WEEKEND COLUMNISTS I didn’t expect to hit anything. Apart from one charity day I have not used my shotguns all year; the first six months were spent working round the clock in response to the recession. And since the business climate has improved (we noticed a watershed in June, although it’s early days yet) no opportunity has presented itself. But I have discovered that my village, to which we moved last September, has a clay shooting club that operates for two hours a week. It leases its field from the council and is entirely member-run.
The club is right next to a private air strip. How many villages in England sport a clay shooting club next to a private air strip? And there is a boxing gym in the next village, only a mile away. I cannot imagine why I ever wanted to live anywhere else. The air strip also has hangar space for rent (it is always good to have aspirations).
The partridge season opened this week, so I needed some practice. Cost Centre #2 is currently a better shot than me. He and his best friend, a lovely German boy we have known for years, recently spent a week on an estate in Lincolnshire helping to prepare it for the game season.
Had you ever wondered what to do with bored 14- and 15-year-olds in the middle of the summer, here’s your answer. Send them off to help take delivery of pheasants (which arrive in boxes of 30), prepare their pens (mending fences, clearing foliage, sorting out water and grain) and then spend their evenings outdoors with torches and .22 rifles getting rid of any vermin that look likely to dine out on the new arrivals. Add in some pigeon and rabbit shooting, then some lessons in how to pluck/skin and cook, and you will get the picture. No wonder they called after a few days to ask if they could extend their stay.
CC#2’s absence relieved me of having to answer his continual questions. And he is not the only one; CC#3 is starting to develop a keen line of questioning. The most recent was to ask me how his oldest brother would ever pay back the student loan he is about to take out. Answer: the government will reclaim it from him once he earns more than £15,000 pa, but goodness knows when that will be, not least because he currently plans to earn a living writing screenplays! But at least I could answer that question; CC#2, as usual, asks much more difficult ones. This weekend he wanted to know, during a two-hour hike we took together, why cows had such complicated digestive systems. Answer – I definitely don’t know, I don’t even have biology O-level, why don’t you save that question for God when you get there, and in the meantime consult the internet?
He did consult the internet the previous week, when, home alone, he decided to cook macaroni cheese. Shelves of cookery books were left to collect dust while he Googled a recipe. I was impressed with this initiative, but have been told that he is not pleased about accepting my praise – apparently cooking is something that 14-year-olds don’t do if they are cool. What do they do? Lines of coke? Cooking seems to me to be a very useful occupation for someone that age.
There were no 14-year-olds in evidence at my local clay shooting club, where I was the youngest person present by quite some years. At the end of the 90 minutes or so shooting time, everyone set to and packed up the equipment, while I and a few others were put to good use scouring the field to retrieve any clays that had fallen without breaking, so that they could be reused. I like that approach to recycling and happily brought back the piles and piles that I had missed. Because, as I had predicted, I didn’t hit much.
