“And must I wholly banish hence these red and golden juices, and pay my vows to Abstinence, that pallidest of Muses?”
Sir William Watson

Sod the abstinence thingy – yesterday saw your humble correspondent partaking in that most gentlemanly of activities … the 14 ½ hour lunch. The not unsurprising thing about that is that as a direct consequence, today, I am as rough as a badgers a*se - & I should know, living in the West Country.

Therefore, rather that ramble on, in an increasingly incoherent manner, I shall attend to a little house keeping arising from comments & links over the weekend:

CB – (re: killing foxes) I tend to shoot centre of body mass. As you can imagine, when we inspected the carcass, a fair amount of time was spent trying to properly identify the entry & exit wounds!!

John East – (re: Mr B) you feel free to comment away sir !! I take your points entirely. Just about the only thing that The Englishman & I disagree on is that he feels poor Blighty can still be saved; I fear that it is sliding irrevocably round the u-bend

Kim du Toit - (re: killing foxes) sadly the new gun fund is looking a little the worse for wear. As soon as I can find the nippers piggy banks to raid, current thinking is a plastic Remy thingy in 22-250

Laban – (re: Mr B) no Barry Beelzebub isn’t me. My I humbly direct you sir, to the original introduction that I gave him. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding on this point.

Kevin Baker - (re: killing foxes) thank you for your kind words sir.

Now if you will all excuse me, I am off for a little nap