More than mere walnut and steel

I remember when my brother and I bought our first air rifle. We thought we had cleverly hidden this fact from my father; he knew, of course, and though my mother wasn’t happy, he allowed us to keep it. While giving us a safety briefing, he took its first shot. Standing with his legs astride, he lined up the iron sights on that crooked old gun and plucked the stigma out of the centre of a tulip 30 yards away; I am still trying to do the same 20 years later.

I lost my father in September after a long and hard fight with cancer. His side-by-side, a nondescript yet beautifully blued AYA No 4, fell to me and