DIARY
VICKI WOODS Like my neighbour Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton I have lived almost half my life under the haunches of Watership Down and I felt vaguely guilty that I wasn't marching alongside him in my Barbour on Sunday. I could have done with a five-hour hike before nipping into some smart metropolitan eatery for a spot of beef on the bone. Newbury dispatched a chartered train, apparently, and my neighbour the headhunter's wife ran through the various reasons that set the local folk a-marching: `Well, he's a shooting man, of course; Lizzie's very concerned about village schools; there were quite a few people from the tied cottages; Elaine, oh, I think ban- ning green-top milk was the last straw for her. . . . ' But I didn't march with the coun- try people. Because although I live in undoubted rural discomfort out here in the Hampshire/Berkshire borders without streetlamps or public transport, under a dripping thatch, I know I am not in any sense a country person. Twenty years on, I am an exiled townie. Tarmac runs in the veins.
ast Thursday at midnight, I plodded out to my coalhouse in driving rain with both coal scuttles, having forgotten to give the solid-fuel Rayburn its early evening feed of Welsh nuts, and an enormous leath- ery bat left its perch on the wall, hurled itself at the light-fitting and flopped, disori- entated, onto the back of my neck. I did what any feeble Londoner would have done ran flapping and shrieking from the coalhouse like a madwoman, abandoned both coal and scuttles (and with them any hope of a morning bath) and didn't dare return for them until the late afternoon sunshine had moved round to the coal- house door, when I hoped Dracula might be sleeping undisturbed. No countrywoman Would have behaved in this feeble-minded manner. She would have fetched a tennis- racket, backhanded the heinous creature, dispatched it under the heel of her boot and shoved it deep into the compost-bin to rot. She would then have kept stumm about it, unlike me. For one weak, New Labour moment, I thought about ringing up Bas- ingstoke council and telling them there was a bat in the coalhouse. Thank heaven, I resisted. Relighting a cold Rayburn with damp hedge-clippings and the new safety firelighters is a tedious enough way to spend an afternoon when the wind is in the east, without some council batman giving Me Euro-grief about rare wild mammals being disturbed in their chosen habitat. It would have been protected species and ani- mal rights and heavy fines liable, blah, blah, blah. Not to mention banning me from my own coalhouse. ► J till, Monday's papers were heaven to read, especially the Daily Mail's empurpled paragraphs: 'Rugged, tweed-clad ghillies strode through Trafalgar Square', 'Yeoman farmers, their roots deep in the shire earth, carried the red dust of Rotten Row on their boots', 'The marchers' apparel spoke of heath and moorland, wooded valleys, rolling fields and the traditions there enshrined' and so forth. Faced with the inherent con- tradictions in the Countryside Alliance, metropolitan commentators struggled to define the real differences between coun- trymen and townies. Obviously it was easier to stick to fashion commentary than weigh up all the motley grievances about green- field mega-Tescos, Stagecoach bus piracy, locked village schools, Mr Cunningham's attempts to collectivise farming, every Briton's right to eat oxtail and the usual half-truths about fox-hunting being the only humane way to keep the vulpine vermin down. But, if you ask me, the absolute dif- ference between townies and country peo- ple is that country people can kill things swiftly and dispassionately. Country people can wring birds' necks, shoot rabbits, back- hand bats, beat rats to death with the flat side of a spade and strangle moles with bits of wire. (`It's quicker 'em smokin"em out,' my late molecatcher, Mr Appleby, used to assure me as he stuffed another corpse into his bag in front of my fascinated children.) Whenever I hear the sickening bump of a bunny under the wheels on the back road to Kingsclere, I wish like anything that I was a proper countrywoman and could dis- patch it with a sharp blow to the back of the neck, instead of reversing and retracking over the pitiful creature with my teeth grit- ted and my stomach churning until I'm sure it's dead. I'm all for people killing things that want killing, especially when they do it dispassionately. The real reason that fox- hunting is now so vilified is that hunters have allowed their passion for it to be seen too clearly. Aiother thing that stopped me march- ing was that Sunday was my set-aside day for VAT, so I had to spend it gloomily doing the sort of maths homework I hoped I'd never see again after 0-level. Every quarter, I get a green form to sign and a horrible leaflet chucked at my accountant, telling him about increased thresholds and new liabilities. It's a leaflet only an accoun- tant could love, but this quarter's VAT Notes contain the fascinating information that Abyssinian chewing-khat is now standard-rated for VAT. 'In the light of evi- dence suggesting that khat is being increas- ingly used as a stimulant drug, it is now not regarded as a food product,' says the note, `and is properly standard-rated,' which at 17.5 per cent could be very handy for those of us who can't find January's petrol bills. Having forgotten all I ever knew about Abyssinian chewing-khat, I rang the only man I know who might be expected to have chewed any recently. He said he hadn't actually tried it, possibly because he was in the Yemen at the time, and teenage Yeme- nis have a merry habit of mixing their Abyssinian chewing-khat with loaded kalashnikovs, so he felt he needed a clear head in order to hit the floor when the bul- lets were spraying around. But you can still buy it over the counter in Brick Lane if you want to try it for yourself, he said helpfully. It's a form of speed. Vaguely addictive. Mind how you go. I asked my local Cus- toms & Excise officer why he was charging VAT on the sales of what was a pretty heady stimulant drug and could I claim it back. He droned on for ten minutes about certain food items being VATable and oth- ers non-VATable depending on how you held them out for sale. I said I thought there wasn't any VAT on food. 'Food items' liability changes all the time,' he said. 'It's hard to keep up, even for me. Take crisps!' he cried. 'If you're holding them out for sale as animal food, they're zero-rated!' So there's no problem with my claiming back VAT on a couple of pounds of Abyssinian chewing-khat? 'Not at all,' he repeated. Even if I'm as high as a kite? `Not as far as we're concerned.' My accoun- tant said rather stiffly that I could certainly reclaim my 17.5 per cent on Abyssinian chewing-khat so long as it was an expense incurred wholly and exclusively in pursuit of my business. You mean like this Specta- tor piece? I asked, and he said, 'Well, yes.' So it looks as though I'll be marching through the capital after all. I shall leave my roots deep in the shire earth and wear apparel that speaks of heath and moorland, wooded valleys, rolling fields and the tradi- tions there enshrined. But I'll have a hunter's glint in my eye as well. The unspeakable in pursuit of the now VAT- able.
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