You can't teach this on Zoom

A less-than-perfect afternoon of chasing pigeon over kale presents the perfect learning opportunity for a keen 14-year-old

- SIMON GARNHAM

The other night I went to bed with Peter Scott and Arthur Cadman. It was a dream ménage à trois for me that felt not unlike the time in training on Dartmoor when a sadistic colour sergeant removed every item of waterproof or warm kit from two other young Royal Marines officers and me. We were left alone and very, very cold.

But our troop commander was not the hard-nosed Yorkshireman he pretended to be. By way of compensation for our extreme discomfort he brought waterproofed matches and permission to go ‘nontac’. This meant a “ging-gang gooly like Fred Karno’s Army” as the irate colour sergeant called it.

I ended up snuggled comfortably between a para-trained psychopath from Glasgow and a signaller from Taunton, while a bonfire to compare with the Great Fire of London in 1666 burned the chicken we had liberated from a nearby farm. It turned out to be blissfully cosy.

Treasured

Cadman and Scott, of course, are neither psychopath nor signaller but both can warm you very nicely at bedtime. BB describes Cadman as his favourite writer on wildfowling. Inside the book Tales of a Wildfowler, illustrated by Sir Peter Scott, I keep treasured cuttings, including a letter from Cadman in which he describes a “super right-and-left at two tall pinks”. The book is signed by Scott — priceless indeed — and there is an article by John Humphreys.

This is a special bookmark for me because he describes being hosted by my club, the incomparable Little Oakley & District Wildfowlers Association, on a day on which I had the privilege of beating.