How to whittle away a case of ‘stick envy’
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut,” said Dad, “and make sure you keep in line, halfway between the beaters on either side.” I was only eight years old when those instructions were delivered, as we travelled in the old Ford Anglia to my first day’s beating at Clandon Park, near Guildford in Surrey.
To my mind, they are as valid today as they were in the mid-1960s, as was the next bit — to resist the temptation to shout and holler, even if the others did so, and to keep my stick tapping, even when the headkeeper stopped the line.
Dad issued me with a nicely seasoned straight hazel rod, with the further instruction that, though it was a beating stick, I did not need to thrash things so hard that it
