Smoking and hunting ban

Life around here has changed in that subtle way it does when one in a partnership makes a major habit change. You can guess what that is (or go back two posts if you're a new visitor...If so, Hi :)
So Barney is on patches and self denial.
How come this makes me the edgy, jumpy one, desparate for a fag and wondering if I can sneak out for a quick puff??????
He's sleeping more calmly though, that's got to be a plus. The elbows and knees fold themselves up tidily and I'm hoping he's going to stop turning round in the middle of the night to cough loudly and richly in my face :) (I always wake up to cough and decorously smother it under the blankets if I can't be bothered to turn away...I'm just so considerate :)

Well, the other morning, I was peering dopily out of the window and I saw a brown lump in the field, really not so far from the hedge. Aha! a hare, I thought. Got to be worth a quick shot. So I flung a woollie over my pajamas and grabbed a pair of sandals and set off into the wet garden to stalk a hare. Creeping, you know, and peering through the hedge so as not to appear on a skyline and all that.
So imagine my surprise and slight discomfort when I hear hunting horns, loud cries and a horde of people on horses, on foot, on quad cars (!!!??) and a pack of hounds sudenly surge into view, hollering, baying and generally interfering with my hare!!!!
My Hare, I say indignantly to myself. Well, my hares actually. Because as the hunt thundered away across the field and the hounds milled about yelping a lot, all disappearing into the woods, hares suddenly appeared all over the place. They ran across the field, quite at cross purposes with the hunt and with each other. They stopped and sat around thinking hard and then ran different ways. Then they crouched down and turned into brown lumps. One came softly along the hedge practically under my nose and sloshed through the place where our septic tank ends.
The hunt, now quite distant all turned round and went in several directions, mostly, not the same directions as the hounds (which themselves seemed pretty confused about directions) nor the hares.
Hares, I have to say are quite astonishingly fast. The hounds were beagles so not as fast as say, harriers or fox hounds.

By now I was standing on the stile, pajamas and sandals forgotten and asked a passing hunt person (on foot), wasn't this illegal?
I kept her standing around for quite a while explaining that they were allowed to hunt 'shot hares' after a hare shoot earlier on and made her repeat herself quite a lot (very politely but indulging in a good deal of pedantry and masked snydeness) while watching, out of the corners of my eyes, two hares running in opposite directions to different covers and noticing a third doing the brown lump thing not far away. She must have been wondering if I had a serious squint.
Anyway eventually she set off again, now in a bit of a hurry and panting through the same septic tank run off as the hare had traversed earlier.
Three deer joined the game at one stage and a sparrow hawk left the woods, in some high dudgeon, I expect.

I don't think all the hares made it to safety what with all the hunt persons posted around to drive them back into the field. Still I know a few did because two of them were there this morning.
Can't help wondering how the hounds could tell which hares were 'shot hares'.
And for all that the hares seemed to be winning most of the time, I have one or two shots (my goodness they were fast) which show that it wasn't all a game for them.
I am sad about the ones that didn't get away and am going to get in touch with the RSPCA or whichever body it is that is supposed to keep these idiots under control.
I'm not passionately anti-hunting. There are far worse things happening than that. but I think it's self evidently silly to say it's an efficient way to deal with pests. And though I don't really believe hunting people are emotionally aware enough to be full of blood lust, they are clearly emotionally as thick as several short planks and need to be turned into flies for a while and have their wings pulled off by small ignorant boys to teach them something about being the under-dog in a world full of alpha humans*-**. And I'm not ignorant about the other side of it. When I was a small pony mad brat I went hunting three times. Actually I loved all the galloping about and didn't mind at all that on each of those times there was no kill. No one else seemed to care very much either. But I was fairly plank shaped in the head in those days.


Right. On on and ever upward.
Barney forgot Valentines day. He was so struck with remorse (since I had, this year, remembered) that he bought and made a fantastically complex and delicious meal involving fish and herbs and six saucepans and all the mixing bowls and chocolate and cream and all sorts of wonderful stuff.
And, I bought him a rather splendid Japanes knife for Christmas and then an amazing knife sharpener for his birthday. I tell you the combination is lethal. He doesn't dare drink when he's using it any more! And all the knives are now so sharp that if you see them in the washing up water, you keep checking your fingers to see if any of them have sneakily touched you without being noticed. Onions quail at the sight of them and fall into tiny thin slices in terror. Herbs sliver into a million tiny shreds and apple peel falls quaking to the floor in perfect rings. It's all rather exciting in our kitchen these days:)

*I expect there are people who feel the same way about bloggers
**I suddenly remember that there's half a hare in the freezer. I feel a bit twitchy about it. This is the first time I've ever done that.
Dammed hares :(
Nice hares :+
My hares ?????? ~:{
Oops.