Diary – 24 September 2004

The imminent ban on fox-hunting saddens me mainly for reasons of nostalgia. I am far too much of a sissy ever to have hunted: I would fall off my horse as soon as it moved, and cry if the poor little fox got caught. But I am romantic enough to love the Olde Englishness of the hunt: the Surteesian image of pink-coated squires racing across a pastoral landscape. Although I am a total townie, hunting is part of my family mythology. My grandmother grew up on a Gloucestershire farm amid rabid blood-sports enthusiasts. Her father — a terrifying, hawk-nosed domestic tyrant who once bit his son on the leg for forgetting to light the Aga — only allowed one book in the house: Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. The whole family loved hunting, but in a typically perverse country way they also loved foxes. In my grandmother’s photo album there is a picture of a fox sitting on their lawn, nose-to-nose with the family labrador. Her father had found it when it was a tiny orphaned cub, and brought it home for his wife to look after. It became an adored and adoring pet: when my great-grandmother retired to bed for her afternoon nap, it would settle down with her, its ginger nose poking out from under the eiderdown. But the call of the wild proved too strong, and one day it ran away. From then on, whenever they hunted, they were conscious that they might be chasing after their old pet. It didn’t bother them unduly: as far as they were concerned, there could be no nobler way for a fox to go.

I stayed away from the pro-hunting demonstration because I didn’t want to turn into an anti. I am such a reactionary that I always end up disagreeing with whatever crowd I’m in.