Hunting special

Foul weather and worse to come. Puddles in the farmyard. An 18th-century farmhouse with a cast-iron fox’s mask for a doorknocker. The door is ajar. Inside, men in hunting waistcoats are gathered around a silver drinks tray.

The warmth and enthusiasm of my host’s greeting takes me aback. He welcomes me literally with open arms and introduces me to the company. One of them, a raffish-looking bloke, is an Earl. Another, with a cruel, outdoor face, is introduced as ‘the Master’. Friendly hands are extended. ‘He looks the part, anyway,’ says the Master.

‘Now, then,’ says my host to me in a business-like manner, carefully tipping first whisky then cherry brandy into a glass and presenting it to me, ‘would you care for a “Sid special”?’

A scrubbed wooden table, a monumental oak cupboard, a coatrack fit for a school, a fireplace spacious enough to take a spitted pig and somebody to turn the handle, a centuries’-old soot-blackened clock stopped at ten to four, the assembled company in tall boots and hunting waistcoats: stepping into that parlour is like stepping back a couple of centuries. I remark on it. Not the most original remark they’ve ever heard, but it gets me off the mark and they are very sporting about it. Someone generously extinguishes the two bare light bulbs hanging over the table to increase the truth of it. ‘Cheers!’ says my host, arching his spine and crashing back his Sid special in one.

I met him at a Spectator party. He invited me to come hunting with him because he reads and sometimes enjoys this column. I accepted because I’ve yet to meet a professional huntsman I haven’t liked — though I’m more a ferret and terrier man myself.