Does everyone really hate us?

When the Editor posed the question “Does everybody hate us?” to me on the phone, I laughed. At the time, I was visiting a friend called Angus who attends the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester. His digs weren’t quite your typical student house.

There were pigeon decoys on the lamp shades. Barbour jackets and wellies cluttered the hallway. Old copies of The Field were being used to get the barbecue going in the garden. Everyone I met came from the countryside and seemed to understand it. Angus’s friends loved fieldsports and talked about them.

Entire flats in halls of residence would go beating in the winter to earn themselves a free roast dinner. They went pheasant shooting on each other’s farms in the winter and decoyed pigeons in the summer. I was told by Angus that game, often still in the feather, could be found in their