Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, the fact what has gone on? Ready?
Speaker 2: So we're back and it's the usual standard.
Speaker 3: Of can you say that your llawds say that I
Speaker 3: just did. It's going to go downhill from here.
Speaker 2: Then well Amy can bleep it out. She can also
Speaker 2: bleep out, but.
Speaker 1: Can she what? You can't say? This will lose our
Speaker 1: status as.
Speaker 3: What will we lose unpaid jobs, voluntary service?
Speaker 1: No, our status as the Guardians of the Galaxy. That
Speaker 1: is the countryside, you know, the only true and authentic voice.
Speaker 3: If the Guardians of the Galaxy are our real group
Speaker 3: is going to have such a problem with you all
Speaker 3: that bill hooking and laying They're probably that's probably cousins
Speaker 3: of his.
Speaker 2: You know, there is danger to ends.
Speaker 1: No, but I'm not. I'm not, though, am I Because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm actually just turning Grouped into something better than
Speaker 1: what he was originally. So I'd have thought Grouped would
Speaker 1: like me. I think possibly the Angry Raccoon wouldn't, because
Speaker 1: I think he'd probably find my slightly sort of environmental
Speaker 1: ways annoying. I think he'd probably want to blow me
Speaker 1: up or something.
Speaker 3: The angry Raccoon is a bit like Nigel Farage, like
Speaker 3: you won't want to hang around of him all the time,
Speaker 3: but you definitely go for a pipe, wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's sort of broken many people's spell of
Speaker 2: what and who you are by the fact that you
Speaker 2: know what Marvel films are and you've seen them and
Speaker 2: you know the plotlines and characters and things.
Speaker 1: What me I like now? I like Guardians of the
Speaker 1: Galaxy because it is utterly irrelevant. I also think Chris
Speaker 1: Pratt is one of those rare actors that even when
Speaker 1: he's not trying to be funny, he just makes me chuckle.
Speaker 1: He's got those faces that you look at like Callums
Speaker 1: and you just laugh at. You know, he's Callum's trying
Speaker 1: to pour his heart out about something that matters a
Speaker 1: lot to him, and I go, you know, I think
Speaker 1: Chris Pratt's the same, although I don't know Chris Pratt personally.
Speaker 2: Have you seen The Terminal List or read it?
Speaker 1: No? No?
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 2: So? It's a book a guy called Jack Carr, who
Speaker 2: is a Navy seal and then he wanted basically, he
Speaker 2: had his whole life planned out. He wanted to become
Speaker 2: a Navy seal so he could get experience in special
Speaker 2: forces and then become a writer because he's sort of
Speaker 2: wanted to become effectively the sort of person who would
Speaker 2: write magnum p I and that kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: that was that was his influence, and he managed to
Speaker 2: map out his life and follow it all and he
Speaker 2: wrote this first novel called The Terminal List, which I'm
Speaker 2: not going to spoil in any way other than say
Speaker 2: it is possibly the most satisfying revenge novel that has
Speaker 2: ever been written, and in the dramatization of it, Chris
Speaker 2: Pratt plays the protagonist, and it's equally satisfying but very violent.
Speaker 1: I will write that down The Terminal List, you see.
Speaker 1: My favorite revenge book of all time is The Count
Speaker 1: of Monte Cristo Alexander Dumat because I like that because
Speaker 1: he pulls no punches, because it was obviously written, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Victorian Frenchman, and it's just horrible. He has
Speaker 1: no no problem whatsoever about actually serving out every single
Speaker 1: vengeance against him, and I think probably every single revenge
Speaker 1: novel or drama ever since has just take basically nicked
Speaker 1: the Count monte Cristo, and it's a great book. I
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly recommend everything that Alexander do.
Speaker 2: Matt has written, Yeah, and I know would take the
Speaker 2: piss out of the French quite a lot on here,
Speaker 2: because well, you know, it's a cultural responsibility of ours.
Speaker 2: But the French are incredibly violent and calculating as a
Speaker 2: as a race. They are. I can get scared of
Speaker 2: the French.
Speaker 1: Indeed, you know, indeed, you've only got to sort of
Speaker 1: look at some of their cheeses and realize that seriously offensive.
Speaker 1: Exactly seriously offensive.
Speaker 2: I think we should acknowledge the fact that Callum is back.
Speaker 1: Yes we should. Yeah. Yeah, And he's playing with his
Speaker 1: scissors everyone you know, Yeah, he always playing with the scissors.
Speaker 1: It's like a fidget spinner.
Speaker 2: Well, they're already blunt scissors, though, I notice they're not
Speaker 2: allowed pointy scissors.
Speaker 4: No, no, not since the incident.
Speaker 1: The incidents. We don't talk about the incident, Callum. We
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm back.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: I nearly wasn't back. Been a busy old day, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm back.
Speaker 1: So you're basically you were swilling port and hanging around
Speaker 1: in bars that Prido and I wouldn't get let in.
Speaker 3: That's basically minor character assassination last week, but I'll allow
Speaker 3: it which bit I didn't mind being referred to as
Speaker 3: an extra from The Gentleman, a sort of character. The
Speaker 3: cyber crime crime acceptable. I just knew myself as more
Speaker 3: of a struggling creative if I was going to be
Speaker 3: portrayed in a film. But I'll take cyber crime. It's
Speaker 3: a bit cooler. And then you know that would also
Speaker 3: normally their Asian because cyber crime is exclusively for Asians
Speaker 3: in all films.
Speaker 1: That's true, true, Actually, that is that is true because
Speaker 1: even in Slow Horses, they've got the guy who who
Speaker 1: does all the cyber stuff and hacks into everyone. He's
Speaker 1: an Asian guy. That is very true.
Speaker 3: It's always it's always the it's always a smart, you
Speaker 3: know guy from from Tokyo or somewhere that's like a
Speaker 3: genius at hacking. It's just that the most cliche they
Speaker 3: could possibly get.
Speaker 1: I wonder do you think in Asian made sort of gangs,
Speaker 1: the slash spy films, that the person who's behind the
Speaker 1: computer going hold on, i'm in, I'm in is actually
Speaker 1: some English bloke you know, called Callum from Essex.
Speaker 3: What they're just saying like enhance repeatedly until they can
Speaker 3: turn like seven twenty CCTV footage into a high res
Speaker 3: image and get a tattoo on that's it on his
Speaker 3: left chin. Yeah, I love those I love those things.
Speaker 3: The two thousands was a golden era for those those
Speaker 3: kind of terrible like you'd open a laptop and it
Speaker 3: would all just be blue and green code and then
Speaker 3: someone would be like, I'm in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with a lot of typing, just typing faster.
Speaker 3: Turfing fast, until lots of zeros and ones, when really, yeah,
Speaker 3: most hacking is actually like somebody sending a text message
Speaker 3: to your phone telling you that something's happened and you
Speaker 3: click a link roll.
Speaker 4: That's what that is these days.
Speaker 2: Or dropping a USB stick in the parking space of
Speaker 2: the really hot girl from the office with private photos
Speaker 2: written across it and just waiting for somebody picks it
Speaker 2: up and shoves it into the networked office computer.
Speaker 3: There was a guy that put a terribly compromising virus
Speaker 3: thing into a USB device and then cemented it into
Speaker 3: a wall, and he got a lot of people. A
Speaker 3: lot of people were just so curious that what the
Speaker 3: hell was a USB sticking out of the wall that
Speaker 3: they on their laptop or phone or something into this
Speaker 3: device and we took all their details, but they deserve it.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, curiosity killed the cas.
Speaker 1: I can tell you a thing back in my pre
Speaker 1: digital obviously, back when I was a young man in
Speaker 1: the Army, I went on the pre Sandturst course. Was
Speaker 1: absolute doss for six months at Becconsfield and basically they
Speaker 1: just wanted to sort of make sure because we all
Speaker 1: past our CB and before we go off to Santurst.
Speaker 1: This wanted to make sure that brush up on our
Speaker 1: education a bit. And we just went to the theater
Speaker 1: and didn't a level in six months and that was
Speaker 1: about it. But we had to do presentations and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was there with a lovely guy who was
Speaker 1: an Aussie who was going into one of the fraction
Speaker 1: cavalry regiments as we had then, and he had broken
Speaker 1: his headphones off his walkman, which shows you how long
Speaker 1: ago it was, and he had to do a presentation
Speaker 1: for a wall mounted display on Beethoven and he shoved
Speaker 1: his headphones, which has got no jack plug on anymore,
Speaker 1: through the wall and he just put a little thing
Speaker 1: on there saying hear what Beethoven heard. And some very
Speaker 1: crusty old major general sort of came around looking at
Speaker 1: all our things, pretending to be interested, and we watched
Speaker 1: with delight as he sort of put these headphones on
Speaker 1: and then turned around and said the words that he
Speaker 1: was supposed to say. Well, I can't hear anything, and
Speaker 1: the chap said, exactly, that's because Beethoven was death general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think his career lasted that long in the army,
Speaker 1: but you know it was worth it just for that
Speaker 1: gag alone.
Speaker 2: Did you see that they've drained the lake at Sanders.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I hear God, that's going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of lockers in it.
Speaker 2: Well, the Amnesty Lake as it was referred to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: lots of things that shouldn't exist there in that.
Speaker 1: Lake, absolutely big time. I mean that you used to
Speaker 1: get loads of stuff chucked in there, or your bucksheese
Speaker 1: used to get thrown in yeah, and of course you did.
Speaker 1: There will also been lots of ticket that's not the
Speaker 1: fishing lake. No, No, you didn't fish in there, but
Speaker 1: we used to have to do a river crossing exercise
Speaker 1: there with floatation packs and stuff. So you can guarantee
Speaker 1: there'll be lots of old knives, forks and spoons that
Speaker 1: have fallen out of your webbing as you did a
Speaker 1: sort of river crossing exercise along there, and the it's
Speaker 1: a funny old thing actually that because we we had that,
Speaker 1: there was a thing in the army where basically you
Speaker 1: get issued a very small amount of kit which is
Speaker 1: really insufficient to do your job. So you get something
Speaker 1: called bucksheese, which goes back to our days of the
Speaker 1: Indian Army, and buckshee he means basically free of charge.
Speaker 1: So you get kit and you accumulate it either by theft,
Speaker 1: borrowing and not giving back inadvertently signing something out and
Speaker 1: then someone gets it wrong and you end up with
Speaker 1: a lot more kit than you used to have. But
Speaker 1: we had at Knightsbridge, when I was at the Mounted Regiment,
Speaker 1: we had some massive who har that came down. They
Speaker 1: realized just how expensive the household cavalry was and how
Speaker 1: much it was costing the exchequer, and so they sent
Speaker 1: down a load of people from the SIB, which is
Speaker 1: like the Special Investigations branch of the Royal Military Police,
Speaker 1: claiming that there were clearly massive fraud going on because
Speaker 1: we had far too much kit for how many men
Speaker 1: were there, and they were wanting to know where all
Speaker 1: this missing stuff was because it was worth hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds. All this stuff that was sort of
Speaker 1: we'd got wasn't on anyone's kind of stuff. Oh, everything
Speaker 1: from State Kit. So that would be the State helmets,
Speaker 1: your curiasses, jack boots, spurs, even just the bits alone
Speaker 1: that the horses wore in their mouth for on what
Speaker 1: we used to call State head kit, that's the bridle.
Speaker 1: Those things alone were worth like two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: quid a pop back then in the eighties, and they
Speaker 1: were just everywhere. Well, and it's so unique and special.
Speaker 1: And one or two I think it all came because
Speaker 1: there was a full set of State Kit arrived in
Speaker 1: the shop window of a sort of secondhand shop down
Speaker 1: on Portobella Market and somebody clocked it and they sort
Speaker 1: of looked in and look whose name was written on
Speaker 1: the curirasses and they went, but he's still serving. That
Speaker 1: shouldn't be there, And so they made this big who
Speaker 1: har of a thing. Well, our kernel at the time
Speaker 1: was a wonderful chap And actually I can say his
Speaker 1: name because he dead fluffed bird would and he was brilliant.
Speaker 1: He knew this was coming, and he th on, look
Speaker 1: do you.
Speaker 4: Make places and people's names.
Speaker 1: Not fluffy Bird.
Speaker 2: He's a good AI, is it?
Speaker 1: I was just fluffy Bird was a real chap wird. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what we did was we kept all the kit. But
Speaker 1: when you go down to the stables at Knightsbridge, of
Speaker 1: course you have great big piles of straw bales hanging
Speaker 1: around there, and we just made a hollow cavern of
Speaker 1: straw bales, and each squadron, both the lifeguards and Blues
Speaker 1: and walls, hid all of their kit in plain sight,
Speaker 1: but just behind this little sheath of of of straw bales.
Speaker 1: And as all these sneaky beakye people came around and
Speaker 1: went into our lockers and counted, you know, how many
Speaker 1: socks we had and a many shirts, and they found
Speaker 1: that we were absolutely, to a man perfect, We had
Speaker 1: exactly how much kit we should have. And when they
Speaker 1: came down to the stables and they were counting the
Speaker 1: bridles and counting the saddles and everything, little did they
Speaker 1: know that within a couple of feet of them, just
Speaker 1: hidden behind one straw veil, was probably about fifty pounds
Speaker 1: worth a buckshee kit just sat there. Wonderful. That was
Speaker 1: what the army used to be like, not the pastiche is.
Speaker 2: Now well, I've been not working with them, but working
Speaker 2: with people along alongside them in role a little bit
Speaker 2: over the last few weeks, and I want to highlight
Speaker 2: the support that we've had as a business from Elite Optical,
Speaker 2: and in particular a man called Glenn, who is probably
Speaker 2: listening to this and wondering what the hell I'm about
Speaker 2: to say next, but he as a company, they have
Speaker 2: been very very helpful to me, and I want to
Speaker 2: highlight their customer service and also just their technical support
Speaker 2: because they are the guys that bring in hick micro
Speaker 2: thermal imaging stuff that we've talked about on the podcast before,
Speaker 2: but I've been using them in a non field sports
Speaker 2: hunting sense over the last few weeks on some courses.
Speaker 2: If you are listening to this and you sort of
Speaker 2: you've got a thermal device where you've used your mates
Speaker 2: or something like that and that's a few years old,
Speaker 2: go and play with the new stuff. It is out
Speaker 2: of this world. I mean, there was one bit where
Speaker 2: I sent it to my mate Phil, who's a beekeeper
Speaker 2: amongst other things, and he's got some hives in our woods.
Speaker 2: Sending a video of these little white dots flying around
Speaker 2: one hundred yards a get away and he goes, what
Speaker 2: are those? And those are your bees? Mate, It's like
Speaker 2: one hundred yards away, I'm spotting bees in fult In,
Speaker 2: even on a hot day. The detection on this stuff
Speaker 2: is so much better than it was. The new tools
Speaker 2: within it, and I'm not this is not a sales
Speaker 2: pitch because I don't get anything from it. It's just
Speaker 2: bloody hell. This kit has moved on a huge way.
Speaker 2: And that's what I've been doing over the last few
Speaker 2: weeks on and off different courses, is teaching people who
Speaker 2: have to observe other people how to get the most
Speaker 2: out of it. And yeah, the new kit is scarily good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel sorry for anyone that spent a huge
Speaker 3: amount of money on stuff only three four years ago
Speaker 3: that yeah, you can now buy a very basic model
Speaker 3: that's the same and a hell of a lot cheaper
Speaker 3: stuff is if you're going to spend that money the
Speaker 3: big money. Actually it's not even the same in terms
Speaker 3: of big money, is it. Really, it's quite a bit less.
Speaker 3: And still they're still really good.
Speaker 2: I was going to say it's been it's been like
Speaker 2: digital cameras have gone, but actually digital cameras, particularly like
Speaker 2: even mirrorless and things like that. The tech is kind
Speaker 2: of stalled. It's not you know, something new this year
Speaker 2: compared to last year, isn't is the rate of development
Speaker 2: isn't the same.
Speaker 3: You know, in the I really didn't expect to get
Speaker 3: into this in the last sort of two years or so, maybe.
Speaker 2: Your previous career of callum.
Speaker 4: Maybe like three years.
Speaker 3: They've worked out how to make lenses that so optical
Speaker 3: designs were based on DSLR cameras for a long long time.
Speaker 3: So all of your first versions of lenses are all
Speaker 3: DSLR lenses because we're making the glass, we're making the components,
Speaker 3: we're doing the thing the DSLR lenses adapted for mirrorless
Speaker 3: cameras well. Now they've had enough time and money invested
Speaker 3: to get mark two versions of some of these lenses,
Speaker 3: and they've shrunk them optically, they've tweaked different things, and
Speaker 3: they're working with the limitations of the flanged depth. Never
Speaker 3: gets old of the camera and optics, yeah, I know it.
Speaker 3: Never it never got old grass either, And they've they've
Speaker 3: worked out how to make optically far superior lenses than
Speaker 3: any DSLR lenses that ever existed. So the optics and
Speaker 3: the speed of auto focus has gone on absolutely miles
Speaker 3: where the changes in actual image performance and dynamic range
Speaker 3: have not gone crazy different in the last I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, five years.
Speaker 3: Five years, yeah, five years, it's not mad different, but
Speaker 3: the speed of aater focusing and processing and a little
Speaker 3: bit of a dynamic range improvement has come.
Speaker 4: But they could all change with stacked senses.
Speaker 1: For you, you see that, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: you are talking about. I use a bill hook that
Speaker 1: was made in nineteen twenty three. Yeah, that's what I.
Speaker 2: You're made in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: I've got a seven pound lump hammer, which I have
Speaker 1: to say has got a plastic shaft because it takes
Speaker 1: some of the thing out whacking stuff and I don't
Speaker 1: want that.
Speaker 4: You get a silicon shaft.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not on only fans, so I
Speaker 1: don't think so. And that's basically it, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I take photo. I had to go today editing with
Speaker 1: I had to go with the editing app on my
Speaker 1: phone because when I'm laying a hedge, the chap next
Speaker 1: door said, oh, just make it. I was taking the
Speaker 1: photographs because we have to do that for the bean
Speaker 1: counters at the RPA, and he said, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want my place appearing anywhere. I went, okay, so I
Speaker 1: use the raise function on this thing and I was
Speaker 1: able to remove all the background imagery out of this thing.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, that's just magic. I don't even
Speaker 1: know how that works, but it does. So anyway, listen,
Speaker 1: I think I don't have no idea what DSLR are.
Speaker 1: We are country Slide, the UK's finest rural podcast, and
Speaker 1: that's got nothing to do with the country side. So
Speaker 1: why don't we talk about trees instead? Trees? I like trees.
Speaker 1: Everyone likes trees. What's your favorite tree?
Speaker 2: So we're just watching the show plan be obliterated entirely.
Speaker 4: There was a great link.
Speaker 2: Richard.
Speaker 3: Thank you for your time and your patients. It really
Speaker 3: means a lot to us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I have no idea what DSLRM means, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to know. I just I just take
Speaker 1: it that when you press buttons, things that probably did
Speaker 1: happen look better on the image that you have made,
Speaker 1: and that happens.
Speaker 3: Do they believe in suffing that every time I take
Speaker 3: a picture, I capture their soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. That's what happens in Suffolk of the
Speaker 1: See when you go and take Garnum, because he's from Essix,
Speaker 1: he's they look at it a bit differently. Basically just pouts,
Speaker 1: pats at the camera. He's pacting all the time. He
Speaker 1: just can't see because he's always got his little mask.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I took.
Speaker 3: I took a really nice picture of Garnum yesterday where
Speaker 3: I made him laugh from across a pond. So and
Speaker 3: sometimes they make it into the magazine, but I never
Speaker 3: get mentioned. So there will be probably a picture in
Speaker 3: the Shooting Times in the next couple of weeks of
Speaker 3: Simon Garnum laughing as he puts out some till decoys,
Speaker 3: which basically makes him look like he's a mentalist, like
Speaker 3: there's something actually wrong with him, because nobody you know
Speaker 3: who sits on a marsh and shares a joke with
Speaker 3: their dog, Well, not that many people.
Speaker 4: Well probably, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean that is that's true. Actually, But when you think
Speaker 1: a lot of the time when you used to come
Speaker 1: out and do photographs of Darren Ceiser and I for
Speaker 1: Kit Review, and you always got lots and lots of
Speaker 1: pictures of us laughing as we're sort of sat there
Speaker 1: in Cama FuG.
Speaker 3: It's not so bad when it's which you and Darren
Speaker 3: and people know that it's you two together. But when
Speaker 3: it's you you alone on a marsh with your decoys laughing, yeah,
Speaker 3: laughing up with the labrador. Yeah that is true. Actually
Speaker 3: that is a bit worrying, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Right now, listener, listen to this bit. This is the
Speaker 2: important bit. This is the bit that once again we
Speaker 2: forgot to put in the main episode, mostly because I
Speaker 2: couldn't get a word in edgeways past the other two talking. Now,
Speaker 2: this show runs well, it's run entirely on the back
Speaker 2: of our supporters over at Patreon dot com or if
Speaker 2: you go to Countryslide dot co dot uk forward slash
Speaker 2: support you'll see the same links and in fact better links.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: Those people, those people, and they know who they are.
Speaker 2: They keep the show going because they give us a
Speaker 2: small amount of money every month and in return, because
Speaker 2: we do acknowledge that times are tight and giving any
Speaker 2: money out at the moment is it's starting to become
Speaker 2: a real equation. You've got to work out before you
Speaker 2: do it. In return, we give them extra content. So
Speaker 2: every main show has an after show, which is often
Speaker 2: as long, if not longer than the show itself. In
Speaker 2: there we just carry on rambling, but we say all
Speaker 2: the things that we don't really want to say out
Speaker 2: in public. There's sort of things that you wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to put your career next to. We put all those
Speaker 2: kind of things behind the paywall. You also, as a supporter,
Speaker 2: get access to our WhatsApp group, so that is quite
Speaker 2: a big community now of people, and we've got sub
Speaker 2: channels in there about gardening and farming and forestry and
Speaker 2: shooting and fishing and food, and there's a motoring section.
Speaker 2: There's all these little bits. It's starting to become well,
Speaker 2: a really active community of like minded rural people. And
Speaker 2: if you want access to all of that, then go
Speaker 2: to countryslide dot co dot UK forward slash support. The
Speaker 2: other benefit is you don't get any more ads on
Speaker 2: the episode and this bit that I'm reading out right
Speaker 2: now goes away. So if you want to get rid
Speaker 2: of me and get rid of this, there you have it.
Speaker 2: Right back. With the episode, Rich's probably talking about the
Speaker 2: army horses, hedges, Norfolk Suffolk, or Calum is talking about
Speaker 2: flat roof pubs.
Speaker 1: Sorry, so we aren't going to talk about our favorite trees.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to talk about what we've done this week.
Speaker 1: I think first.
Speaker 2: I tried to lead you into that with a thermal thing.
Speaker 2: That's what I was doing. I was saying, well, that's
Speaker 2: what I've been doing, and I was about to say,
Speaker 2: what have you up to?
Speaker 1: You and the like hedges. That's it, And he's been
Speaker 1: fiddling around with this dlrs, so you know that's it.
Speaker 1: We can go on to trees. Now, go on, then,
Speaker 1: what have you been up to?
Speaker 3: I've been doing posh things the last few weeks. I've
Speaker 3: been to Parliament a couple of times. I had to
Speaker 3: walk there because the train strikes. So thanks for that, TfL.
Speaker 3: I hope you get your pay rise in line of inflation.
Speaker 2: Have you noticed when it affects him? Not a communist?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm all for socialism, but you know, why
Speaker 3: do I have to walk?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Yeah, that's another reform. Votes over arrived at the station,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much? Are empty paint.
Speaker 4: A roundabout.
Speaker 1: Parliament?
Speaker 3: So I went to Parliament, done a little parliamentary reception
Speaker 3: to people drinking champagne talking talking about public transport.
Speaker 4: That was fun.
Speaker 3: Had to also get a double decker bus to catch
Speaker 3: the bus month and I had to direct it in
Speaker 3: front of the Palace of Westminster and then take pictures
Speaker 3: of it. We have lots of MPs and at one point,
Speaker 3: although he's not an MP and he wasn't actually invited,
Speaker 3: that fella the the what's his name, it's gone, the
Speaker 3: Victorian Jacob Riese mod He's just really strange. It's like
Speaker 3: he's from a Dickens book. I've spoke to him like
Speaker 3: two or three times and he's never not strange.
Speaker 4: But I quite like him.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you mean, living ghost of a
Speaker 2: Victorian child Jacob Riese mog.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he looks haunted.
Speaker 1: They called him the Minister for the nineteenth Century, which
Speaker 1: I thought was quite funny when he was.
Speaker 2: I want that job, actually, i'd have that.
Speaker 1: What are the policies, yeah, well work houses, yeah, bring
Speaker 1: them back and return of the Empire. So sorry, how
Speaker 1: did you direct a bus in front of I mean,
Speaker 1: did you have to wave your arms about.
Speaker 4: Right a bit? Yeah, it's quite hard to direct a bus.
Speaker 3: And also, obviously so I've done this before, this isn't
Speaker 3: my first time directing a bus outside of the Palace
Speaker 3: of Westbodin, which is a sentence I never thought I'd
Speaker 3: say in my life, but I had done it before,
Speaker 3: but there's an incredible police presence now, so whereas it
Speaker 3: was previously quite easy to do because we booked out
Speaker 3: opposite the palace, there's a little there's a little square,
Speaker 3: not Parliament Square, just down a little bit in.
Speaker 1: Front of the Queen Elizabeth the second conference Center.
Speaker 3: That's it, that one, so we booked that out. But
Speaker 3: there was huge police presence and lots of lots of
Speaker 3: things happening, and lots of armed people in the way,
Speaker 3: which made it really difficult. But I did manage to
Speaker 3: get it, and there isn't any scaffolding this time, which
Speaker 3: is always nice. We got some call images and then
Speaker 3: I've done fancy stuff in hotels where we released an
Speaker 3: eighty year old vintage port.
Speaker 4: I say we, I didn't. I didn't make it. I'm
Speaker 4: not that old.
Speaker 3: But well, I was with all the journalists photographing them
Speaker 3: sipping port which is so expensive. We had to dish
Speaker 3: out Vira Pippett because like every sip is probably like
Speaker 3: six pounds.
Speaker 4: So yeah, how was it.
Speaker 3: I didn't drink the eighty, but I did drink the
Speaker 3: forty and it was phenomenal, so unbelievably good. It loses
Speaker 3: like the deity flavor you get of Attorney Port, and
Speaker 3: it takes more of a sort of syrupy sweetness, but
Speaker 3: you still get the complexity, but you don't get quite
Speaker 3: the deity flavor, the fruity sort of number.
Speaker 4: And it's so nice, so good.
Speaker 2: Because you're not allowed to mention the brand yet, I'm
Speaker 2: guessing was it the same company that we were drinking
Speaker 2: their port cocktails at the game there?
Speaker 3: No, probably not, No, it was it was Graham's. I
Speaker 3: know the people there, they're all good Graham's Port. If
Speaker 3: anyone's got sixteen hundred quid they want to spend on
Speaker 3: a bottle, you just.
Speaker 1: No short answer notes, I haven't an old Ford focus. Then, actually,
Speaker 1: let's be perfectly honest. The country slide listenership are pretty
Speaker 1: unlikely to be spending sixteen one hundred quid on a
Speaker 1: bottle of port. Well, they're much more likely to spend
Speaker 1: some money on is extra bottles of very cheap gin
Speaker 1: from Aldi, so that the cook called someone like Gardens
Speaker 1: Gardens or Yes or Goblin.
Speaker 3: Cheap what did I buy a cheap test ghost one
Speaker 3: the other day to make my first ever batch of
Speaker 3: slow Gin. So I have three bottles sitting on the
Speaker 3: on the shelf outside. Should I put them outside? Is
Speaker 3: that a good idea? Or should I wring them in?
Speaker 2: I'd keep them room temperature well, somewhere under the sink.
Speaker 2: Isn't bad because you're not fermenting anything. You're just infusing,
Speaker 2: so you just want it to be nice and stable.
Speaker 2: Don't put me so outside's bad.
Speaker 4: I've been turning them every day as well, channeling my
Speaker 4: inner champagne creator wine maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just dissolving that. You're just dissolving and slushing. Really,
Speaker 2: that's what you're doing with the slow gin.
Speaker 3: Oh I thought you just meant in general that does
Speaker 3: feel like what I'm doing most days.
Speaker 2: Well, you're turning every day anyway in life, aren't you.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just every day it's a new job.
Speaker 4: I'm dissolving and slashing.
Speaker 2: That's just getting through your thirties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the physio is going well.
Speaker 4: Time.
Speaker 3: I really liked your supplement chat the other day as well.
Speaker 3: That was in the after show. What was actually quite
Speaker 3: good creating. I'm absolutely for taking quick. Now I might start.
Speaker 3: I might start doing some extra creatine supplements. See if
Speaker 3: it improves cognitive function. It actually makes sense. On the
Speaker 3: next podcast, you know what's happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's over the overdosed on creating. I'm still not
Speaker 1: taking creating, but I am untill continuing with my vitamin
Speaker 1: D supplement, so I might need to get that too. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's I think it's certainly something
Speaker 1: that to try and make my poor old skin, which
Speaker 1: is now already looking like I've been attacked by well
Speaker 1: a hedge. Funny enough, because I haven't been attacked by
Speaker 1: hedge is looking a bit and what's it? So? Have
Speaker 1: you done anything else other than sworn about with ghastly politicians,
Speaker 1: smart girning from buses and drinking port. Have you done
Speaker 1: anything that doesn't involve the ghastliest people in society? We've
Speaker 1: done some night anything with nice people. Callum.
Speaker 3: I went out with with your your biggest fans at
Speaker 3: the weekend, so the Watchers, not just Simon Garno. I
Speaker 3: went out with the Eastern County mink Howns. Obviously know
Speaker 3: well because you covered them see shooting Times.
Speaker 1: You covered them for shooting Times and Scribe Hand. Yes,
Speaker 1: I revisited. Yes, was it the same article? Though, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was quite different because this time the
Speaker 1: ghastly antes came out with us when we for this
Speaker 1: for the scribe hand things.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how did you arrange that? How did your
Speaker 2: book them in?
Speaker 1: Well? You know, I not the first at this.
Speaker 4: Were you at that one?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I do know.
Speaker 3: I went to the one before, which was I do.
Speaker 1: Not know how the anties found out where they were? Well,
Speaker 1: I do know. Actually I think it's drones. I think
Speaker 1: what they do because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if you think about mink howns, well, yes, we ought
Speaker 1: to explain about how it works because these aren'tline mink
Speaker 1: hous I have been mink hunting since I was a
Speaker 1: small child. I would say that my love of hunting,
Speaker 1: but mink hunting was brilliant because the most the galitarian
Speaker 1: thing ever, it followed in the footsteps of otter hunting. Right.
Speaker 1: You had a pack of hounds which were either foxhounds
Speaker 1: that were drafted from foxhound packs and they got a
Speaker 1: bit old and slow, or they had otter hounds, which
Speaker 1: is these great, big, shaggy things that looked like sort
Speaker 1: of a foxhound has decided to put on an astra
Speaker 1: can coat or otherwise. They were a cross between the two.
Speaker 1: And you would have about fifteen couple of hounds and
Speaker 1: you would descend into the water and you would hunt
Speaker 1: the drag of a mink and it was all jolly
Speaker 1: good fun and you would sometimes kill mink, you sometimes didn't,
Speaker 1: but it was sort of done less along the style
Speaker 1: of what the old otter hunting used to do. And
Speaker 1: if anyone's ever read Tark of the Otter you will
Speaker 1: know what sort of went on with otter hunting. Well,
Speaker 1: of course that was banned as part of Blair's attack
Speaker 1: on right thinking people. And to try and do trail
Speaker 1: hunting with mink counts on water is basically a non starter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work. So the Eastern County's mink hunts, the
Speaker 1: chaps you went with, have got a far better way
Speaker 1: of doing it. And callum you explain how the Eastern
Speaker 1: Counties mink hunt, not mink Houns mink hunt do it.
Speaker 3: So the rules are you're not allowed multiple hounds, so
Speaker 3: you can have a two hound and a dog, so
Speaker 3: you can't have well, I don't know could they could
Speaker 3: they have to. I don't know, you allow you're allowed
Speaker 3: to dogs.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to have two dogs to flush to the gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the rule.
Speaker 3: So you get So we've got a little beagle called
Speaker 3: Miles and a black lab called Bramble and essentially they
Speaker 3: have this have a very good lunch. It's a proper spread.
Speaker 3: It's there's quite a lot of pageantry to it, which
Speaker 3: as a as a sort of towny from Essex, it
Speaker 3: does feel a bit strange because it's not an environment
Speaker 3: I've ever seen myself in ever before. At one point
Speaker 3: a man poured a monocle from his waistcoat to to
Speaker 3: look at a sort of taxidermy otter tail that was
Speaker 3: recently purchased at auction, So it was it's just strange
Speaker 3: for me. There's there's no judge in that.
Speaker 4: It's just a very.
Speaker 3: It's a culture shock that I'm not really used to.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever seen a monocle outside of Monopoly.
Speaker 2: Take place in a flat roof pup. Would you have
Speaker 2: been more comfortable or if it was like in a
Speaker 2: lock up or something.
Speaker 3: I mean, it feels like something that could have happened
Speaker 3: at an after party that where someone's brought out the
Speaker 3: sort of the regal dress or something. And then and
Speaker 3: then yeah, but anyway, I digress. These guys they have
Speaker 3: a fantastic lunch and then they get into a freezing
Speaker 3: cold creek or stream or river and they take the
Speaker 3: dog and the beagle and the well, I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: I take a beagle and bramble. And then two of
Speaker 3: them walk up while others are on the bank and
Speaker 3: they just looking for signs of mink under trees. And
Speaker 3: when we went, you found coot chicks in one of
Speaker 3: their holes, didn't you, coot chicks? And you pulled out
Speaker 3: a very fresh coot chick. There this mink had just killed,
Speaker 3: hid into its hole and just left it there. Mink
Speaker 3: couldn't even eat.
Speaker 1: The mink stash up food there. They sort of holed
Speaker 1: it away. And sometime, I mean I remember once back
Speaker 1: in the old days, I was mink hunting up in
Speaker 1: a tree is just founding this stack of this mink
Speaker 1: had been absolutely devastating a trout farm, and going in
Speaker 1: this tree, it was stacked one upon one upon one
Speaker 1: upon one of a great big concertina of about a
Speaker 1: pound weight trout or just stacked up where it had
Speaker 1: taken them back to its its little den and had
Speaker 1: stacked them up, which I assume they'd go back at
Speaker 1: some point and go and eat them. But I mean,
Speaker 1: they're ridiculously voracious things. And the wonderful thing about the
Speaker 1: Eastern Counti's mink hunt is because what they do is
Speaker 1: you've described, is they hunt within the law one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: What the masters decided to do is rather than this
Speaker 1: rather sad pastiche of sort of trail hunting, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: so what can we do. We can use two dogs
Speaker 1: and we've got to flush the quarry to a gun
Speaker 1: that stays within the law. And they also looked at
Speaker 1: its experienced mink hunters under the old way we used
Speaker 1: to do it, they realized actually probably having a lot
Speaker 1: of hounds on the water wasn't actually that effective in
Speaker 1: killing mink, and they thought, well, what's our job. Well,
Speaker 1: primarily is we've got to kill this bliming thing, which
Speaker 1: is a voracious non native predator. And one of a
Speaker 1: lot of the places where they hunt, they are bits
Speaker 1: of water where they have I that there's no one
Speaker 1: trapping mink because it's too close to habitation to put
Speaker 1: a mink raft out to trap them, or it's a
Speaker 1: place where mink are pretty savvy. If you don't catch
Speaker 1: them first time they go nap, I ain't going to
Speaker 1: go near that cage anymore. So you know, once bitten
Speaker 1: twice ship if they get away, they so they're very,
Speaker 1: very very effective. And because they're only using one mute
Speaker 1: to beagle never never so much as speaks miles and
Speaker 1: a labrador, it's pretty low impact. I mean, as it goes.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember I wrote a piece about it,
Speaker 1: and that when Twitter still had all the mouth breathers
Speaker 1: still in there before they went off with Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: who were going, oh yeah, but what about the disturbance. Okay, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're the same lot who were talking about disturbance
Speaker 1: who actually want free access for all to walk ways.
Speaker 1: And if you're not wild swimming, then you're kayaking everywhere,
Speaker 1: so go and get knotted. So they have this system
Speaker 1: where they work down if.
Speaker 4: There were probably no worse than a swan no.
Speaker 1: Sleep. You got two people wading up the river two dogs. Now,
Speaker 1: these dogs are obviously wholly just that they only hunt mink,
Speaker 1: and if they are on a mink then they will
Speaker 1: get it, usually invariably if there were otters on the water,
Speaker 1: then you would either pass over that otter or if
Speaker 1: it flushed in front of them, they go, okay, there's
Speaker 1: an otter there. Pull these two dogs out and jobs
Speaker 1: are good. And if they then flush this mink, then
Speaker 1: the huntsman blows a little toot on his horn and
Speaker 1: he gets his gun out of his slim and he
Speaker 1: goes bang and shoots his mink dead. And they are
Speaker 1: very very effective at it in places where usually it
Speaker 1: would be incredibly difficult to kill mink. So there is
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say, and if I was looking
Speaker 1: at this completely dispassionately and I'm okay, cards on the table,
Speaker 1: they're very kindly gave me the hunt tie. They liked
Speaker 1: what I'd written about various things, and so they gave
Speaker 1: me the hunt tie. So I would say, obviously they
Speaker 1: are pals of mine. But if I looked at this
Speaker 1: utterly dispassionately, I would say, it is without shadow of doubt,
Speaker 1: the most effective form of mink control in the environments
Speaker 1: where they are going that you could possibly have. And
Speaker 1: one less mink is a good day at the office
Speaker 1: for wildlife because they are a voracious predator and the
Speaker 1: way that they do. It is within the law, but
Speaker 1: the only downside is the outfits that they wear, and
Speaker 1: that enrages people. Now, for me, that makes me laugh
Speaker 1: like a drain, because basically, the only thing that you
Speaker 1: hate is the fact that these chaps are wearing bowler
Speaker 1: hats and bright waistcoats and ties and breeches and funny
Speaker 1: colored socks, and that they're swimming around in rivers doing
Speaker 1: this daft thing. That's the only thing you've actually hating
Speaker 1: is that you're hating them. You're not hating the practice
Speaker 1: that they're doing, which can only be good, can't.
Speaker 3: It's It's funny, isn't it, because it I think it's
Speaker 3: because of the emotional side of what fox hunting was
Speaker 3: and what people think it is. And probably I don't know.
Speaker 3: I wasn't really I wasn't around to see any of
Speaker 3: this stuff. But I can imagine some fox hunting stuff was.
Speaker 3: I mean, it got bad, so I can't imagine it
Speaker 3: was very humane and all perfect practice a lot like
Speaker 3: you know, some shooting isn't great practice. Big bird days
Speaker 3: and things that happened, just some of it's terrible, and
Speaker 3: there's I'm not pro fox hunting in any way, shape
Speaker 3: or form. But when you it would be easy to
Speaker 3: take that frame of mind apply it to those guys
Speaker 3: and then go, oh, they're just blood thirsty. But actually
Speaker 3: they're in that river they covered maybe every time I've been,
Speaker 3: they've covered like two hundred yards before they've killed a mink.
Speaker 3: Done something good for that for that little area. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is this is a time where there's more
Speaker 3: trapping of mink than ever and apparently we're getting on
Speaker 3: top of them. But from the evidence that I see
Speaker 3: in these little these little places that they go to,
Speaker 3: there's still plenty of them. So taking a mink out
Speaker 3: is a really good thing. There'll be more coot chicks,
Speaker 3: there'll be more bird life, they'll be more crayfish, there'll
Speaker 3: be more frog life. Everything will benefit from not having
Speaker 3: an invasive species that is a apex predator and nothing
Speaker 3: else gets them.
Speaker 4: So it's really hard not.
Speaker 3: To use the fox hunting framework to say their blood thirsty,
Speaker 3: they dress up in silly outfits, they just want to
Speaker 3: kill something, because that's absolutely not the case.
Speaker 4: And it's.
Speaker 3: It's not conflicting for me because I went to it
Speaker 3: with an open mind, and it's I find it fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons I still photograph shooting is
Speaker 3: because I just find it so fascinating to question the
Speaker 3: morality of all of it and to be with these
Speaker 3: people and see what makes them tick and stuff. And yeah,
Speaker 3: my verdict is I like them.
Speaker 2: Prido where you at talk to me, I was listening
Speaker 2: along to that. It was quite nice to be a
Speaker 2: sort of an audience in my own podcast. So we
Speaker 2: don't have anything like that over here. The only thing
Speaker 2: we've got is still what is not sort of trail
Speaker 2: hunting that's not or fox hunting that's trail you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not sure what we're up to
Speaker 2: with a local pack here. But this thing about dressing
Speaker 2: up silly and things like that, it's all about I
Speaker 2: think it's all about your your point of view and
Speaker 2: how you view yourself first and then how you view
Speaker 2: the people that you're either ridiculing, your criticizing or whatever.
Speaker 2: So the if the the well what they called.
Speaker 1: The mink Eastern Counties, mink.
Speaker 2: Eastern Counties, mink mink hunts, mink hunt So if they
Speaker 2: were wearing waders and fleeces and did everything else the same,
Speaker 2: I don't think they would get much. It wouldn't be okay.
Speaker 2: Then in terms of the anties and things like that,
Speaker 2: people would still hate them. It's just that they'd have
Speaker 2: a different they have to find a different attack vector.
Speaker 2: There's something about traditional cultural dress which I don't think
Speaker 2: we do very well in the UK because anything that
Speaker 2: isn't the average of an urban population, it's now seen
Speaker 2: as weird. You know, if you dress up in whereas
Speaker 2: you can't invert that and say, God, have you seen
Speaker 2: how those people in Brixton dress weird?
Speaker 4: Isn't that? My friend said? Everybody dresses up for events.
Speaker 3: Like you wouldn't go if you were going out on
Speaker 3: a Friday night, you wouldn't. You wouldn't be wearing your
Speaker 3: crocs in your sweatpants.
Speaker 4: Would you.
Speaker 2: Clearly you've never been on the town with me.
Speaker 3: Genuinely, I knew I was going to be in waders,
Speaker 3: so I turned up to the to the mink hunt
Speaker 3: with my sports crocs on timeound.
Speaker 1: Me with your with your little.
Speaker 2: Exactly all right, let's drop in Richard's difficult political statement
Speaker 2: of the week politically difficult statement of the week. What
Speaker 2: if you were to go to somewhere in Africa, and
Speaker 2: look at people there who are doing a hunt. It's
Speaker 2: just sort of the indigenous people of somewhere doing a hunt,
Speaker 2: managing their population of wildlife in the way they see fit,
Speaker 2: and they chose to dress in a certain way. What
Speaker 2: would be the standpoint where you could say, well, the
Speaker 2: way they dress is terrible, or the way they dress
Speaker 2: is weird or fuddy or whatever. Why are they dressing
Speaker 2: like that to do this thing? Because you do see
Speaker 2: that with indigenous where you've got indigenous cultures within a
Speaker 2: country who overlap into the modern, often Western influenced, post
Speaker 2: colonial world. So it might work in the city and
Speaker 2: then come back to rural areas for traditional hunting at
Speaker 2: different times, or come back to the family or whatever.
Speaker 2: You see that in Australia and New Zealand as well,
Speaker 2: and even in North America where've got First Nations and
Speaker 2: Native Americans traditional there's different rules for hunting for Native
Speaker 2: Americans in a lot in a lot of the US states,
Speaker 2: like they can use lights and thermal optics and stuff
Speaker 2: like that because they exist in subsistence hunting versus sort
Speaker 2: of hunting for sports. So why do we not do
Speaker 2: that in the UK? Why don't we say well, this
Speaker 2: is an indigenous activity. Why do we you know? This?
Speaker 2: Is this style address and trade can be traced backed
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years, say you bowler hats and waistcoats,
Speaker 2: So that would be an interesting defense to make, particularly
Speaker 2: on lots of these things. Is is this and actually
Speaker 2: an indigenous practice that is being undertaken by indigenous people.
Speaker 2: It's just because we're often the colonizers and the indigenous
Speaker 2: people at the same time, it loops back on itself.
Speaker 1: Do you know. One of the interesting things when Patrick
Speaker 1: Galbraith wrote his latest book, Uncommon Ground, one of the
Speaker 1: things that the Right to Rome crew got most irate
Speaker 1: about was because he highlighted a point that a master
Speaker 1: of a pack of trail hounds in Surrey was winging
Speaker 1: about the fact that these rich guys would leave London
Speaker 1: and they would go and buy one hundred acre little
Speaker 1: patch of heaven for them, you know, a nice house
Speaker 1: and one hundred acre block that you had once upon
Speaker 1: a time being a farm, and then they would not
Speaker 1: let the hunt over their land anymore. And this master
Speaker 1: was saying, you know, we are being excluded from the
Speaker 1: land by these incomers. And Patrick was drawing the analogy
Speaker 1: between how that this is happening to hunting to people
Speaker 1: who go fox hunting, a traditional pastime in the UK.
Speaker 1: And he was saying, well, what's the difference then, Right
Speaker 1: to Rome gang, when you're saying someone goes and buys
Speaker 1: an estate and says I'm not going to let you
Speaker 1: walk over over my land. And they hated that with
Speaker 1: a passion. And one of the things that I see
Speaker 1: that I remember when I wrote a piece about the
Speaker 1: Eastern Counties income for the Shooting Times and a lot
Speaker 1: of the crew who would have been very pro the
Speaker 1: Right to Rome movement, they had a real nickers in
Speaker 1: a twist about what the guy's were wearing and about
Speaker 1: what we were doing, and about how we were on
Speaker 1: the river and disturbance and whatnot. And it was so
Speaker 1: amusing because a we've already talked about the disturbance thing,
Speaker 1: but also this is the same bunch Right to Rome
Speaker 1: who when they went on their protest against Alexander Darnell,
Speaker 1: that guy who's brought up Great Sway of Dartmoor and
Speaker 1: said you can't come while camping on there anymore. Their
Speaker 1: means of protest was that they dressed up in a
Speaker 1: pastiche of what they said was traditional dressed, and they
Speaker 1: had some effigy which they said was called this ancient spirit,
Speaker 1: local spirit called Kruak or something like that. And we're
Speaker 1: evoking the spirit of Kruak for the people of Dartmore.
Speaker 1: And I thought, hold on a second, So you can
Speaker 1: dress up like you're extras from Robin of Sherwood and
Speaker 1: you think this is fine, But you're getting all your
Speaker 1: nickers in a twist when some people want to go
Speaker 1: and wear a uniform of a hunt that was formed
Speaker 1: in I don't know, nineteen hundred or eighteen something or other. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's all they're doing. They're wearing a historic uniform.
Speaker 1: They are wearing the same uniform that the old Eastern
Speaker 1: County's otter hounds you to wear back in the day.
Speaker 1: And so I think it highlights the perfect oxymoronic, two
Speaker 1: faced nonsense that so many of these people who like
Speaker 1: to kick up their heels about hunting and shooting and
Speaker 1: all they've got to wear all work for. Do you
Speaker 1: know that doesn't matter? That really doesn't matter to me.
Speaker 1: I can honestly say the Eastern Counties mink hunt do
Speaker 1: everything for the right reasons. The fact that they want
Speaker 1: to dress like peacocks and have a big blowout in
Speaker 1: a sort of Edwardian high tea. Well that hardly makes
Speaker 1: some bloody pole pots, does it. So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: well done them, And I'm proud to wear their tie.
Speaker 1: And I have to say I do wear the Eastern
Speaker 1: Counties Mink Hunt tie on occasions when I have to
Speaker 1: dress up a bit smart, and I know that there
Speaker 1: are going to be oursholes in the room and are
Speaker 1: thinking they don't know what this tie is unwearing, but
Speaker 1: I do. And it's tie version of sticking a middle
Speaker 1: finger up. If ties could talk, it would be a
Speaker 1: rude one.
Speaker 2: It's a semi aquatic Masons then, yes, exactly right. Okay, callum,
Speaker 2: what's your favorite tree? I'm just moving forward. I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to get grind ahead. And you have the episode
Speaker 2: plan he enacted somehow in real life.
Speaker 1: Five minutes to talk about our favorite tree?
Speaker 2: Hazel, go right?
Speaker 4: Is it quick fire around?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Go okay, Richard, what's your favorite tree? A?
Speaker 1: Is it oak? And oak in particular? I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what we haven't got. I have can't tell you about
Speaker 1: it because very very briefly, because my favorite trees are
Speaker 1: oaks at.
Speaker 3: West You can't pick more than one.
Speaker 1: It's the same species, but it just happens to be
Speaker 1: at Westall and they're the old bang hang on which
Speaker 1: which and of oak are we talking about here? Proper
Speaker 1: good English oaks? None coming over here? Take now, Canapees No,
Speaker 1: the English oaks at Westhorpe Hall originally was Westhorpe is
Speaker 1: the next village to me in mid Suffolk. It's now
Speaker 1: the home of the Barkers who farm there, and they've
Speaker 1: got these fantastic old oaks which were I would have
Speaker 1: thought probably pre when actually the hall was built, but
Speaker 1: it was the home of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
Speaker 1: He married Mary Tudor, who was Henry the Yight's sister.
Speaker 1: And these boundary marker oaks are all still there and
Speaker 1: they mark where the old rides used to be of
Speaker 1: when it was a deer park, so that Charles Brandon
Speaker 1: and Mary Tudor, the former Queen of France, used to
Speaker 1: go hunting deer. And there are oaks still there that
Speaker 1: marked where each keeper had their beat, and they're still there.
Speaker 1: They're all gnarl they're all wonderful. They're ancient and I
Speaker 1: think every time I walk underneath them, I think, my god,
Speaker 1: I am laying aheage, or I'm walking underneath my dogs
Speaker 1: under a tree where Mary Tudor, former Queen of France
Speaker 1: once walks to history. Beneath my feet and over my head,
Speaker 1: there might ask my favorite tree.
Speaker 3: Now, now you've given me a favorite tree like that,
Speaker 3: I've just written something down that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 4: But now do you say it?
Speaker 3: There's actually there's a tree that I go past when
Speaker 3: I walk the dog every single day, And at first
Speaker 3: I just thought it was a tree, and then I
Speaker 3: noticed that it's actually two trees that have grown together perfectly,
Speaker 3: and it is an oak I've grown together perfectly to
Speaker 3: form like a single tree. And every time I look
Speaker 3: at it, I just sort of think, isn't that remarkable
Speaker 3: that they didn't split off? They just grew into one
Speaker 3: one what looks like a tree, but with two trunks,
Speaker 3: And it's just really cool thing to look at. And
Speaker 3: often the sun rises and sets behind it, depending on
Speaker 3: which way you walk, and I look at that and
Speaker 3: I think that nice.
Speaker 4: Two trees just growing together. One's taken the left side,
Speaker 4: one's taken the right side. No arguments there, And yeah,
Speaker 4: it's an absolutely beaute. I'm going to take a picture
Speaker 4: of it. I'll put it in the in the Patreon chat,
Speaker 4: which you can get access to if you go to
Speaker 4: ww dot country slide dot cod at uk slash.
Speaker 2: He's doing his own and Reid now, wasn't that.
Speaker 3: Brilliant But just three pounds a month one day, Richard
Speaker 3: Nigas can get proper internet and Richard pretty cant.
Speaker 4: What do you want turkey teeth.
Speaker 1: Heating the top.
Speaker 3: He can get a monoculture on his head.
Speaker 4: The non monoculture for your hair transplant.
Speaker 2: Just in case, I'm going to ignore Callum and just
Speaker 2: listen to Richard. My favorite tree is a black poplar.
Speaker 2: It's one particular one. So it's it's on the edge
Speaker 2: of a woodland that we manage. And we've been to
Speaker 2: look at the woodland before the owners bought it, and
Speaker 2: they asked us to go and have a look at
Speaker 2: this one place and it was this particularly boggy bit
Speaker 2: of wet woodland about nine acres and there's a man
Speaker 2: acre of meadow and we it was one of those
Speaker 2: ones that goes up on woodlands for sale and the
Speaker 2: the you know, and there were lots of people looking
Speaker 2: around the wood at the same on the same day,
Speaker 2: because I think you had about three days to look
Speaker 2: at it before you put your bid in. And well
Speaker 2: when we went around, I just spent the whole time
Speaker 2: going up to the other people in the wood and
Speaker 2: was going court BlimE, Yeah, you can see where the
Speaker 2: floodwater has come up to here. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: And they're said, is is it a bit damp or
Speaker 2: you're obviously not a local. No, no floodwaters. Basically it's
Speaker 2: tidal this woodland. But actually it wasn't. It just needed
Speaker 2: a bit of drainage work. So we didn't notice during
Speaker 2: any of that until they bought it and they were
Speaker 2: actually looking around the boundaries properly. That buried in the
Speaker 2: hedge on the roadside is this huge black poplar male
Speaker 2: or female. So this is a male that put a
Speaker 2: pin in that we're coming back to that. This the
Speaker 2: trunk is about seven eight feet in diameter, and not
Speaker 2: exaggerating is that there's a long walk around it. It's
Speaker 2: not that tall. The top is obviously snapped out in
Speaker 2: a storm at some point, but the bottom is huge.
Speaker 2: It's a really really chonky tree. So we laid the
Speaker 2: hedge in front of it, and now it's getting good
Speaker 2: light on it. It's got all this epicormic growth, all
Speaker 2: this sort of fresh shoots coming out the side of
Speaker 2: it on the sunwood side, but you can see all
Speaker 2: the scars of life on it, so it's got all that.
Speaker 2: You can see a mark where ivy has been growing
Speaker 2: up on it and then pulled off because the bark's
Speaker 2: a different shape. You can see where a few branches
Speaker 2: overhanging the road have been knocked off, probably by sort
Speaker 2: of tractors or big wagons in the middle of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. And this this tree, I mean, when it's
Speaker 2: inevitably going to come down at some point, and if
Speaker 2: it's within my lifetime, I'm going to love to find
Speaker 2: out how old it is. Because the up just up
Speaker 2: the road from it is this ancient bridge as well,
Speaker 2: and I'm working out was the bridge built first, and
Speaker 2: was was the was the popular tree there when the
Speaker 2: bridge was built. And this has sort of led to
Speaker 2: this wide discussion now of many other black poplars are
Speaker 2: in the valley because when we had the big storms
Speaker 2: this winter, a couple of the farmers got in touch
Speaker 2: and said, oh, yeah, we've got this black poplar, can
Speaker 2: you come and deal with that? And they find out
Speaker 2: this huge black poplar in the field that no one
Speaker 2: ever goes to because it's in a bit of a
Speaker 2: boggy land, so there's no footpaths, no one goes past it.
Speaker 2: There's another ancient poplar that's fallen down, and there's another
Speaker 2: one three fields away in another one, and it turns
Speaker 2: out we're a bit of a hotbed for black poplars.
Speaker 2: The problem is that they're all male. So we got
Speaker 2: in touch with the county Biodiversity officer earlier this year
Speaker 2: and he has been experimenting on his secret tree nursery,
Speaker 2: or is now a public one, but the secret tree
Speaker 2: nursery had he had as a project. He was hand
Speaker 2: pollinating black poplars using the flowers he'd got from one,
Speaker 2: and then was sending them off for genetic purity testing
Speaker 2: to find out that they were they were pure black poplars,
Speaker 2: not hybrids. And now we will have on the edge
Speaker 2: of that woodland, we'll have a female black poplar that
Speaker 2: we have possession of now and that's going to get
Speaker 2: planted out after the winter. Want to make sure that
Speaker 2: it's not going to flood and there's no more stupid
Speaker 2: frosts or anything. So right at the end of the
Speaker 2: winter that's going in, but we will hopefully have a
Speaker 2: female black poplar slowly coming up alongside the male, so
Speaker 2: we're sort of restoring what was there. But I just
Speaker 2: love a bit like yours. I love of the idea
Speaker 2: of this tree has seen so much in this one place,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's just the I think that's why
Speaker 2: I love trees, because they are sentinel. Like it's like
Speaker 2: looking at an ancient building, but it's living and growing,
Speaker 2: and it's a building that's changing every year and doing
Speaker 2: its own thing. And you can help it just by
Speaker 2: clearing the canopy around it or not trampling on it
Speaker 2: and not nailing fences to it and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just you just got to love the the
Speaker 3: old the old trees. And when you sit there and think,
Speaker 3: you know something, it's like like five six hundred years
Speaker 3: old and stuff. You look at these things and you think,
Speaker 3: well that what was history like then? Like some of
Speaker 3: this stuff was not even here, Like this whole landscape
Speaker 3: looked completely different, and it's just stood there in the
Speaker 3: same place and everything around it has changed, and it's
Speaker 3: just yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Well, there's there's one not there's one in the Comedy Valley,
Speaker 2: the Hangurnu You, which is thought to be between like
Speaker 2: four and five thousand years old.
Speaker 3: I cannot recommend it enough. Go to a Burly house
Speaker 3: and do the ancient tree walk. There's trees outside there
Speaker 3: where they tried to bomb Burley House but they missed
Speaker 3: and they hit they hit a couple of top of
Speaker 3: the trees I think, and they're still shrapped from the
Speaker 3: bomb that missed.
Speaker 4: In the trunk of the tree.
Speaker 3: There's also a tree outside that was granted by a
Speaker 3: variety of queens and even a king, and you can
Speaker 3: see those trees.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: King Edwards one Calonder's history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do in tree history on the fly.
Speaker 3: And they've also got so there's a guy called Peter
Speaker 3: Glassie who is a chair of the Ancient Ancient Woodland
Speaker 3: Society or Ancient Tree Society, Ancient Tree Society, I believe,
Speaker 3: and he he's an absolute legend, and he'll show you
Speaker 3: all these cool trees and you go around and you
Speaker 3: have a look at all these different bits and it
Speaker 3: is fascinating.
Speaker 4: Worth a trip out.
Speaker 2: Well, this has given me an idea for the after show,
Speaker 2: So I think we'll drift off and go and talk
Speaker 2: about that, which you'll be able to access if you're
Speaker 2: not a patron by going to country Slide dot co
Speaker 2: dot UK, forward slash Support, and you're going to hear
Speaker 2: the other sort of politically difficult things I'm going to
Speaker 2: say over there, because it's not the sort of thing
Speaker 2: we want out there in public. You know, this is
Speaker 2: sort of drawing room talk. Everyone else has gone to
Speaker 2: bed and there's just three of you sat by the
Speaker 2: fire smoking cigars. That's that's basically what we're getting next.
Speaker 1: Right bye everyone, Thank you, Bye,