Chapter 12: Shooting the breeze

The person I was supposed to meet next was going to take me out in a shooting party and blow away various other species, mainly birds, in a wooded environment. I think the film crew felt that if it came off it would really provide the big impasse between my beliefs and those of the people around me, which they wanted to film. I would be witnessing what I regard as the murder of other living things. I had already said to the owner of the gun club that if my two-year-old daughter saw a bird being shot, it would really upset her. In fact, at her age, it might mentally scar her.

'Does it make me a bad parent to have brought her up in an environment where things like that would be considered repulsive?'

'No, no, no,' he said. 'People bring their kids up in different ways.'

The usual casual get-out from having to discuss anything really serious. As a result of it all having got a bit thorny with the gun club owner, I learnt that he actually rang the head of the shooting party and various other people involved with Gerard's estate and warned them that I was too dangerous to be allowed to attend. He did make it clear that I was not any physical threat, obviously. I had been walking around with loads of people who disagreed with me and they had been carrying guns, so I do not think he thought I was going to turn a shotgun on anybody, although I have to say I was more concerned about the fact that I might be shot, accidentally of course. All the same, given the menacing atmosphere at the end of my visit to the gun-club, I was a bit apprehensive of going to the shooting party with a load of men I rather feared might be racist bigots & animal killers. The shooting party were very apprehensive about me attending.

The media wanted this one badly, though. Believe me, I said I was prepared to do it and I knew it would look weak if I did not actually go to witness it.

'It is odd,' I said, 'that I am expected to go and watch something that I really feel I ought to be actively involved in stopping. That animal's about to die! Bang! Too late. That animal's about to die! Bang! Too late... You know? How can I stand there and do nothing?'

Then I had a second thought.

'Well, I suppose I ought to really,' I said to the director. 'Because the audience is more important than the situation itself, and the audience should be allowed to see this, if the media is exposing it...'

Now, while this way of looking at it made me feel a little better, I think it was precisely this point that the gun club and the shooting party were the most worried about themselves. What they do looks ugly to those who are not into it. To people who have not got the habit of indiscriminately shooting things, it looks horrible. They almost know they are wrong in that respect. If they were not partly ashamed of it, like some twisted heroin addict who is disgusted by his own addiction to smack, then they would have said, "Yeah, we want it on telly, because it will advertise the beautiful sport of shooting birds." They know it would not.

A fellow who was quite an influential bloke in the local area and was probably worth quite a few bob himself, agreed to come and talk to me about it and be filmed doing it. The director was very excited, because this was a foot in the door and having experienced my ability to make agreements and deals with people he was pretty convinced I could get the show the next day

Anyway, this bloke came into the grounds. I was doing another interview and so he was, unfortunately, made to wait a half an hour. We were all warned this was something he was not used to doing. Well, I thought, up yours! We were already involved in something else, he had turned up when he decided to and we were not all stopping for him. I think I may have been ringing millionaires to try and get investment. The master shootist then decided he did not want his discussion with me filmed in any way after all. He was concerned about what the gun club owner had said. He was afraid that I would be able to make him look like an idiot. I felt very flattered. It was true, too. I was able to do that, but it was not my intention. My intention was to draw out the issues and discuss them seriously, not just to ridicule. The part where someone becomes ridiculed is usually where they have done it to themselves because their argument is so unpopular, and that is often the closest we will ever get to democracy on television.

I agreed to talk to him privately. He was a very interesting fellow, very thick set, again, about my age, it is incredible to me how many of the same generation were drawn together over this project, I very rarely met people who were older or younger, it was quite interesting, it like was on a plateau and it was quite odd because none of that was planned either, I think the director at all points on the map was absolutely as amazed as I was that these coincidences were occurring. This fellow, bespectacled, curly haired, thick set. I would say he was quite a heavy meat eater, in fact probably that and nothing else. Strangely again, he was easier to talk to than I had expected and he certainly was not, I would say, as conventionally upper class as I was expecting, I would say from quite a rich farming family but had an undeniable working class rural edge to him. Again, part of the yeomanry that protects the Queen and this came into play very strongly in our discussion.

Anyway, not only did he not want the cameras anywhere near us, or he would just drive off and that would be that, no deal, he insisted on taking me round the back of the polo arena where there was no-one or anything in sight. So, there would be no witnesses at all to anything that should happen between us.

'Okay, all right, fair enough,' I thought. In the corner of my mind I actually did think that if we disagreed and it came to physical violence, then so be it. He was a man that did completely the opposite of what I agree with and there was I, a man who did completely the opposite of what he agrees with. Anyway it was a really classic scene. It is a shame it was not filmed in some ways because we both had our feet up on the first rung of a wooden fence in true cowboy fashion and chewed the cud.

'I've heard that you're quite a threat to us, Craig,' he said.

'I should like to think so,' I said. 'Let's face it, you know, I am not going to pretend I ain't got it in for you. But I am as shocked about a lot of what has happened here as you are. I certainly haven't planned it, you don't want to worry about that. It's all sort of fallen into place. It's offering us an opportunity to discuss things when we wouldn't normally even be in the same room.'

A lot of what we said to one another was only being half heard because we were overly conscious of each other's body language. I noticed he was as apprehensive as I was and I was glad about that. I did not see any overconfidence in there at all. There was none any of this "you horrible, dirty little oik" with him. His approach seemed to be that "one of them" has managed to get in here, and we had better bloody talk.

'Well,' he said, 'I want you to know a few things about me because you might not have read me correctly.'

'Fire away then,' I said.

'I find the prospect of fois gras and veal repulsive,' he said, 'and I think both things should be banned. How's that for you?'

'Well,' I said, 'I admire that. They are both very cruel ways to obtain a meal, so, fair enough. I'm a vegetarian because I don't think there is any way to get a meal that involves another animal without cruelty, if you've another option and can avoid it.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But it's nature, Craig. You've got to understand that if it wasn't for us shootists a lot of these species would be extinct in Britain.'

Now if that isn't an oxymoronic statement on the most basic "fresh but frozen," "light but filling," model then I do not know what is. Well, I had heard this argument already on this trip, so this was not new.

'A lot of the tracts of land we shoot on we are protecting,' he said, 'and if it wasn't for us using them for shooting parties they would be turned to agriculture and those species wouldn't exist.'

'Isn't that sick?' I said. 'That the human race has driven these species into compounds, little pockets of woodlands, very sparse and thin on the ground in the Vale of York from what I saw in the helicopter and then their last rights are dependent on our rights to hunt them for sport. What I believe is the only thing that will get this country out of the shit is actually reforesting and diminishing the level of agriculture on an industrial level that takes up more land than it needs, changing the eating habits of the British public and playing right by the small farmers. You know, you're a big country boy and you're all into the country and you're part of the Countryside Alliance here, I also live in the country and the country from the small Welsh farmer's perspective is not the same as it is from yours. For example, I think that the whole Foot and Mouth fiasco was a downsizing of a market in order to get away with big insurance payouts because a lot of British companies, bigger companies have just been selling up, fucking off and leaving the people who have provided them with the wealth in the shit. Whereas you can make miners, dock-workers and factory workers redundant, you can't make sheep, pigs and cows redundant, so what do you do? Yeah?'

I thought that would get him swinging his fists if nothing would. He turned round to me

'I agree with you,' he said.

'You what?'

'You have got a lot of strong views and I am really pleased that you are respectful and forthright.'

He was well spoken, but he had an accent and a regional sense closer to mine, and I thought, yes, this one has gone out and done a bit of farm work and he does put his back into it.

'Absolutely,' he said, 'the Foot and Mouth thing was a total invention of the market place, I totally agree with you, but I wasn't a party to that.'

This is the point where I believed him, but should not have done. This is the bit in Goodfellas where the camera freeze-frames and that is the moment where, if you are not on the ball, you are going to be turned into a sucker.

'Well, where did it originate?' I said. 'Considering that you are much more on the inside where that whole scam was concerned.'

'At the Lake District and in Cumbria.'

'That's very interesting,' I said, 'and is that where the greatest concentration of gentleman farmers are?'

'Well,' he said, 'they are all over Britain, but that was where the decision was made.'

'So,' I said, 'basically you are going to scapegoat Cumbria now, and you are also going to say that none of the other huge, industrial, high level factory farmers had anything to do with it? They all jumped in, didn't they? A bit of easy money, off we go? That was appalling, and the government did exactly what you wanted. There's been talk of industrial farmers visiting this site, and you know them and perhaps even are one.'

'I am,' he said, 'but I didn't agree with that and it wasn't anything to do with us and we suffered.'

'I very much doubt that,' I said, 'looking at the vehicles you're driving and the company you keep. You visit one of the farmers who is going to be one of the hosts to your mate Gerard. You go visit Bill, who puts on a festival every year. He lives a very different lifestyle to you. I don't see any countryside "alliance" at all between the likes of you & him.'

'I'm really impressed,' he said. 'We've obviously got more in common than I thought. You obviously respect the countryside and don't want to see any harm come to it.'

'It's finished!' I said. 'There is hardly any natural countryside left in Britain. Certainly not around here. Since land enclosure and perhaps before that when we had the stupid idea of chopping forests down simply to own the land. You really have to bust your arse to find a bit of wilderness in Britain and the other things that appals me is that you and your counterparts think that you are the guardians of the countryside! Bloody hell! Look at the industrial hardware you're involved with, and your vehicles and your helicopters.'

'Oh,' he said, 'I keep going on at Gerard about the helicopter. He just uses it to go up the shops. I don't.'

There were points of communication between us, but he said some very strange things.

'Are you going to cause me any trouble on the shoot tomorrow?' he said.

'Possibly,' I said. 'But it'll all be out in the open, won't it? I'll probably burst into tears and then you'll be finished, won't you?'

'I suppose you think it's for the public to decide whether or not you're weak or I am cruel?'

'It is indeed,' I said, and he really thought about it. He was looking over to the horizon, chewing his lip and thinking hard. He really was taking this situation seriously. I think in some ways he was taking it more seriously than the polo trainer had up to this point, which is why he never got the sharp end of my tongue.

'All right,' he said, 'I'll do it. But I am uneasy.'

'I know you are.'

'You know the media are going to crucify me?'

'They may just as well crucify me,' I said.

'Strangely,' he said, 'I suspect not. Strangely, I suspect you are not the target in this one. I can't deny that people like you have been made the target so often that you are probably champing at the bit.'

'I am,' I said.

'All right, I'll do it.'

'That's interesting,' I said.

'You may be picking the wrong targets here yourself,' he said. 'You know Gerard is a self-made man?'

'Don't give me that!' I said. 'Come on mate! He's been right down the bottom? Like some of my mates who have been and still are on the dole? Like myself? He's been right down to living on four or five thousand a year? Don't give me that!'

'He's been cleaned out,' he said. 'Twice. Not a single penny.'

I turned around to him.

'Could he still get credit?' I said.

He went very red.

'Yes. He could. Yes.'

'There it is, then.'

'Fair enough,' he said.

There was a silence for a moment or two.

'I really hate this government, though,' I said. 'I said to your mate at the gun club that when we were going out clay pigeon shooting I said "would it be all right if we got little photos of Tony Blair's head and attached them to the clay pigeons?" and the fellow who ran the gun club, being very gentlemanly, very English establishment, was a bit pained at the brutality of my wit, which I found quite ironic when you consider what his trade was but some of this mates laughed. I would imagine that your hatred of Tony Blair is probably equal to mine, but from a completely opposite extreme.'

He turned around to me and he looked really angry at this point and he said,

'That man had our Lady Diana assassinated!'

Oh No! I thought. "Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!" Tread very carefully now.

Most people I know think the Queen was responsible for that one. The British aristocracy have been doing each other in for hundreds & hundreds of years. I knew damn well that if I even suggested the Queen was behind it they'd have definitely been a fight between us.

'Well,' I said, 'that's as may be, but what's probably a more interesting debate for us right now is our mutual hatred and suspicion of the media, because that is one thing where we are on a level playing field. They have been complete bastards to the likes of me. They have never ever thanked us for helping prevent the escalation of street violence in the 1980s by the popularisation of MDMA through rave culture. The cops and media have never painted us in a good light for trying to stand up for environmental issues and anti-nuclear issues. We have had a rough deal off them. And it took a lot for me and my wife to agree to do this, but I suspect that this particular film crew actually do want to give us a bit of a platform here, which means you're fucked. I'm not going to mess you about. If you don't want to do tomorrow, then you need to know that in advance. I ain't suckering you into a situation where you are scapegoated by every liberal in the popular press. They are going to eat you alive, mate. The only thing I can suggest to you is I will not make a complete meal out of you. What I will do is react perfectly normally, as if the cameras were not there, but it is almost certainly going to upset me, mate.'

'Don't you understand I'm protecting these species?' he said.

'I cannot equate shooting something with protecting it, my friend,' I said. 'I think you're all right. For you to come and talk to me in private is really decent of you, because it means you are open to discussing these things, as am I. That is something that has refreshed and delighted me. I thought that a fellow like you wouldn't come near me with a ten foot pole unless you wanted to whack me with it and to be quite honest I think that we probably didn't have too dissimilar childhoods.'

We left it at that. Obviously this society was a little more interwoven than I had thought. The big process here for both Kiran and myself and the individuals we were meeting was the revelation that we do have common ground in some things. But what I had here was an out and out monarchist, here was a man who would die for the Queen, there is no question, he sees a level of dignity in that. He was also chain-smoking like a bastard, was about as unfit as you can get and I wonder about this sporting life really. If he had had to chase me, I reckon he would have had a coronary at least half an hour before I stopped running, so I did not feel too threatened, even though he was one of the blokes I thought might end up with some kind of militia round at my flat if this ever got on telly. I understood that things could become very ugly, but, really, if I were scared of people like this, then surely half their battle would have been won.

I did not go shooting with him, in the end. God intervened. The only day of the week when we had really quite heavy rainfall was the day I was supposed to go on the shoot. At about eight in the morning, we had a phone call from him. Both the director and I spoke to him.

'All the little animals have gone into hiding, Craig,' he said, 'We've been out and we've looked around and there'll be no show this morning.'

He laughed with relief. I think Luke was pretty pissed off, though. He wasn't pissed off with anyone, but he wanted this one, this was the one, and if I read him right, as a journalist, he would have been more excited about this one than any of the other face-offs he had contrived.

'Luke,' I said, 'don't worry about it. The fact that the public aren't going to see any killing, yeah, isn't necessary. We all know it goes on. There's a bigger issue of class confrontation that's going on here and I think that is now superseding your original topic of animal rights. They are just a part of a bigger picture. We have got ourselves involved in something that is far more fundamental than any one issue. Don't worry about it.'

'You're not upset then?'

'No, mate. I don't want to watch that.'

The fellow on the phone was even more relieved. I think he just felt the only honourable thing he could do was go down with his ship and had we gone out on that shooting party that was exactly what would have happened. To be honest, I think that was why he was so nice to me at the polo club ball. He was still experiencing this euphoria that God had intervened on his side and rained the match off. He was probably also worried that one of his mates was going to shoot me. I am sure that they are not all under each other's control to that extent and he certainly could not be sure I was not going to lose my rag. I had already been seen to throw down a twelve-bore in disgust and storm off the shooting range, so obviously word had got out that I was a bit fiery, if you will excuse the pun. I don't even know if I would have wanted to hold a gun in that environment. If I was not going to shoot anything, then what would I be holding a gun for? Then again, if I got shot while I was not holding a gun, they would be in serious legal danger, so they would have to have made sure I had one in my hands. I was not about to become a martyr, so everyone was happy, except the director, bless him. After all, the camera crew had been like a bunch of hyenas anticipating it. "Guns? Anarchists? Royalists? This has got to be good, hasn't it?" It amused me that none of them for a minute thought any of us might try and shoot them. The media priesthood believe they are above that sort of thing but there will be a few monasteries burnt yet in anguish, believe you me.

Anyway, at the polo club ball, the head of the shooting party met up with me again and he was delightful company. He and a bagpipe-player came up to me and they were both highly impressed that I was wearing hunting pink. I grinned. I looked more the part than any of them.

'I'm trying to fit in,' I said. 'It's a red and black velvet drape jacket, in fact. A satirical rehash of late nineteenth century Establishment dress, admittedly, but I am trying to fit in.'

The shootist was one of very few of them who was getting pissed properly. It was odd. I was being nice to a man who kills birds. My mother would give me a slap for that, I can tell you. Well, strangely, he was being nice to me. He was also trying his best to understand who or what I was. He was a malcontent himself, he was a discontent. He is now a radical in the very society that created him. He is on the back foot. He knew damn well the pendulum was swinging the other way and it is now he who has to be worried about the media. It was quite weird, but I was just lapping it up. I was calling it in. Unfortunately mate, we are moving into a new age and there is a lot of weird thinking going on out there, that does not go with your venison pie and pint of bull's blood while you lock horns with the bloke who is shagging your missus.

Oddly this was not my final encounter with him. A strange thing happened on my way home. Now, this man was angry about car pollution. He mentioned that he was annoyed with people for just sitting in vehicles and not making a real effort to get about. He was not happy about Gerard's obsession with his helicopter, either. When I was being driven back to West Wales at the end of the week, and we were passing through the border territories of East Wales, some few hundred miles from Ingols Hall, I saw one of those buggies, like the ones they race in New Zealand. It was a two-wheeler, pulled by one horse. As I looked out the window of the car, coming the other way in heavy traffic, was a big fat fellow, almost like Orson Welles, only younger and fatter, with quite a lot of curly, ginger hair and driving goggles. There he was, like a mad English eccentric in the middle of a traffic jam on the Welsh borders, going in the opposite direction to us. I had a good look at him. I double checked. This was the very same gentleman, the head of the shooting party. There he was, sitting in a two-wheel buggy with a single horse drawing the carriage.

'That's him!' I said. 'I know that man!'

Now these people are flamboyant millionaires. They do odd things.

'He thinks he's being environmental and moral, riding a horse through traffic like that,' I said.

Of course, it was also making a point about his heritage and what you should be doing, apart from, in some way, displaying his wealth. I do not think it is a very working class image, being able to own and maintain a horse and carriage like that. I remembered seeing pictures of Bavarian businessmen in traps like that at the time of the fall of the Deutschmark in the 1930s. The photos showed really flamboyant gentlemen with plumes in their Bavarian hats riding through streets where people were sleeping rough. So, I did not feel this was a proletarian gesture. It was not like saying, "I'm getting down with the workers - I've got my horse out!" It was not exactly Steptoe and Son, that form of transport. All the same, I thought, how odd. Then I thought, why was he there? Had he taken the helicopter from Yorkshire to be part of Gerard's withdrawal from West Wales? Then, maybe, one of his mad escapades was to go all the way back to Yorkshire from West Wales using that mode of transport. I knew they were well into showing off to one another. One of the millionaires I had to ring up was close to seven foot and he was famous locally for having walked across the river Humber. At its deepest point all you could see of him was the top of his bald head. All of his Hooray-Henry friends were on the other side, cheering him on as the first man to walk across the bed of that river. He was quite fun, actually when I talked to him on the phone. I cannot deny he was hysterically amused by me and what I had done and by Gerard and what he had done and yet he was a harsh competitor, in major international finance, of Gerard's. So tickled was he that he made me repeat the story of the life-swap four times over the phone, and all I could hear was, "No!" and laughter. He had a really deep voice. I imagine he would have regarded himself as one of Wagner's giants, like Fasolt or Fafner. He strides across the planet and he cannot help the fact that he is superior but he is amused by individual acts of eccentric behaviour so he would not be prejudiced against me because of my politics as long as I amused him. You know that kind of thing. It is very difficult not to want to amuse them too. It is not as though I immediately became a serf, or a court jester, and thought I could have him as a boss. Although I could perpetually ridicule him in that situation. Sorry, friend, but you are my equal, even if you cannot see other human beings that way.

Anyway, the bloke from the shooting club was obviously a friend of his. It was all jolly japes to them. Every so often, one of them does something stupid and costly and they all hug and go, "Jolly Ho!" and all that. I saw this fellow riding in his carriage and I thought, this was probably one of those stunts.

'Bloody hell!'

I was, for a split second, just a bit impressed. After all, I thought, it is an obviously environmentally sound way to travel... but then I thought twice. I did not think it was fair on the horse, breathing all those fumes and trotting so very far. Sorry. You should have been pedalling, you fat bastard!