Deer Stalkers
Lovely hat, just like the one my father wore and which hung on a peg for decades – an earliest memory. He actually tried to train our new puppy crossbreed as a shooting dog, and the poor thing was never the same again after he came back from those six weeks at the dog trainer’s.
Lady Di was only a couple of years older than me at the time she dated Charles, but the fact she was seeing someone in their thirties made her seem ancient, and the pictures of her and her country pursuits may have inspired my father to take me on a shoot. Or was it me that wanted to go. I identified strongly with Lady Di and like many young girls at the time got likened to her, and followed her hairstyles and downward shy glances. It was expressive and hid how I was really feeling, so thank you Di for giving me a way to cope with and cover up my emotions during my terrible teenage years.
A Fox in a Box – by Patricia Goldberg ©2023
Boxing Day night , in the long Volvo,
With pa;
Precious cargo in the back,
To an Ungracious Street,
Where through the window,
Strutted tattered old birds,
And stoats.
On a dark December's eve,
Taking the fox in a box,
The precious cargo in the back,
A fox in a box,
On Boxing Day.
That day,
In the mid wintry gray,
I'd trailed along,
And stolen a swift swig of whiskey
Sat on a bale like Lady Di.
A hike across the moor,
Through ten fields of snow,
Towards Brimham's spectral shapes.
Just a few old boys and pa,
Banging at live birds,
Not the usual lonely telephone pole,
Halfway down our ten acre bog.
Fortune favoured the pheasants that day,
All cleared off, they'd stayed away.
And peace reigned.
Then packing up,
There's a rustle in the bracken,
A momentary panic on,
Bang,
And pa returned with a limp bundle,
A red tailed creature
In his arms.
And there he sat and stayed,
All alone in his dusty corner,
Of our barn conversion,
Grinning with his gleaming teeth.
This was the start of my revelation of the real horrors of man’s arrogance and cruelty towards wildlife, and my journey to veganism. If I had wanted, aged fourteen, to shoot the gun my father owned, it was probably a feminist response to my much younger brother being allowed to do so. He was so young that he was injured by the force of it.
My school friend on the bus also helped me to want to care for animals not kill them as she described to me her experience of going hunting at a young age and being ‘bloodied’.
This Christmas try to go cruelty free when purchasing presents.
Sapphire Sea 