Mrs Down's Diary

It's the men that gets the pleasure and the women get the pain. Not in this case, however: our friend's kitchen is so spacious and well thought out that it was actually fun to cook on a four-oven Aga (my dream cooker) and lay out the places for dinner on their huge dining table with their gorgeous china.

There, that's me done drooling, and the meal itself was not nearly so exotic as the setting. Shepherd's pie and apple crumble. And delicious it was too.

As we have been going to the shoot for many years now, John knows the other guests and syndicate members quite well so the evening meal was very sociable.

As most of the men were farmers, talk was mainly agricultural, after the dissection of birds missed, birds shot etc, etc.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette January 30