Sheep?”

It appeared. I settled on the next stool, knowing that the oncoming anecdote was as inevitable as a high plains tornado and that one best be seated and watered for it.

“I don’t suppose you know the Duke of Clapham, B, Jonny Clapham? Nice chap, not a bad shot now, I gave him a few lessons and sorted him out. He lets me run the stalking in the park at Penge Abbey. Always impresses the Yanks – real live Duke, not utterly gaga, great mouldy house with lots of blotchy furniture, acres of woods and parkland and some easy shots at a stag or two. Not that I tell them they’re easy shots of course. And Jonny, for an extra five hundred pounds, will put them up in the east wing overnight, let them be eaten by blue blooded bed bugs, and in the evening even take bread with them. Great grandfather’s claret is extra. It’s from Majestic really of course, pull half the label off and throw dirty water over it.

Nearly went wrong this time though.

This yankee chap is in hard drives or hard oil or hard cheese or something in Des Moines, he arrived with his grandson, Dwayne or Dwight, nasty surly lad of 15 with his hat on backwards. But plenty of spare rooms so no problem at the Abbey, and Darren behaved pretty well whilst we were in the hide. Not a squeak, entire time on his iphone, never looked up. Could have been in Des Moines for all he cared.

Granpaps got a very nice stag, I took it behind a bush and gralloched it, and we posed for the hunter home from the hill pictures in front of the Abbey. Then dinner with the Duke at 8pm, some pretty repulsive sherry in the Great Hall but the Yank had never tasted it before, so could not tell that any gentleman would have rejected it even in the soup.

Into the dining room, the butler, forced out of retirement and into the black livery for this – Jonny gives value for five hundred quid you know – doing all the serving and pouring. Smoked salmon to kick off, the Dylan kid gave it a dirty look and nibbled very cautiously but soon got the hang of it and wolfed that down.

Rather a long pause and the visitors started to look impatient but just when I thought we might get a little talk on fast food and the wonders of the drive through diner, in came butler and cook – nice looking girl, the cook incidentally – with four vast plates with silver lids on. One in front of each of us and then lifted simultaneously – the cook did Jonny’s and I noticed they gave each other a very beady look. A partridge each and all the trimmings, very nice. Little exclamations of delight – except from Dwebble who was staring at the salver.

“It’s a boid” he hollered, “a dead boid!”

More intelligence there than I would have given him credit for. Granpappy looked daggers and was about to tell him to get munching when the kid delivered the coup de grace:

“Granmaw won’t like this, Granpaps, when I tells her I eaten parrot”

“Say Duke....” says Granpaps.

But Jonny was ahead of him.

“Parsons” (this was to the butler) “Do we have any choice for dinner tonight?”

From the shaking of family portraits as Parsons slammed the door I suspected his preferred choice was diced callow youth. I started to draw Jonny out with stories about great stags missed, as part of our guest self esteem management programme, but within about two minutes Parsons was back with another vast plate and silver lid, which he plonked rather firmly in front of Dwobble. White cloth over left arm, and the lid was raised to reveal – a hamburger and fries, with lettuce leaf on the side to satisfy the five a day requirement.

Jonny half raised an aristocratic eyebrow, though Granpaps and the kid seemed unmoved by this turn of fortune. Presumably they thought that ducal kitchens at all times housed a range of hot foods for every taste, like TGIFridays.

Later that night I happened to have to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, and was able to interview the cook (did I mention she was rather pretty?) on this remarkable substitution. “As soon as I saw Fat Boy in shorts and baseball cap in the Great Hall I knew he wouldn’t want the Partridge a la Mode, so I ran up a burger as well.”

“But why not send it up with the partridges?” I asked.

“Because then Jonny, I mean, his Grace, would have wanted one too, he hates game and all that fancy food, only eats it to impress the paying guests. Another cognac, Stuffer?”

The Deal Hunter

The holidays are over at last, and B is at work.  The pinstripe jacket is over the back of the chair, the bowler hat has been dusted and is resting nonchalantly on top of the filing cabinet, the pewter pheasant perched on top, the laptop is open on the corner of the desk, both screens of the PC are on, prices scrolling with elegant deliberation across the right hand one.  And in the high backed chair is B himself; hair shorn like a summer lawn, shoes polished to sergeant major standard, a suitable expression of frowning concentration keeping the double chin taut, his eyes focused on the left hand screen.

So let’s move round behind him and see if we can get a glimpse of the great financier at work, of an epoch making deal in final structuring before we read about it in gushing praise from the FT.

The right little finger presses a keyboard button and a tantalising glimpse of the screen seems to show black and gold and the words “Holland and...” before they are replaced by the sobriety of a rate sheet; maybe a very prestigious deal for the Kingdom of the Netherlands?  “Yes, dear boy?”

“Oh, nothing much B, do you think we could look at the second quarter results when you are not so busy?  We need to send them upstairs.”

“Of course, my old duck, maybe this afternoon?  Bring me a macchiato next time you happen to pass the machine could you?  And a Kitkat”

B picks up the phone as we move away and by walking very slowly perhaps we can pick up the theme of the deal:

“Hi, Harry, I’ve moved the diary around, and I could do that partridge day on the 21^st, very kind of you indeed.  And, look, we’re taking a day at Snizort on 14^th January, some very late well trained seriously high pheasanties.  Just your thing.  Would you come to that, be lovely if you could....”

The bank better check its deal targets for the year, because if B hasn’t done his share by now, there won’t be much else getting booked in the P&L this quarter under his name.  The season is started, the leaves are beginning to turn, the woodlands beckon; the bowler’s in the office and the flat cap is in the Rangie.

Oh yes, the holidays are over and the top sportsman is seriously at work.

Frozen Assets

Aaaah. Spring at last.  Daffodils and green shoots and lambs and all that stuff.   More importantly invitations for the autumn, early booking of sporting hotels, shooting syndicate reunion dinners, bargain sales of sporting goods (no madam, not tennis rackets),  quiet contemplation of the diary working out how to get from Devon-on-Thursday-to-Northumberland-on-Friday-to-Buckinghamshire-on-Saturday.

And who the guests might be on Thursday and Friday so that these can be put down as corporate days, and the hotel accommodation upgraded so that the bank, and of course, its representative, can be shown as serious and heavyweight players worthy of doing business with.  Could one, B ponders, put down a Devonshire farmer as a possible purchaser of complex derivatives? Maybe he would like to hedge his milk production in case the Exmoor lanes get blocked with snow?

Blocked with snow; my lord!  Supposing they get blocked with snow that vital Thursday shoot day!  Would the boss be willing to pay for helicopter hire?  Surely yes, for seizing such important corporate marketing leads.   Such are the thoughts that bother the modern countrysportsman as he juggles a busy business career with his corporate marketing obligations.  And dozes gently in his garden chair on a Bank Holiday Monday.

Which in light spring kissed dreams brought a remembrance of one of Stuffer’s stories. Therefore, without doubt, true in every single respect and of the utmost verisimilitude.  This was set not in Devon, but far west Cornwall. .Somewhere on that snow blasted side of Bodmin Moor, where the woodcock for some reason like to spent their winters and the snipe jink across the bogs, soaring up into the low cloud at the slightest sign of tweedy gents and guns  

Four sporty chaps and Stuffer (why he was there we shall never know) were out in the sedgy reed bogs for a day’s sport.  The snow was lying long and the bogs were a week frozen, ideal conditions for wild flighty birds. Not so good for wild sporty chaps though. It was cold. Bitterly cold.  The brass monkey jokes had been abandoned as too proximate to the truth.  Mental notes had been made to upgrade long johns (or in two cases, to wear them next time).  Military fleeces and winter coats were been worn together.  And still the chill crept through into the aching bones and the fingers and toes slowly froze into immobility.

Without being too biological, a doctor would advise that a bottle of claret per chap in the evening and three cups of coffee over breakfast to mitigate the effects thereof are not best advised when said chaps are intending to spend their mornings standing in exposed places in virulently low temperatures.  Especially where there is a distinct lack of those nice little cubicles sited on London streets where a chap might retreat for a quick...erm.. perusal of the rugger pages, in fact, a distinct lack of walls, hedges, trees, old sheds, and any other form of cover for the performance of nature’s call, or even shielding from the western blasts.

Tom had stood it as long as he could, but finally as the Land Rover emptied for yet another sweep of a hopeful frozen expanse, he made his excuses and hung back as the others began their cautious sweep across the sedge and reed. Shielded from them by the Landy he fumbled with layers of coats and trouserings and long johns and even lower layers that we will not dwell on, and finally was able to excavate the required equipment and turned to begin that blessed relief which we must all from time to time seek.

Turned to find that he was facing directly two orange clad blue hatted lady walkers who somehow had walked up the track whilst all the fumbling was going on and by a mischance of timing were now forming a fascinated audience.

A fascinated but not very impressed audience “My goodness, it must be a cold day” said number one.  “Yes indeed, although you never know do you” replied number two. They raised their eyes back to the horizon and walked on.  Their giggling was borne downwind for a good hundred yards as Tom found his biological need no longer so pressing.

Swing Lowe

I was not born the proud occupant of a corner cubicle and window desk with a view across the dreaming money mountains of the City. Oh no, indeed. My beginnings were much more humble.

My climb to this locational glory began as a student, a student equipped with, my children entirely refuse to believe, all the essential apparatus of 1970’s studenthood – a magnificent Zappa moustache paid due homage to a great man, fourteen inch flared jeans sat elegantly on my 30" waist, my long golden tresses were habitually tied back in a long wavy ponytail.  Well….  A small ponytail. And the colour was perhaps a little more mouse than golden. And maybe the waist was 32”. Or 34”. Not 36”, absolutely not.  And, looking at the photographs, the moustache seems perchance more Niven than Zappa.

This essay at hippydom was a rather short period of my life, as it turned out.  For my second long vacation I had been expecting to go back to the farm where I had worked in the first long summer and which seemed very appreciative of fashionable dress and hairstyling. To my surprise, my letter seeking renewal of my post garnered an instant response. From this it was very obvious that the incident involving the ditch, the tractor, and the three ton trailer of barley had not been forgotten, or forgiven.

So I applied to the local stately home to work as a guide, escorting the steaming masses round the treasures and trinkets of one hundred and fifty years of throwing nothing away. A colonel’s wife commanded the regiment of guides and my charm went nowhere with her. She perused me over the top of her half-focals, a technique learned no doubt from her husband as perfected at El Alamein

“It would be nice to have a man among the team” she boomed – with a look and in a tone that indicated that yours truly was not helping achieve this objective.

She looked again, eyes narrowed against the desert sun, sighed, and said “Start on Tuesday.  No doubt you can get a proper hair cut and shave by then. Oh, and buy some clothes. Good afternoon”

So the pony tail was cropped, the flares replaced with best country cords and the Zappa zapped, with a razor..But, this sartorial vandalism apart, I took to life at Lowesdale Hall rather well. It was warm and dry, an easy bike ride from home, the guides’ tea was generously provisioned (though one did have to watch the sharp elbows when trying to get at the scones and jam); and the gawping masses generally not too trying.  

The most trying thing was trying to remember the history and provenance of all the clutter which was laid about to amuse the hordes.  Lord Lowesdale was a bit coy about this, and did not care to hear his staff admit that most of it had been bought off dealers in the late nineteenth century, the ancient family and fortune of Lowe going only as far back as a cotton mill in Accrington in about 1856.

After a couple of weeks I was given the heavy responsibility, but more generous tipping potential, of the evening parties. These were not jolly cocktail parties, but groups of, mostly, Americans who were prepared to pay very generously for a tour of the tat by candlelight (much better that way actually, it looked more distinguished and less distressed) and then dinner with Lord L himself – who also by candlelight looked more distinguished and less distressed.

He normally avoided the tours part, presumably to avoid awkward questions as to the presence of a lot other people’s ancestors on his walls, but graciously received the punters in the Green Drawing Room, for a quick glass of something reviving before dinner.

My last evening tour, before I was demoted to the dizzy depths of supervising the correct placement of cars in the car park, was of a party of very Californian Californians, all in jeans and tie dyed T shirts, and indeed probably all relatives or mates of F Zappa. I was very taken by all this laid back coolness, which is probably why I forgot to mention to his lordship that they all had to a man, and to a rock chick, opted for the vegetarian choice for dinner (three courses, each mostly of cheese).

Into the Green Drawing Room we shuffled, with his lordship lolling heavily in front of a large Munnings of the 4th Lord Lowesdale with the hounds of the Lowesdale Hunt, in front of Lowesdale Castle.  His son gave them the ritual three minutes of the charm of the English cotton spinning aristocracy, ending with “Do feel free to ask any questions, though I doubt I’ll know the answers…hohoho”.

The sun-kissed ones were regarding the hunting picture with what a lesser noble might have noticed to be considerable distaste. Silence. Then one blond rock chick spoke up, speaking, one could not help but feel, for them all:

“Gee Sir Lord Lowe, is that you in the hunting gear?”

“Hahaha, my dear, certainly not. Not at all”  The Californians suddenly looked happier, and at the back a short haired clean shaven guide breathed out.

“No no, dear lady, the hunt is banned from Lowesdale Hall and all its lands”  The group began to look as they might raise three cheers for this splendid example of a modern aristocrat.

“I banned them twenty years ago, my dear, absolutely inappropriate. Created havoc with my shooting, can’t run a decent pheasant shoot with my woods full of hounds. Eh? Eh? What? Where are you all going? Mr B, where are they all going?”

 

The Illustrious Client - Part Two

Mr Great gave me a reassuring smile, the smile that says "Well done for trying, but you are in the prescence of true talent", and walked off, pulling out his cigar case as he made for the gunbus.

The pretty picker-up provided further confirmation that her true future lay in investment banking. Thoughfully folding the £50 note she said "Every drive here is like this'un, yer know" And tucked the note in an inner pocket of her astonishingly battered barbour..

"And Ah'll be picking up behind you and 'im, each drive, like"

A smaller and purpler version of the first note made the short journey from my wallet to the inner pocket.

She raised an eyebrow. Two more of the larger and redder variety of notes followed their companions (the art of long term gain is knowing when to make that vital investment decision). She smiled confidentially.

"Don't know who that bloke is, love, but ah'll make him love his day" 

And (unlike your average investment banker, I hear you say) she delivered. At the end of each drive she produced Mr Great's birds and pointed out the sparse numbers brought down by Mr B. By the fourth drive Mr Great was feeling so sorry for the terrible day I was having that he proferred his cigar case to me and lent me his silver lighter to lit the chosen stoogie with.  I notice his gaze rather lingered on the picker-up at several points, but then, she was a pretty girl. Or had he noticed, as I fancied I had, that some of these birds did seem to slightly resemble ones that had been produced on previous drives? But then, who on earth can tell one pheasant from another....

Finally, the last drive was completed, the guns stood in the lee of a wood that curved away from the prevailing wind. The view was truly magnificent with the ruins of a distant castle tower catching the last of the sun a long way below us. The beaters slowly emerged from the wood, and the lightely loaded game cart hove into view.  Mr Great looked thoughtful again as the picker-up hung two brace of birds on the rack, giving me a wink as she turned away. 

Finally the keeper appeared, a magnificent figure in estate tweed and battered hat: "Had a good day gentlemen?"

We assured him we had, Mr Great in terms of enthusiasm which gladdened my heart .

Each of us walked forward with a note or two rolled in our right hands, and as we shook his, a mysterious sleight of hand took place as the notes disappeared into his waistcoat pocket. Best be generous I always feel, as I suspect part of the advanced training for head keeping is to how to know exactly who is Mr Generous and who is Mr Skinflint, and next time out to direct the drives so that not much passes over the Skinflints.

As host I waited until last, and then the ritual handshake and transfer took place. Finally relaxed, I engaged this colossus of his craft in conversation:

"Thank you, it was a really astonishing day; our client, I mean our clients, loved it"

"Oh, aye" 

"One doesn't get birds like this in the south, astonishing, I fear we didn't do them proper justice"

He scratched his head under his hat: "Aye, nev'r mind, they'll be there for't next lot on Munda"

"Haha, indeed.  We certainly have left them a few.  Another corporate group?"

"Nay, local syndicate, farmers and like."

"I think we had better come up and take some lessons as to how to hit such high birds, there must be some special technique in Yorkshire for hitting birds on drives like these ones."

He pulled his hat down: "No Yorkshireman would shoot these drives, tha knows, these birds is completely out of range; they wouldn't waste their cartridges. We keep 'em for foreigners. Afternoon to you"



  

The Illustrious Client (with apologies to Dr John Watson, MD)

Your correspondent leads a wearisome and difficult life. You, no doubt, think that life in the City is all four course lunches and champagne, but the modest enjoyment of the basic pleasures of life is oft sullied by the demands and thrusts of vulgar commerce.

Which is why your correspondent was on the crest of a steep hillside in finest North Yorkshire one recent frosty morning.  The keeper was in attendance in his best estate tweed, the beaters and pickers-up had donned new plastic sacks as leggings, holes in flat caps had been roughly stitched up, and even a few of the retrievers had been lightly brushed.

Standing slightly apart were eight fine chaps in eight fine caps. Not adorned in the discounted products of the local agricultural merchant these grand fellows, but all kitted out by visits to Messr’s F and Messr’s P and Messr’s B (correctly, it has been pointed out to me, Signori’s B), and, let us not forget, Messr’s H&H.  Today they too looked especially well scrubbed, polished and brushed; and even a casual observer would soon have spotted the reason for all this sartorial elegance in, behind, and in front of the line.  For there, smoking a small breakfast cigar and regaling his fellow guns with a few amusing words, was Mr Great.

You might not have recognised him; indeed very few people would, but to a certain select crowd of City bankers, he is a very well known face indeed. And to your humble correspondent B and his modest financial institution it is a face which strikes both fear and hope. Fear, in case he takes his huge portfolio of transactions away, and hope, that he might not, and the bonuses will grow ever more straight and strong.

So it is worth keeping Mr Great happy and smiling. Each year he gracefully accepts our proffered invitations to a lunch and a dinner, a visit to a private box at Ascot, and a shooting invitation.  Competition growing ever more intense for Mr Great’s business, this year it was decided that the boat should be well and truly pushed out and that no expense should be spared.  One of the grandest shoots in the far North Riding was booked, as was a dinner and appropriately salubrious accommodations the night before. 

And thus far, so good; though I was rather glad that I had thought to bring along a couple of colleagues to split the expenses submission with, the contents of the hotel cellar being unexpectedly good and Mr Great’s thirst remarkable.

Here we were, a fine morning, a modest wind, and all looking good with the world. Except that into my mind had come sudden doubt. Which was occasioned by my looking down into the deep valley and seeing far far; indeed far, below us tiny yellow tickets on sticks. The pegs for the first drive.  At least, I reckoned, one hundred and twenty feet down from the valley crest where Mr Great was waving his cigar.

Now, Mr Great likes his shooting, and he likes a suitable pile of pheasants at his peg at the end of the drive so he can show us amateurs how it is done.  But no doubt the cares of intensive money making mean he does not get as much time as he might like to get the practice in.  And doing most of your shooting in the Home Counties does not really allow you to get used to the amount of lead and swing and fancy footwork that some might think ideal for the 40 yard bird.  I have seen him hit high birds. Sometimes.  Once or twice. When given proper notice.  Not in a deep Yorkshire valley with a lifting wind. Low birds are, let us be honest, more his thing.

I began to contemplate next year’s bonus.

Twenty minutes later the eight chaps were at the bottom of the valley, the beaters were behind the ridge, and the whistle had been blown.  And ten minutes later I was wondering how Mrs B might feel about giving up three August weeks on the Amalfi coast for a sweet self-catering cottage in the Lake District. 

Our best shot was, I reckoned, maybe hitting one pheasant for every ten cartridges. And the rest of the line was looking like a ratio of  20 to 1. Except for two of us, your correspondent who had lowered his gun to contemplate the occupant of the adjacent peg, his bank’s most important client, whose ratio, I conservatively estimated, was in the region of Infinity to 0.

Hugely high curling birds approached, in sparse and perfectly presented drifts. And practically all of them disappeared over the other side of the valley in unsullied form.  Hours passed. Or at least five minutes. 

Self preservation and the bank’ best interests finally overcame paralysis.  As soon as the final whistle blew I moved from my peg toward Mr Great. Too slow. He turned proudly and called to the pretty girl who was picker-up on the hillside above us: “How many?”

The world suddenly slowed, my feet stuck to the ground, Mr Great smiled with confident modestly, the picker-up opened her pretty mouth. “Lie, lie, lie” I silently transmitted across the bracken to her.

But your Yorkshirewoman is of honest and straightforward stuff.

“NUN” she bellowed.

Mr Great looked around him, perplexed at this sudden religious fervour: “What?”

“None; all missed”.

Sometimes chance and fortune run together. In my coat pocket was the £50 note for the keepers tip at the end of the day. Mr Great was staring up the hillside. The £50 note was in my hand and I waved merrily at the picker-up.

Bright girl that one. Very quick on the uptake. She has great potential for a career in the City I suspect.

“NONE FOR MR B. We are still collecting yours Mr Great. Ten, mebbe a dozen”

“Ah, B, bit high for you, old man, those little birdies. Bit more practice with the clays on the high tower is my advice”

Bagged

Any sportsman will tell you that one of the great joys and sorrows of any sport - indeed of any recreation, I am sure, is the endless opportunities for buying more and more equipment. Capitalistic vultures lie in wait to take advantage of the unwary and when it comes to shooting and fishing types there is an especially close attention to catching the prey. Messrs F, and Messrs P, and Messrs B, and indeed Messrs H&H, are just a few of those entrepreneurial types - or great grandchildren of such - who set up their traps for the unwary in the rabbit runs of the West End.

Your naive sporting gent goes off for an innocent lunch with a few chums, a little business conversation to ensure that the bill can be passed through expenses, and a lot of chat and gossip. Then after both bottles are empty and the light is failing, out of Scotts or Wiltons or the Connaught he staggers in a friendly and avuncular manner, and blow me, before he knows what is going on, Messrs F or P or B, or indeed H&H, have got him in their carefully bated trap and into the cage he is lured.

And then there is all that blasted business trying to smuggle some piece of kit into the matrimonial dwelling and into the bottom drawer or back of the wardrobe, and just when you think the domestic authorities have not noticed and you are in the arm chair with the G&T, the trick question:

"Do you really need three pairs of boots?"

"I am sure I got you one of those cleaning rod thingies for Christmas last year"

"Just how many pairs of breeks can you wear at once, darling?"

But when this is got over and the credit card bill winced at, and the car loaded with all this stuff that seemed so vital at 3.30pm one Thursday afternoon and may be not quite so useful now, when all this is dealt with, it does mean that one can proudly go out and stand in a wet muddy field in great style, glorying in the knowledge that one really does look the part, the envy of one's fellow shootists, and would have done credit to any of those great Edwardian top shots.

At least you can do this glorying if you actually put the kit in the car before you set off to the most remote parts of North Yorkshire. And not realise at breakfast at some small hotel in some tiny market town consisting of a bus-stop and fourteen pubs and a Co-op, when otherwise perfectly and immaculately dressed for the forthcoming day, that you do not seem to have any one of the four cartridge bags that ornament the shooting cupboard. And at that precise moment, presumably still do, because not one of them has accompanied you to Yorkshire.

But I am been churlishly rude about the amenities of this small town, because on peering out of the dining room window, there, right opposite, was a sporting goods shop. Jno. Woodall, whoever he was, or had been, had learnt at the feet of the F's and P's and all the rest of them, and situated his premises where no visiting sportsman could possibly overlook it.

And what is more Jno. Woodall, or his grandson, had already opened the doors and put the lights on. Your correspondent abandoned his toast and leapt across the road and into this heaven sent boudoir of pleasure.  Mr Woodall was behind his counter.

"Good Morning! I am so glad you are open".

"Well, I wouldn't sell much if I wasn't".

"No, indeed! Well, I left a bit of kit at home yesterday and I am hoping you might have a cheap cartridge bag to sell me this morning!"

Mr Woodall looked me closely up and down, with the keen and discerning eye of a Yorkshireman, from brand new and highly polished DuBarrys, up the tailored plus fours with pink socks and gaiters, the new seasons waistcoat (fresh from Messrs P themselves), the matching tailored jacket, to the Hermes silk tie, and not forgetting that rather snazzy silver tie pin.

"A cheap...", he lingered, "... a cheap cartridge bag?"

"Mmm, yes please".

"No. NO. Sold the last one yesterday.  But we have this nice calf leather one by H&H, silk lined"

I didn't have the heart to ask for a discount; I don't carry that much cash.