Hares in the Snow
I have about forty hectares of land by the house and today, I could see how many hares there were.
Hares in the Snow
Note the two brown piles are not hares! They are molehills.
These tracks though were everywhere and as we had had snow last night, these were just the tracks of a single day.
To me, the hare is the most interesting of all of the animals that inhabit our countryside. I say that too with a lot of respect, as for seventeen seasons I hunted with the Easton Harriers in East Suffolk. You get entwined with them and those who are anti-hunting will never understand the respect hunters show.
The snow reminded me of one day at Tannington, where the weather was so cold, that we hunted hounds on foot. Tony Harvey was at one end of an immense field and Jimmy Wickham was at the other with the hounds working between them. It was a memorable day.
There was also the day when I was privileged to follow three packs of hare hounds in one day. Few have done that.
It was at Tannington again, and we started with our own harriers before an alcoholic breakfast. We caught nothing. I remember, I hunted one of my son’s ponies called Bluebell. She was a mare and I always found them a better mount for my skills. In later years, I used to hunt a thoughbred mare called Censella and she never dropped me. But could she go if you asked her!
In the morning it was hunting bassets on foot. It is strenuous work, even if bassets are slow. But once on a hare, they never give up and just keep going. Well some do. My solitary example might follow a scent for twenty metres or so and then it’s time for a snooze or the next meal. She’s never caught anything and we didn’t on that day either with the bassets.
Another alcoholic meal was followed by beagles in the afternoon. Now these were small and angelic beagles, but they were serious too. After perhaps two hours nothing had been caught, although we had seen a few hares.
The day finished with a formal dinner. Tony had suggested that we all go ratting round the stackyard to finish it off, but it was assumed he was joking.
One thing that sums up the day is Tony asking, if we had all had a good day. He got a resounding yes. He then said that is the difference between hunting and shooting and asked how someone would feel if they had gone shooting and hadn’t killed anything!
Birds in the Snow
Or rather some imprints of them in the snow.
Bird in the Snow
Unfortunately, this picture only shows where the bird was sitting. I actually saw the marks of its wing tips where it had taken off. I could make excuses, but it was just a badly taken photo.
Wingtip in the Snow
This picture shows the marks a bird’s wingtip had made. There was no other marks in the snow for some metres around.
It may have been the same bird as the other as these marks were similar to those just outside the other photo. Perhaps in its flapping to get airborne out of the snow, it just touched the ground.
Thanks and No Thanks Mr. Hughes
It seems that Moneybags Manchester City are doing their best to alienate everybody.
To someone who has watched football for many years, the problem at City is the team. Or the fact that they aren’t one! It’s probably impossible to get the City’s bunch of mercenaries to work as one anyway.
Mancini will need time to clear out the non-triers, buy a load more players and then get his team. But will he get the time needed?
An Afternoon Walk in the Snow
I took a walk this afternoon. It was cold and sunny.
The aim of the walk was to take a suitable picture for next year’s Christmas card.
Did I get the picture? Who’s to know!
An Elan on Skis?
I took the X-Type to Sainsburys this afternoon and the temperature gauge was showing minus eight. Don’t ask me what that is in old money, as I don’t do Fahrenheit.
It was probably lucky that I took the Jaguar as someone had got themselves stuck and needed a tow off the snow-covered grass. Not that the car would have been any good at it, as it wasn’t getting any grip on the ice, but I did have a tow rope, which meant that someone else in a Nissan Terrano could do the honours and remove the BMW.
Since the weather has got bad I’ve been alternating the two cars; the Jaguar X-Type and the Lotus Elan.
These pictures show the conditions and a couple of pictures to prove the Elan got safely to Newmarket and back.
By preference, I’d take the Elan every time on this sort of surface. Especially as the lane to the main road into Newmarket, hasn’t been gritted at all and is a fairly steep incline down and then up both ways. It’s also very much single track as the photo shows and you need to go slowly to avoid hitting someone going the other way, as hedges and a couple of bends make the road dangerous. In the last eighteen years, that I have lived in this house, I reckon that there have been about one serious accident a year. I’ve been hit thrice; by the postie, a lady who didn’t get over at all and a lunatic.
Today, I took the Lotus in with the top down and perhaps that was just too ambitious, despite the fact I was well wrapped up. What the car needs is a proper tonneau cover!
All of this shows, that if you take a modern car like the X-Type with lots of clever electronics and anti-lock braking, it is no better than a car which was designed with proper dynamics in the first place.
I should say that I’ve driven cars a lot worse on snow and ice than the Jaguar, but good dynamics are the key to everything, when it comes to roadholding on surfaces, that are good, bad or just plain terrible!
Bum Hoopla
I put a post about Fighting Talk up around midday today. It mentioned “Bum Hoopla”, although I quite rightly left it to your own imagination as to what the game is!
But it has got the blog a hell of a lot of hits.
There must be a moral there!
Or it could be that lots of people have overactive minds!
Busway Humour
You really know you have made it, when you start appearing in humorous Christmas lists. In today’s list in the Cambridge News, number 10 is as follows.
For £116 million you could build a guided busway . . . although Santa could be a little late delivering it.
No delivery date has been set either!
Fighting Talk
This program on BBC Radio 5, is sometimes the highlight of Saturday. Especially, this Saturday, when I was hoping to go to see Ipswich at Scunthorpe and then have supper with an old friend. But the match has been called off and I don’t know what is going to happen about supper.
So I’m listening to Fighting Talk. They sometimes bring up subjects that really get you going.
The first is the game of Bum Hoopla. Apparently, someone went to a lucky dip Christmas Party, where a Bum Hoopla set was one of the prizes. Unfortunately, it was won by one of the women in the office…
They also brought up the subject of double duvets in football colours. One of my sons had a Liverpool duvet as a kid, but now he has seen sense and supports Ipswich. I wouldn’t have one on my bed, even if you could get one, but just imagine bringing a new lady to your bedroom and seeing a full size duvet cover in say Manchester United. For most women that would be a real turn-off.
I did find one in Arsenal colours. Yuck!
The Anonymous Widower 