I've decided that I'm going to write all further posts on this blog in verse. So there will now be a small pause (of some years, probably) in which I learn how to write poetry.

(Also it's damn chilly and wet in the sodden, autumnal West Midlands and lying under a dripping hedge at dusk with an iron-sights rifle seems about as attractive to me as ... something very unattractive.)

Meanwhile, I send my most hearty congratulations to Holly on the occasion of her first deer.

Drug abuse, idleness and mobile phones.

Today, nostrils crammed with snuff and my head spinning pleasantly, I lay on the grass of a cool Autumn field and gazed up into the branches of an oak tree; leaves - one or two at a time - fluttered down to join me.

Later, lying in a another field, I heard someone shouting; a large man appeared with a mobile phone at his ear and a red and white spaniel at his heels. He advanced into the field, lay down himself and continued his conversation while his dog raced around him. The call finished, he stood up, hitched up his tee-shirt and - baring his generous white belly in the act - scratched his shoulder at some length. This done, he greeted me with a cordial wave and left the field followed by his dog.

Pausing to exchange a series of whimsical text messages with my wife, I mooched in stages down a fence-line free of rabbits.

Dusk fell and the snuff ran out. Wholly unburdened with game as I was, a vision of cocoa and cheese on toast easily carried me home.

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Tags: photography, snuff, hunting, shooting, humour, UK

At work in the fields

I crawled through a hedge yesterday, like you do, and found myself under a tree. I took my rifle out of its bag, popped in a pellet and lay back against the tree. A flutter - and a wood pigeon landed in the branches above my head.

The times I've cooked them in the past, I realised last night, I've overcooked them; they don't need long: twenty minutes in the oven yesterday and this one was superbly tender and delicious.

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Tags: wood pigeon, photographs, hunting, shooting, England, UK

(S)Canned Veg

Scouring the 'reduced' shelves for food as I do, I'm often struck by the way that price tags and labels have come to dominate the appearance of the items on sale. Here are two fine specimens from my recent expeditions:

Brrrrrr!

• A bracing, heart-expanding Autumn evening; I stride briskly to the fields at dusk and sit motionless behind a stile for half an hour. In the distance, I can see scampering brown blobs but, near at hand, nothing stirs.
  

• I get up and walk down the fence line; a cold mist is rising off the fields; it is, I realise, damn cold.

• I shiver and - ninja-like, except for copious nose-blowing and snuff ingestion - continue to edge down the field.

• I shiver more and realise that I am actually on the brink of hypothermia. Striding vigorously about and admiring the Autumn is all well and good, sitting motionless on the ground in a field is another matter entirely.

• Rather than perish in a chilly field I elect to knock hunting on the head and go home to get warm.