My rumination is interrupted by a text message from a French TGV train. “Wife tells me it is too expensive to phone you & as she just spent £1,000 on shoes things must be tight.”
Please, not so mean. Does he know the price of JP Tod loafers? I am hardly the one to complain to. We spend more than that every month on horseshoes. Is this excessive? It depends on how many horses you have and how exquisitely you shoe them.
At a country-house dinner in Wiltshire, my hunting friends tell me the cubbing is fantastic this year and the sabs seem to have disappeared to the guinea-pig farm.
Lost for conversation, I announce that I am switching sides on the foxhunting question, with predictably chilling consequences. Obviously I had not thought it through when I announced this but have done, since then.
In Mean Fields passim I came out in support of hunting after trying it myself and concluding that there is no system of wild animal control that can give the fox such a good chance of survival nor one so likely to reduce the number of hunters through fatal horse-related accidents.
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But after four, gosh, almost five years on the farm, getting in synch with nature, my attitude to the local fauna has become increasingly tolerant and the idea of some of my neighbours in prison not unappealing.
I claim no moral high ground; I have not been entirely virtuous. I remember one bag of 70 rabbits. Several deer. We’ve caught, shot and otherwise dispatched a few foxes, too. But not that you’d notice much difference as I can still see their eyes at night when I point my high-powered flashlight into the woods.
So, on the whole, I am reconciled to the squirrels taking my walnuts, the rabbits eating my grass, the deer eating my saplings, the herons eating my fish, and inevitably, too, the foul, furry foxes.
As I confirmed in my own ill-judged intervention on the hunting field, there is much that is thrilling about hunting when you are fit for it, and terrifying when you are not. Irrespective of the rights of others, I am no longer in the killing space.
But ban it for others? Well, why not? Never mind the welfare of the fox. How can such brazen defiance of health and safety regulations be tolerated? Hunting is dangerous! There will be those who say I am nothing but an opportunist, and they may be right.
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Tony Blair has the most serious question to answer. Is his avowal that he will ban foxhunting a party trick? We have now had several years of Blair suddenly being just a moment away from producing a rabbit from his hat, or perhaps a furry fox. These political performances are always timed to coincide with other troubles.
But even the densest will now have realised that Blair has never actually produced the long-promised decision on hunting, although there are whispers once again that it could be any day now. Well, put up or shut up. Blair’s party trick is in danger of losing its magic.
So I dare the government. I double dare it. Ban foxhunting. Do it now. It would be an act of courage. It would show you keep your word. It would delight the class warriors and the tree huggers. It would save the necks of countless hunters. And if the hunters come out swinging, you can always send in John Prescott. Surely you cannot be seriously worried there could be trouble? A peasants’ revolt? I am asked for my view on the Olympic Games, which is that they affirm the British aptitude for sports that involve sitting down. Also, we probably do not win more because we do not cheat enough.
About half a billion in tax and lottery money has been poured into British sport over the past four years. Needless to say, a gigantic new Labour bureaucracy has risen from the ground to serve it, with 570 on the payroll in England alone at one point. All this has produced a haul in which so far each medal can be imputed to have cost the public around £20m.
The cereal farmers say they are in trouble, although their maize looks okay. Lord Haskins for the government ludicrously invites us to consider this a disaster akin to foot and mouth.
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The oak leaves are starting to turn, also the chestnuts. We are being dive-bombed by wasps and hornets. I am predicting a harsh winter and global cooling. Just do not pay attention to Haskins.