Signing the Declaration

By day Clive drives a tractor. At night he tramps the fields with a pair of greyhound collie crosses called Knocker and Tip and a lamp. The lamp he is currently using is lighter in weight and much more powerful than his old one. To Clive, the almost incredible scientific and technical advances of the last 20 years have manifested themselves chiefly in the invention of the ferret locator and improvements in the hunting lamp. His new one is so powerful, he claims, that he can see into the next county. For someone like Clive, who hardly goes out of the parish, and has never been out of Devon in his entire life, this must be very exciting.

Clive and his lurchers catch rabbits and foxes mainly, hares sometimes, and now and again the odd cat. He illuminates them in a beam of light, slips his dogs and courses them. The one time I went out with him at night, we had 18 rabbits, which Knocker and Tip retrieved live to hand. I would have preferred it if we had caught fewer because 18 rabbits are very exhausting to carry.

In the bad old days, Clive would have been described as the ‘village idiot’. In today’s enlightened times, however, his solitary habits, his disregard of personal hygiene, his woolly bumpkin sideburns and his frank simplicity have earned him the local nickname ‘Sheep Shagger’. While we were out lamping together I took the opportunity to ask Clive whether his nickname did in fact bear any relation to his sexual preferences.