RICHARD NEGUS IS A PROFESSIONAL HEDGE LAYER AND WRITER. HE IS A KEEN WILDFOWLER AND HAS A PASSION FOR GREY PARTRIDGES
Much is made about the peace and tranquillity of the English countryside in winter. Countless books, essays and articles in Sunday supplements have been written, invariably by urban émigrés, on how solace is found in frosted rural pastures and woods. It may make for attractive word painting, but these paragraphs, in my experience, are notably wide of the truth.
It is quite obvious these scribes have never ventured into what I would term the ‘real countryside’, nor have they met with the yokel youths who live here. The notion of hush is rarely if ever connected with 12-year-old boys. If you
