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NAKED WILLY - MAY 2004

This is a new and popular feature. It will include all the bits that Editors have stuck their blue pencil through and all the bits that I knew they would have done and which, therefore I have never submitted.

To Cornwall – I was bred and buttered in Cornwall and I have a strong emotional attachment to the Duchy (it is the Duchy of Cornwall) but I find that going back is always a sadness. The Cornwall that I knew and loved is dead and gone. I grew up outside a little village on the beautiful Fowey River. I knew everybody in the village and they knew me. It was a working village with 4 farms, 6 cider presses, orchards and a shop. That village no longer exists. It has been ethnically cleansed and its indigenous population dispersed, or dead. This was done not with bullets or bayonets, but with bank notes. It has become a geriatric ward for In-comers (or Emmets to use the Cornish word – it means ‘Ants’). There is not an indigenous Cornish person left in the village. I know that this has happened to villages all over the UK, but they were not MY village. I prefer to keep the memories of my childhood, when I wandered where I liked and no one would say me nay. I could wander into any cottage or farmhouse secure in the knowledge that I would be welcome and would be given a glass of milk (straight from the cow) and a slice of saffron cake, or a split (sweet roll) full of jam and homemade cream – proper clotted cream with a golden crust to it. If ever anyone had a childhood idyll it was I.

The purpose of my visit was to speak at a dinner of the East Cornwall Hunt. I must say that the members were a wonderful audience. I split my visit between two old friends (for the avoidance of offence). The first one was a friend of my childhood and we had a great wander through the fields of nostalgia. John worked as a Farrier. He is now semi-retired to a small farm on the edge of Bodmin Moor – a wild and lonely spot.

The E. Cornwall hunts mainly on the Moor and I had a day with them after the dinner. I suppose that I should wax lyrical about the wild beauty of the Moor, but this would be difficult as it was shrouded in mist all day and I was too busy trying to miss the next boulder, on my borrowed quad, to worry about a view that I could not see anyway. Perhaps it was fortunate that the scent was poor. If hounds had really run, we would have lost them for certain sure (a fine Cornish expression). Bodmin Moor is studded with old mine shafts and ruined winding houses. In the C.19th it was a great copper mining area (the tin was further west), but the copper is long gone. The old miners mostly emigrated – to the USA, Australia and anywhere where their skills were valued. ‘Fish, tin and copper’ (it is a song) were the foundation of the Cornish economy (even a little silver). The tin and copper have all gone and the fishing industry has been stolen by the EU. I am reminded of a rusting trawler lying on the beach in Galway City. Painted on the side in large letters was the single word – ‘MAASTRECKED’. But the livelihood of a few far away people was a small sacrifice to make in the drive for us to become ‘Good Europeans’. I remember that old toad, Edward Heath, lying through those ghastly teeth when he told us that the EU would have no more power than an English County Council. He should have his genitalia (such as they may be) removed and stuffed down his throat.

Cornwall’s only industry now is tourism and in the summer it is one big traffic jam. The side roads with their high stone and earth banks were only designed for horse and cart. If two cars meet, one has to back up. It is amazing how many drivers are unable to reverse. Even supposing that you manage to get where you are going, there will be nowhere to park. Cornwall needs tourism, but is singularly ill adapted to deal with it.

I am still trying to relocate myself, since the Telegraph kicked my arse out of the door. There seems to be no demand for a ‘Rural Affairs’ writer these days. It is a fashion that has passed. Max Hastings lit a firework of interest when he started the Telegraph Weekend. Other broadsheets rushed to copy him. Now the attitude seems to be –‘if it’s outside the M25, it does not exist’. It is a little bit like Canada. Canada was named by the old Portuguese voyagers. They dismissed it as a large blank on the chart with ‘Ca Nada’ written on it – ‘Here Nothing’. That rather neatly encapsulates the attitudes of most editors to the English countryside and those who live and work there.

To London: this year is our 32nd Wedding anniversary and it was my wife’s birthday on March 18th, so we usually treat ourselves to a few days of genteel and comfortable roistering at this time of year. After all, we live pretty frugally and do not allow ourselves the foreign holidays that most of the population seem to regard as their God-given right – they would bore me rigid (the people and the holiday), not to mention the risk of incipient carcinoma and the total ghastliness of airports and ones fellow travellers. I find that after about four days, I start to yearn for home, my armchair, my pipe and my books. Then of course there are the dogs. An old friend likes to point out that they are D-O-G-S not G-O-D-S, but to my wife and I our dogs are family (and much preferred to many of my blood relations). I simply cannot imagine a house without dogs – it would be a gey lonely place. We both know from hard experience that the time will come when their short life span will be over and our hearts will be broken yet again, but Oh! The wonderful happiness of their companionship. In the kitchen there is a tiny frame that contains a snippet from I know not where. It is thus (unsigned):

‘Oh God, my Master, should I gain the grace

To see Thee face to face when life is ended,

Grant that a little dog, who once pretended

That I was God, may see me face to face.’

Now if you can read that without blinking a tear from the eye, you do not deserve to call a dog your friend.

Our little break in London was a great success. These days we stay at a charming little hotel in Great Cumberland Place called the Montcalm. It is beautifully run and does not break the Bank. For browsing and sluicing, I would point you to the restaurant at Brown’s Hotel. This is run by refugees from the old Savoy Grill and has maintained the atmosphere and excellence of that once wonderful restaurant – now sadly smashed to pieces by some damned retired footballer. I would also point you to Boisdale. This is a fabulously shabby place run by the Younger of Clanranald. The food is the best of Scottish produce, the wines are excellent and the Single Malts and cigars are simply of the best. It has live Trad Jazz, too.

Now, as the month ends it is home to Northumberland and back to the Diet – I have half a stone to go and if you want that metricated then you can sodding well do it yourself and stuff you and the bloody EU.

It pains me to see the continuing downward slide of that once great newspaper – the Daily Telegraph. I tried the Times the other day, but caught one of its regular columnists using a sentence of no less than 45 words – I counted them. How indeed are the mighty fallen.

A development that may prove interesting – you may have seen in the press that Blair refused to make any move on Halal or Kosher slaughter. He accepted the fact that this method of killing animals was ‘cruel’ (his word not mine), but as it was a ‘religious act’ the Government would do nothing. There is now a move afoot to form a ‘Church of Hunting’ and why not? To a substantial minority, hunting is a form of religion and hunting is a ‘religious act’. I have been approached to see if I am prepared to play a part in this. I am minded to do just this. You never know – I might become a Bishop.