Rural rides

Important stuff first: can the chap with the farm address in Shropshire who very kindly said he’d let me have his hunt coats and boots for a modest sum please get in touch again on Jamesdel@dircon.co.uk? My email has been playing up something rotten — apologies to all those of you who’ve not been getting replies — and my archive has been wiped. God, I hate technology.

Right, now to TV. My theme this week is how I hate not just technology but also pretty much every aspect of the modern world. All I want to do is retire to the country — Wiltshire is current favourite because I’ve lots of friends there and I quite fancy getting my boy into Bishop Wordsworth’s in Salisbury, provided Dave ‘Crossman’ Cameron hasn’t managed to abolish grammar schools by then — and spend my time hunting and writing novels set in the second world war.

I’m clearly not the only person with this impulse either, or the BBC wouldn’t be showing programmes like The Bart & The Bounder (BBC2, Tuesday) in the prime 8 p.m. slot. This was the pilot for what I’m quite sure will turn into a whole series about the true-life adventures of Sir Richard Heygate (Bart) and his booming-voiced mucker Michael ‘Bounder’ Daunt, as they motor round the country doing agreeable rural things like eating pigeon pie and catching wild salmon.

As with Two Fat Ladies and Clarissa and the Countryman, the premise needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. It requires that the Bart and the Bounder continually vouchsafe to one another information about their past and about the country which, being old friends and countrymen, they must know perfectly well already.