Weather was a bit rum today. Shame really, I'd planned a shooting party.

The beaters were all arranged, the guns prepared, the hampers loaded. The weather was so foul that Memsahib said that it was unfair on the staff to expect them to go out in such conditions and the wind would make it impossible to hit the birds, so it would be a waste. She made sense - particularly after the problems at the hatchery earlier in the year.

I paid off the beaters with a few shillings and sent them home. There were mutterings of discontent, but I certainly wasn't going to pay them for not beating!

Gussie, Quentin, Kipper and the chums came to the house and we broke open the hampers early and scoffed our way through cook's goodies and several fine bottles of port. (That reminds me, I still haven't found any of the USB Port).