Years ago, every Boxing Day, huntsmen and women would gather outside the local pub in all their finery to drink the finest liquor, before riding off on a hunt over the Waun at the back of my house.
There were few villagers present and this hunt has now gone, with nobody mourning its passing.
I have lived in the countryside (though close to the urban environment in Merthyr) for most of my life : the village of Penparcau near Aberystwyth, in Horseheath then Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire and for the last 32 years in Heolgerrig.
When we hear shooting disturbing the peace on a Sunday, it is Clay Pigeon shooters at the farm over by the forestry. I'd far sooner the clay variety and any real birds, despite the noise pollution!
My own experience of rural life has been largely contrary to the picture created by Labour MP Kate Hoey , the chair of the Countryside Alliance and her predominantly right-wing supporters. It bears out a recent survey that 70% of people in the country are not supportive of fox-hunting.
In Penparcau, there was certainly some fishing going on, but most of the poaching was from fruit trees! Poached pears maybe! In Horseheath, the only form of hunting I encountered was 'rabbiting' , where local lads would follow combine harvesters with sticks and attempt to club to death any rabbits who ran into the open. I joined them one day and and saw more wasps killed than rabbits!
Now in Heolgerrig the hunt has gone and foxes can run free. I have rarely spotted them, but when I have I've been awe-struck by their unique movement and flash of ruddy-brown; following their instincts for hunting over the rough terrain.
It's their world, but it's our choice. And we can choose between destroying beauty or valuing it.
In all the years I've taught I have seldom come across pupils who have taken part in hunts. One girl, however , was very enthusiastic and described vividly to the class how she was 'blooded' in an initiation ceremony, where the fox's brush was smeared across her face after it had been cut off. The class were horrified!
Of course, there are serious problems with the legislation passed under the last Labour Government. There are far too many loopholes which the hunters can readily exploit. If Labour had been truly committed to banning fox-hunting then it would have been party policy and not a free vote where the likes of Hoey can rebel.
What is required is an act outlawing all fox-hunting, in the same way that other brutal so-called 'blood sports' such as badger baiting have been criminalised .
On Boxing Day there were 270 hunts with 91 foxes slaughtered. Most hunts operated legally, but some did not. Did the police try to enforce the law on this? No, they did not!
People can be jailed for first offences after the riots merely for posting messages on Facebook or receiving stolen goods, but there is no way the police are going to take on the forces of the Establishment who regularly snub the law in this way.
Cameron has pledged his desire to repeal the act and for there to be a free vote. He uses the complexity of the law as a pretext.
Hoey's Countryside Alliance talks about 'pride for rural communities' yet this is fundamentally a class question. The majority of hunts are organised for the wealthy by the wealthy; a load of posh toffs showing off, just as the Royal Family do with their tradition of hunting.
Mrs Windsor may be the patron of the RSPCA, but that doesn't stop her family from shooting birds at their Sandringham estate on Boxing Day. What a shame Philip Windsor couldn't join them!
If I were to do a leftie version of Jeremy Clarkson, I'd say we should be hunting them down and not the innocent animals they kill for no other reason than their so-called 'fun'.
If the right-wing Countryside Alliance actually cared about rural matters, then it would address the real problems : the terrible transport services, the poverty, closure of shops and post offices and depopulation of the young especially.
In Cymru, this still has many consequences, as young people leave the countryside for work and affordable housing. The Welsh language dies in these areas as a generation moves away.
In my own village there is the constant threat of opencast mining and the fact that the whole of the Waun could be decimated by the greed for cheap power-station coal.
Those foxes, like so many other wild animals, are a vital contact with the land and whenever we catch glimpses of them it's an insight into a wild world ( think I'm quoting Cat Stevens!) which exists so close to our houses.
Long may that world thrive. Most villagers look out on the Waun or walk over its long grass and reed-clumps and do not want it invaded by hunters on horses, armies of the rich who think the land belongs to them.
The following poem is about the sighting of a fox when I was teaching at Radyr Comp. near Cardiff. Amazingly, I was sitting reading Chaucer's 'Pardoner's Tale' ( in which a fox plays an important part) when I spotted him.
Fox in the School
Out of the staff room window
I see a fox stealthing
along the drive to the school entrance.
I am reading Chaucer
and so wonder, is he ‘daun Russell’,
a figment of my studying?
But he (or she) is so wintery,
so city-brushed with grey,
so unlike any choleric dream,
that I know he’s real
and heading for Reception
as if for an appointment.
I fancy him the guardian
of one of our slyest customers,
but then dismiss the stereotype.
He seems to sense my spying
and runs away, low and fearful
towards a gap in the fence.
I resume my reading, knowing
that fox will not be out-witted,
avoiding, as he did, any crowing man.
There were few villagers present and this hunt has now gone, with nobody mourning its passing.
I have lived in the countryside (though close to the urban environment in Merthyr) for most of my life : the village of Penparcau near Aberystwyth, in Horseheath then Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire and for the last 32 years in Heolgerrig.
When we hear shooting disturbing the peace on a Sunday, it is Clay Pigeon shooters at the farm over by the forestry. I'd far sooner the clay variety and any real birds, despite the noise pollution!
My own experience of rural life has been largely contrary to the picture created by Labour MP Kate Hoey , the chair of the Countryside Alliance and her predominantly right-wing supporters. It bears out a recent survey that 70% of people in the country are not supportive of fox-hunting.
In Penparcau, there was certainly some fishing going on, but most of the poaching was from fruit trees! Poached pears maybe! In Horseheath, the only form of hunting I encountered was 'rabbiting' , where local lads would follow combine harvesters with sticks and attempt to club to death any rabbits who ran into the open. I joined them one day and and saw more wasps killed than rabbits!
Now in Heolgerrig the hunt has gone and foxes can run free. I have rarely spotted them, but when I have I've been awe-struck by their unique movement and flash of ruddy-brown; following their instincts for hunting over the rough terrain.
It's their world, but it's our choice. And we can choose between destroying beauty or valuing it.
In all the years I've taught I have seldom come across pupils who have taken part in hunts. One girl, however , was very enthusiastic and described vividly to the class how she was 'blooded' in an initiation ceremony, where the fox's brush was smeared across her face after it had been cut off. The class were horrified!
Of course, there are serious problems with the legislation passed under the last Labour Government. There are far too many loopholes which the hunters can readily exploit. If Labour had been truly committed to banning fox-hunting then it would have been party policy and not a free vote where the likes of Hoey can rebel.
What is required is an act outlawing all fox-hunting, in the same way that other brutal so-called 'blood sports' such as badger baiting have been criminalised .
On Boxing Day there were 270 hunts with 91 foxes slaughtered. Most hunts operated legally, but some did not. Did the police try to enforce the law on this? No, they did not!
People can be jailed for first offences after the riots merely for posting messages on Facebook or receiving stolen goods, but there is no way the police are going to take on the forces of the Establishment who regularly snub the law in this way.
Cameron has pledged his desire to repeal the act and for there to be a free vote. He uses the complexity of the law as a pretext.
Hoey's Countryside Alliance talks about 'pride for rural communities' yet this is fundamentally a class question. The majority of hunts are organised for the wealthy by the wealthy; a load of posh toffs showing off, just as the Royal Family do with their tradition of hunting.
Mrs Windsor may be the patron of the RSPCA, but that doesn't stop her family from shooting birds at their Sandringham estate on Boxing Day. What a shame Philip Windsor couldn't join them!
If I were to do a leftie version of Jeremy Clarkson, I'd say we should be hunting them down and not the innocent animals they kill for no other reason than their so-called 'fun'.
If the right-wing Countryside Alliance actually cared about rural matters, then it would address the real problems : the terrible transport services, the poverty, closure of shops and post offices and depopulation of the young especially.
In Cymru, this still has many consequences, as young people leave the countryside for work and affordable housing. The Welsh language dies in these areas as a generation moves away.
In my own village there is the constant threat of opencast mining and the fact that the whole of the Waun could be decimated by the greed for cheap power-station coal.
Those foxes, like so many other wild animals, are a vital contact with the land and whenever we catch glimpses of them it's an insight into a wild world ( think I'm quoting Cat Stevens!) which exists so close to our houses.
Long may that world thrive. Most villagers look out on the Waun or walk over its long grass and reed-clumps and do not want it invaded by hunters on horses, armies of the rich who think the land belongs to them.
The following poem is about the sighting of a fox when I was teaching at Radyr Comp. near Cardiff. Amazingly, I was sitting reading Chaucer's 'Pardoner's Tale' ( in which a fox plays an important part) when I spotted him.
Fox in the School
Out of the staff room window
I see a fox stealthing
along the drive to the school entrance.
I am reading Chaucer
and so wonder, is he ‘daun Russell’,
a figment of my studying?
But he (or she) is so wintery,
so city-brushed with grey,
so unlike any choleric dream,
that I know he’s real
and heading for Reception
as if for an appointment.
I fancy him the guardian
of one of our slyest customers,
but then dismiss the stereotype.
He seems to sense my spying
and runs away, low and fearful
towards a gap in the fence.
I resume my reading, knowing
that fox will not be out-witted,
avoiding, as he did, any crowing man.
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