Country life
Please don't let it rain
Leanda de Lisle
It's another beautiful day. Most odd. It's always been my ambition to spend Febru- ary abroad, but this month the sun has shone and shone as if we were enjoying a particularly good May. There are snow- drops where I never knew we had snow- drops. The daffodils think it's Easter and several are already in flower. I don't like to think what a hard frost will do to them. However, with the Countryside March coming up on Sunday, I'm only permitting myself to pray it doesn't rain.
Praying it doesn't rain must form 99.9 per cent of Britain's communication with Heaven: 'Dear God, please don't let it rain on my wedding day/barbecue/teddy-bears' picnic/alfresco snog/fireworks party.' Per- haps God will get fed up one day and ensure it never rains again. Then we'll won- der why they pre-rusted the Angel of the North. Thinking of which, I was surprised by the sculptor saying the Angel expresses his belief that men can achieve as much as angels. What have angels ever achieved? They've brought a few messages, but I can't see that being celestial postmen is much to brag about. Especially when you know their most important messages involved telling women that abstaining from sex or being well past the menopause didn't mean they couldn't get pregnant. Antony Gormley should have built a giant sheep farmer. They help to clothe and feed us. What more could you ask of anyone?
Anyway, I don't suppose everyone on the march will mind rain as much as I will. The Welsh are leading this revolt after all. The sporting fraternity will produce hip-flasks of bullshot and cherry brandy if the weath- er gets really bad. Out shooting you notice that quite a rivalry can build up over what you have in your hip-flask. We were given a triple flask for a wedding present, so I could carry around a veritable cocktail cab- inet, although, sadly, I don't have the receipt for the best hip-flask drink of all Singing Johnny, a delicious, fruity blackber- ry gin. Rain or shine, we've been invited to dozens of little get-togethers on the route. Breakfast at the Savoy, lunch at one of the many clubs opening their doors for the march and tea at an art gallery. For reasons like this, not everyone will be on the streets at once, so I wonder how a reasonably accu- rate assessment of numbers can be made.
The organisers have made it clear they are hoping for an even bigger turn-out than last time, and I'm sure there will be. Those who didn't turn up at the rally have been made to feel pretty small since.
One chap told me that he had taken to lying about his non-attendance. 'People made it clear if you hadn't gone to the rally, you could forget about shooting invi- tations,' he explained. 'I had to tell them, "Oh, yes, wasn't it marvellous, the atmo- sphere, seeing good old Buffy ..." and so forth, or that would have been it,' and he drew his finger across his throat. He won't risk his shooting invitations again.
However, I am a little worried by some- thing I saw in the Telegraph. They inter- viewed a Londoner who goes rambling at weekends. She said she was going on the march, but disapproved of field sports, so she hoped the organisers wouldn't claim the march represented the level of feeling against Foster's Bill. Its timing has been organised especially to coincide with the report stage of Foster's Bill. People like that should just piss off.
Mind you, I can see why even people like that would want to join us, `... gentlemen in England now abed/Shall think them- selves accursed they were not here,/And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.' Or, rather, St David's Day, the national day of Wales. Perhaps we should wear their national symbol, the daf- fodil, to remind us of what this march is about. Country people, not people who go to the country.
`God Mom, I feel so old.'
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