A spiffing day today. The kinder were off with Nanny and my frau was away at some gymkhana thingy with the riding club. Time to get out the old 16 bore and have at a few birds.

Luckily for me, our little pad in Oxfordshire is smack in the migratory path of some very rare Northern Shovellers and anything Northern in my book is fair game. So it was - "Have at them and don't spare the shot."

What a glorious day. Popping away at anything that moved, a snifter of Sempé armangac to keep off the cold and a piping hot shooters sandwich of rump steak and mushrooms, in a hollowed out loaf.

I have to confess to not being the best of shots. At one point I winged a small blighter, which spiralled earthwards - whoooooo-oo!. My second shot at him sadly fell wild of the mark and I managed to pop out one eye of our pointer 'Bertrum the Duke', a lovely black lab that has been with us for 5 years now. Well, there's no point having a one eyed gun dog so "Crack!" no more old Duke. Shame really, we were going to stud him with a bitch at the Caruthers's. Oh well - "There's another Caruthers." Bang!.

So there was plenty of duck for today's dinner. My man Borrie is an excellent cook and rustled up something quite special - for a bloody Norwegian.

Hurrah for the countryside, hurrah I say.

Of course this is all a fantasy. I took Eve on a balance bike and Olias in a rucksack to do the shoppping, while Toni took Isis to gym class in the morning. In the afternoon we went to pick up our pottery from last week (Eve broke hers' about five minutes after we got home) and then I cooked dinner and spent all the evening and night marking (work). Oh for a 100 acres in Oxfordshire and an army of serfs.