The house is a quiet place and I have a weekend of weeding – yes, weeding, not wedding…different stage of life to yours probably – ahead of me which is frankly a relief because last weekend the Easter holiday ended with a bang. Actually I wasn’t there to witness it. Bob has got a gun licence now and being 17 if he wants to cycle down the road with his gun in a slip on his back then, believe it or not, the law says he is entitled to do so. And, for a change, he had permission to shoot on the land he headed to some two or three miles away. Consequently this was a much happier state of affairs than often is the case with stories about him that I relate to you.
Do you remember, some years back, I told you that we found a message on our answer phone from someone complaining about a shooting in the village. Our hearts stopped. Turned out that Sophie had cursed the pigeons that perched in a tree and deposited unsavoury things on her car below once too often and Bob had decided to take matters into his own hands to help solve his mother’s little problem….he was just 12 at the time. Whilst we were out, he found the keys to my gun cabinet – yes….a cardinal sin on my part – and helped himselfto a .410. He then sneaked onto the drive and shot a pigeon stone dead out of the tree. The poor creature landed on the road outside our house at the feet of an elderly and presumably very startled gentleman out for a walk with his dog. Not a happy teddy.
Anyway last Saturday we headed off to our party in Gloucestershire. By the way I didn’t wear the Jungfrau medals in the end. I found a clip on claret coloured velvet bow tie, a revolting tweed waistcoat, stuck a pheasant feather into a trilby and was in every part the perfect Swiss alpine gentleman. My phone buzzed roughly at the point I was negotiating Milton Keynes interminable roundabouts with a text from Bob telling us he was heading out on his bike to have a pop at a few things. I braced myself for some trauma or other. But when we got back home on Sunday afternoon, apart from feeling a little delicate myself, all seemed in order. That was until the point Bob was collected by a friend’s mother to take him back to Rugby. He was half way through the front door when he turned and told me that he had shot a muntjac, butchered it on the spot and then cycled home with two haunches, some fillets and a couple of sirloin steaks - crammed into various pockets of his jacket presumably - that were now in our downstairs freezer. Yum. Same old stuff really isn’t it.
Talking of gardening, home grown asparagus for supper tonight. Popping up all over place. Blinking marvellous.
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