What activity saw a gathering of carers, hill farmers, midwives, children, parents, shopkeepers and even a vicar on New Year’s Day in a small village in North Yorkshire?
And what picture of this event posted on my Instagram feed prompted more fuss than any other I’ve put up over the past year? Answer, none other than the traditional meet of the local hunt.
Now I have no particular passion for hunting, but having witnessed this event, it makes a nonsense of the Government’s determination to bring in further restrictions.
This hunt, where hounds and riders follow an aniseed-scented trail through streams and forests, hills and dales, is no more dangerous to the fox population than that animal’s everyday existence, with all the hazards endemic to life in nature.
There has been no killing of a fox by this group in years, no baying of the aristocracy, no blooding of teenagers.
Instead it was a wonderful display of an activity that had nothing to do with privilege and everything to do with a cherished tradition where children plod along on their stocky ponies behind the hunt masters in their red jackets and women, their hair worn in snoods, only slightly less intricately styled than the horse’s manes. Followed by walkers from the village.
The description of this by the Environment Department as ‘a smokescreen to cruelly kill foxes and hares’ is one more example of those pronouncing having no experience of what they’re talking about.
I’d be interested to know how many of the leading Labour politicians who are committed to outlawing this – surely a harmless activity – have been within even a sniff of a hunt.
Nor, I suspect, had the Instagram followers who jumped to accuse me of heartless behaviour as if I had posted a picture of a public execution instead of a celebration of community and countryside pursuits.
I respect their opinions, but would pay greater attention to them if they showed any knowledge of the hunting rules today that forbid the gruesome massacres they imagine, and the rural infrastructure that hunts help keep going.
Gazumped… by a Christmas sob story
Imagine this scene. A young man and heavily pregnant woman are looking for shelter in the deep mid-winter.
When they arrive in the dark at the inn where they hope to sleep, they find themselves in the company of another couple in the same situation.
There is only one room, but the other couple nab it because the innkeeper prefers their ‘story’. They get stuck with the manger.
OK, the comparison is a bit of a stretch, but a young friend of mine is looking for a flat to buy in a desirable part of London and offered the asking price, as did another buyer.
The other hopeful won the flat, not because either party had upped their offer, nor were they in a better financial position, but because, the estate agent said, the flat’s owners were taken by their story.
Fortunately, the last time I tried try to buy a property, all you had to do was offer the most money. But now estate agents are urging buyers to come up with a tale to resonate with sellers.
Unfortunately, my friend had no heartfelt story, no pregnant companion, no current homeless situation – only, as he remarked, the ability to come up the figure north of half-a-million being asking for.
Next time he won’t be so foolish. A touching Hollywood-style script is being prepared to pull at the heartstrings should it be needed to top up the mortgage offer.
Now I know what’s been occurrin’
Because the finale of Gavin & Stacey broke records for TV viewing, I reckoned the moment had come to watch the programme for the first time.
It was certainly perverse to start my own G&S experience with the ending of a story that was launched in 2007, but luckily for me, having loved every second of it, I now have the delicious three series to catch up with.
Nora’s right: never skimp on bath oils
Over the holiday period I re-read the late Nora Ephron’s masterpiece I Feel Bad About My Neck. I last read it some years back and only really remembered the title essay, but this time it was the last chapter – Considering The Alternative – that really resonated.
Nobody writes more humorously about the unavoidable dilemma of ageing. Nora sensibly concludes there is little positive that can be said about the condition, but she has one marvellous piece of advice: pay no attention to instructions on your favourite bath essence to use only a capful.
As she points out, a capful gets you precisely nowhere in terms of a lovely scented soak. Chuck in cupfuls.
She writes: ‘If the events of the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that I’m going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I skimped on bath oil today.’ What words of wisdom.
Duchess’s latest kitchen nightmare
If Meghan Markle had even a thousandth of the intelligence and sense of Ephron, she would have realised that to host a cooking and lifestyle programme wearing white is never going to convince anyone you are a domestic goddess. One splash and it’s curtains. Why do you think Nigella wears so much black?
But that probably isn’t going to stop anyone watching. Seeing how wrong Meghan gets things has become the compelling point of her appearances, and much more enjoyable than in the unlikely event she got something right.
A tasty Italian has never let me down
The popularity of coffee pod machines continues to amaze me.
The coffee they produce is invariably disgustingly weak and, worse, almost always tepid.
It doesn’t compare to the delight of preparing my morning cup in a traditional Italian Bialetti that lurks on the hob companionably for hours, ready for top-ups and on a cost per cup is so much cheaper to boot.
I bet Meghan prefers a pod.
