FIFTY YEARS ON - SHOOTING AT BISLEY

Artists Rifles Clubhouse at Bisley

In his novel ‘Any Human Heart’  William Boyd has his his protagonist, Logan Mountstuart, reflect on playing golf and getting a hole in one.  One day Logan, a lifelong amateur golfer,  is on a course in Nigeria, playing just for fun with a work colleague when he wallops the ball hard on a par three hole and then watches as the ball runs unerringly into the hole.  As Logan acknowledges, his shot could not have been played better, even by the most accomplished golfer in the world and he concludes that in no other sport could a rank amateur perform, if only on a single occasion, as well as someone who was at the top of their game. Well, there is another sport and that sport is rifle shooting.

    Last Sunday I went to the National Shooting Ground at Bisley for a reunion of some of the members of my school’s old shooting team.  I hadn’t shot a rifle for more than 50 years and so the invitation to have lunch and then a shoot in the afternoon was too good to miss.  I had never been a great shot: I was always too erratic; good on my good days but indifferent at other times.  I had a good day one summer afternoon on Otmoor where I became the Under 16 Oxfordshire full-bore champion and I shot at Bisley for my school on several occasions, though to no great effect.  After school I gave the sport up and since then I haven’t shot a rifle in 50 years.

    So it was with trepidation that I approached the occasion.  First there was the nervousness, exactly like entering a new school, of finding Bisley and then the right clubhouse within the camp and then meeting new and strange faces, but I needn’t have worried.  Ducks to water, even.

     The lunch was at the aptly named Artists Rifles clubhouse - originally deriving from the Artists Rifles regiment which must have been great fun to be in, composed as it was of writers, poets and actors, composers, painters and musicians of every kind.   Yet they were a serious bunch and won 8 Victoria crosses in the First World War.  Noel Coward was a member of the regiment at one point.

    All the clubhouses at Bisley must have been built, I imagine, about 100 years ago and they are redolent of Edwardian England.  Indeed collectively they look like something you might find in India, perhaps, from the days of the Raj.  Inside the Artists Rifles Clubhouse the decoration was as eclectic as you might expect, full of regimental memorabilia and recruiting posters from the first world war.  The service and linen tablecloths also spoke of a bygone age. 

    Sixteen of us turned up and incredibly five of these were people I had shot with at school, so once we had recognised each other it was just like old times.  It is strange how people change.  Appearances change, though the eyes are a constant as are people’s mannerisms, their ways of smiling, moving, walking and their tone of voice.  What was also slightly comforting to me was that they were all deaf or, like me, heading in that direction: a consequence of the lack of hearing protection in our younger days and the regular blast of the .303 service rifle in your ear from a couple of feet away.  Nowadays hearing protection is mandatory: you can see why.

    So after a good lunch and a chance to catch-up, it was on to Bisley’s great Century Range - so called because there used to be 100 targets there.  Now there are 108, colour coded alternately red and yellow.  The assets are being sweated.

    Fifty years ago we used army service rifles - No 4’s from the second world war - and ammunition left over from that conflict.  I remember someone saying that there was enough .303 ammunition to last 50 years.  Well, the 50 years are up and today shooters use mainly modern  0.762 millimetre rounds;  it is more accurate they tell me.  The rifles have changed too.  Gone are the heavy service rifles; the shooting today is with modern target rifles which are lighter.  The targets have changed, too: they are smaller now to match the greater accuracy of the rifles.  Even the bull has been changed and is now divided into an inner and an outer bull - on the same principle as the A* at A Level.  The inner bull (called the ‘V’ bull) is now the equivalent of golf’s hole in one.

    Certain things, however, do not change and induce nostalgia.  The crack of the report that seems to carry its own momentary echo, the dull wetness of the grass of the firing point, the flags that indicate the wind strength and direction, for a bullet is carried by the wind like a bird and you have to allow for this.  Above all the faint scent of burnt cordite drifting in the air.

    Shooting at 500 yards and using a borrowed rifle too long for me in the stock I nevertheless shot a 27 (out of 35) including one of those ‘could not be bettered’ ‘V’ bulls:  a score which would have let down my shooting team in the old days but which nonetheless would not have been unknown.  Incredible, I thought.  50 years on and so little  changed.
   
   

A LAST LOOK AT THE MILL

It is quite amazing, isn’t it, how many conditions you can believe yourself to be suffering from if once you start clicking on those myriad websites that deal with health.  In fact someone might well organise a hypochondriacs’ conference at which there could be a competition to do just that.  Prizes could be awarded both for the severity and the rarity of the condition at the root of your malady.  Anything would do from an allergy to a rare insect bite through to some less romantic condition, gallstones, say, or alcoholism.  I could imagine a quiz: hypochondriacs versus the doctors and we could all place bets on the outcome.
   
Recently I have become convinced in this way that I suffer from ADHD - that is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - and, for good measure, Hypothyroidism.  I suspect I actually suffer from neither of these as you can’t be hyperactive with an underactive thyroid, can you? Though in the small print they do say that even if you are not hyperactive you may still have an attention deficit and that is, I fear the case with me.  My attention wanders all too easily. After about ten years I become bored and need to move on to something else.

    I am now totally bored by politics, for instance, despite in my heyday having been a Parliamentary Candidate and having written umpteen policy papers, the contents of at least some of which my fellow politicians have inflicted on us, though naturally enough without acknowledgement.  Well, there are many others in the same game; one can’t be proprietorial.  But the business of politics, though clearly as important as ever, seems now to me to have become ever more shabby and worthless.  We know only too clearly what the outcome will be of their efforts to improve our lives, which is that the mess will get worse and we shall be left to clear it up ourselves with less money than we had before they started. Look at the latest scandals; indeed, at the latest legislation on gay marriage which, while I have nothing against it, does make me think that the Government, like Nero is fiddling mightily while Rome burns.  I rather identify with the sign that allegedly greets you at the Canadian Border: ‘We don’t care who you marry so long as you both watch hockey.’

    But we shall muddle through, I suppose, until one day the system collapses. My grandchildren I fear will have a harder life than mine has been. I still get emails from my former political friends, flattering me and soliciting money and help, but the spirit is no longer willing and neither is the flesh. My attention deficit disorder has moved me on and my hypothyroidism means I can’t be bothered anyway.  Though maybe of course I’m not suffering from these at all but something else that I haven’t discovered as yet.  It’s the one good thing about being a hypochondriac: you can always find something else that is wrong with you.

    If I appear in a sombre mood it is because the Mill down in the Auvergne belonging to Rosie and Jim’s son, where we have passed so many happy days in recent years, is sold.  They are down there even at this moment collecting up bits and pieces ready for the new owner to move in.   I doubt I shall see it again, which is really most sad for, with the sun shining, it presented with its trees and meadows and river and hills, the most perfect combination of atmosphere and environment that a human could wish for.  On sunny days busy insects buzzed endlessly and you could almost hear the wildflowers growing, and the apples, peaches and walnuts swelling further with each shower of rain.  The river and millrace chuckled endlessly, the swish and clatter of water, while deep in the woods the wild boar rooted, the deer skipped and martens went about their deadly hunt. Nearer the house, the great walnut trees provided shade under which flourished a whole encyclopaedia of minor wildlife.  And beyond the boundaries, in all the many villages round about, flourished the most beautiful stone architecture in the whole of France.

    On my last day there last summer I took a deckchair and a book and some chilled white wine and sat at the bottom of the lawn under the walnut trees where the forested hillside begins its steep climb to the village, looking back at the house and imagining that I was Logan Mountstuart, the protagonist of William Boyd’s great book ‘Any Human Heart.’  Logan does something very similar in a not very distant though fictional part of France at the age of 85 and unfortunately suffers a heart attack while leaving his book to investigate a bunch of thistles.  I didn’t have any thistles to investigate at the Mill, nor am I 85; maybe that is why I am still here, but next time I am on a health website I shall read up about heart attacks. You never know.  

MORAL HYDRAULICS AT HAY

Hay 25 Draws to a Close

Last weekend I was perched, high up, on a plastic seat in a big tent listening to someone talking about 'moral hydraulics.'  And interesting it seemed too.  Yes, it could only be the Hay Literary Festival, whose 25th anniversary fell this year, and to which we make an annual pilgrimage to rub shoulders with the great and the good and spend a day eating over-priced grub and drinking wine whose cost makes you quite wilt at the knees.  Nevertheless, as I said to J, when you have to ship everything in to what is, in effect, a field and then ship everything out again and hire temporary staff - with all those modern regulations to trip you up -  the prices start to look quite reasonable.  Given the price of tents.


'Moral Hydraulics' - who on earth might be rabbiting about moral hydraulics and keeping a straight face, or at least a contented smiling face that makes him look as though he has just received a noble commission to go back to Columbia University and become King?  Yes it was  Simon 'Hi class!  I hope you are all in good form this morning and feeling bright because there'll be questions afterwards' - Schama, who with us is always a must-go-to-see.  His lecture last weekend, on Victorian England's search for some spiritual purpose and their consequent expeditions through the Holy Land to uncover the archaeology of the Bible and in the process equip Jerusalem with clean water (the 'Moral Hydraulics' of my title) had me literally on the edge of my seat.

For the first time in goodness how many years I actually felt alive and could feel the ideas whizzing around in the cortex.  My brain became a pinball machine with this idea, this memory, this connection, this 'wow' - all bouncing off each other and ringing bells.  I may have been missing my lunch but this felt like being back at university before the dreary business of examinations got in the way of education and one could luxuriate simply in the hot shower of ideas cascading upon one's head.  An hour, pretty much, of erudition, delivered pacily and without notes - a real tour de force.

Still reeling, we skedaddled out of Simon's lecture and made our way to meet William Boyd, being interviewed about his latest book 'Waiting for Sunrise'  of which he read us an extract.  Since reading 'Any Human Heart' - his novel cleverly written in the form of extracts from an 'intimate journal' - I have read several of his books and stories.  I like the style and sentiments and the way in which his own, defiant but slightly regretful voice, comes through his various protagonists. As he finished in good time for questions I thought I'd ask one and was disconcerted to find the television camera focusing on me and my torso projected on a giant screen.  It's true what they say, I thought: television does make you look a stone heavier. I wonder why? Maybe it is something to do with hydraulics.

The question I'd have asked Boyd if ever I had found myself next to him in a bar would have been whether he had actually tried skipping an evening meal in favour of red wine and crisps, which is what Logan Mountstuart,  the writer of the 'intimate journal' above,  does in his declining years in his house in France.  I suppose he has.  Come to think of it so have I, though not in France.  It seems such a remarkably civilised thing to do - a bottle of good burgundy, an entertaining book, a pencil and paper to make notes, a dog and perhaps a cat too.  And some good handmade crisps.  One could go to bed happy thinking that the evening had not been entirely wasted.  But only if one were dining alone.

But that would have been a question for the bar.  Instead I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about how in this, the two hundredth centenary of Dickens' birth, he thought that the profession of novelist had changed.  A question, I reckoned, that might have provided all sorts of avenues down which he might happily have charged - technological, abolition of censorship, competitive pressures, niche markets - and so on.  Instead he probably thought I was just some smart-arse and, perhaps caught off guard and having, perhaps again, like me, the type of slow brain that needs time to consider propositions properly, he simply floundered with the sort of answer that would hardly have got him into Columbia or anywhere else.

He would have thought me even more of a smart-arse, too, I suspect had I been able to carry through my intention to get him to sign a copy of 'Waiting for Sunrise' not William Boyd but Logan Gonzales Mountstuart.  Well, I thought it would make a change, given the number of copies there must be signed 'William Boyd.'  But it was not to be.  The queue was long and I was nowhere near the front and he seemed to be taking his time to talk to people.

Moreover, I realised suddenly that the next show was very soon to begin and I was supposed to be meeting others in the hospitality tent before hand.  My emquiries into Logan Gonzales Mountstuart (it is a feature of Boyd's writing that he chooses outrageous names) and his red wine and crisps habit will have to wait for another day.

So then an interesting presentation  on the ethical dilemmas of humanitarian medicine from the director of MSF in the UK.  Should you treat a diseased child prostitute brought to the clinic by her pimp knowing that she will simply be returned unwillingly to prostitution when she is cured?  Are you as a medical resource, simply providing a free medical service that the brothel might otherwise need to pay for?  Are you colluding with the pimp?

Profound questions indeed, but then it was time for a change of ideas and pace.  Our last show was Simon Callow - the actor - who wandered on to the stage in front of a thousand people and talked for an hour, again without so much as a note or a picture, about Charles Dickens who he has studied and read and played and has now written a book about.

We were expecting readings from Dickens but instead we got a biography that focused on Dickens' relationship with the theatre.  Absolutely fascinating! And delivered with an actor's panache.  Callow seemed to warm to the audience as he went along and while he started in a fairly pedestrian manner talking about some early comical experiences in playing 'A Christmas Carol,' he seemed to gather strength as he went on so that when he finished the applause rolled on and on and on.  A thousand people or so all applauding eagerly.  He seemed quite overcome and gave a very theatrical bow.  So  apart from managing somewhere to have a glass of bubbly in the sponsors tent that was that for this year.  But we shall be back next no doubt.

It usually rains at Hay, but we were fortunate in not seeing rain until the time came to depart. It had not rained then for two days and by then most of the mud had dried up.  The Macmillan nurses car park where we left our car was still open and conditions were almost civilised. We reached our car dry shod as the final Hay audiences were being entertained.