The day is bright and blue. The sky is clear and the air is still, poised with an icy tingle that makes the firmament feel like a taught canopy overhead. Perfect conditions, I imagine, for a wild game shoot, but in all honesty I have absolutely no idea. To call myself a novice would be to rank myself well above my station. One good thing in knowing absolutely nothing about a subject is that you are in a perfect position to learn. I am only worried that today my learning will be made with a series of blunders.
I am on a train heading north to Lytham St Annes. My bag is packed to the brim; thermals, top and bottom, my threadbare Macintosh, gloves, a wooly hat, a torch, extra jumpers and trousers and a thermos which I forgot to fill up at home. Perhaps I can get a soy milk latte at Preston when I change trains, although I feel like I’ll have to keep this to myself. I don’t imagine the shooters are the soy milk latte kind.
I am always slightly nervous stepping into the unknown. It’s not only my total lack of experience that makes me feel this way but also the masculinity of the rural world that gives me a feeling of inadequacy. I also worry that I might find myself in the wrong class. This is something that I can handle in the restaurant, with my stories and food to protect me, but out of place, in the world of ‘real men’ I could be overly exposed to their elements. I imagine a world of waders and lurchers, wax jackets and heavy limbs, pints of ale before a shift, big fists, belt and braces, rivets and engines, actions over words. It’s perhaps an old world I begrudgingly romanticise and fear at the same time. No matter. As long as they don’t sniff the soy milk in my thermos I might just get on OK. And I can always reach into my cache of stories from the kitchen should the need arise.
I watch out of the train window as the landscape shifts into lush green fields, scores of rabbits poking their quivering noses above the tufts. Marshes reflect herons, like reptiles on stilts, wading across the burnt amber surface in the late afternoon sun. Birds circle in formation overhead. It’s a beautiful sight and seems like a playground for any man with a gun and a notion to hunt.
I’m not sure if I’m here to shoot or if I’m joining as a bystander. Would any sane person offer me a gun? I’m not sure that if the gun was offered up I could even go through with it. And if I could, that it would not end in some bloody and tragic event.