Dogs Delight 24 Foxhunting

Peter Hopkirk marches past with two buckets of hot manure, throwing me his usual discounting glance.

 

As I am passing the Lone Gelding I hear loud retorts and the thunder of rolling metal.  Stokes, the landlord, is out at the back again with his shotgun and Jack Russell, blasting at foxes. 

He rarely empties the large catering bins, which attract them in numbers from the fields around.  Probably this neglect is deliberate as, witnessing him aiming and firing in silhouette, anyone can see he revels in his sport.  He also takes the odd potshot at Brunt’s yard in the hope of taking out Russell, who is now crowing at dusk and supper time as well as before dawn. 

I ponder the complete lack of attractive personalities in the village.  Stokes’ personality, for instance, has hardly a positive trait and nor has his appearance.  Think of how he leers at revellers from the shadows behind the bar: yellow dome circled by straggling hair, a seedy Dickensian miser in a holey cardigan. 

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 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Dogs Delight 25 Stock market

He occasionally remembers his duty as landlord and throws in a comment to stir up controversy, generally on the need to ‘bring back the stocks.’


Stocks on the village green, say Stokes and his cronies, will not only bring down vandalism but bring in tourists.  (They say he is building a set in his gun shed.)  His supporters cite the example of  Near Otterby, which still has its gibbet, provoking envy in the villages all around.  Some of the regulars have begun calling him ‘Stokesy’ in a game and doomed attempt to lend him a more amiable character.  

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at 

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Dogs Delight 26 Village colour

He and the slatternly Mrs Stokes have a silent son who dyes ferrets: pink, usually, but red and green at Christmas. 

But he does it in a perfunctory way, as though there is nothing better to do and certainly not with an appropriate sense of joy. 

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at 

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight