Foul weather and worse to come. Puddles in the farmyard. An 18th-century farmhouse with a cast-iron fox’s mask for a doorknocker. The door is ajar. Inside, men in hunting waistcoats are gathered around a silver drinks tray.
The warmth and enthusiasm of my host’s greeting takes me aback. He welcomes me literally with open arms and introduces me to the company. One of them, a raffish-looking bloke, is an Earl. Another, with a cruel, outdoor face, is introduced as ‘the Master’. Friendly hands are extended. ‘He looks the part, anyway,’ says the Master.
‘Now, then,’ says my host to me in a business-like manner, carefully tipping first whisky then cherry brandy into a glass and presenting it to me, ‘would you care for a “Sid special”?’
A scrubbed wooden table, a monumental oak cupboard, a coatrack fit for a school, a fireplace spacious enough to take a spitted pig and somebody to turn the handle, a centuries’-old soot-blackened clock stopped at ten to four, the assembled company in tall boots and hunting waistcoats: stepping into that parlour is like stepping back a couple of centuries.
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