Mary meeting the hounds!

There was a hunt meet ( they need to be called trail meets nowadays really ... ) at the farm today. Mary and I wandered about taking a few photos, tho it's not easy with a two yr old in your arms! Once her mum had done handing out sausage rolls, cake and port to those in attendance, I handed Mary to her for a while and was able to get a few snaps of them with the hounds. Mary wasn't too keen on them washing her face, but they were quite insistent!!

Most of my day has been spent playing with Mary or amusing Alex, so it's been a pretty good day for me!

The only unpleasant bit was the anti-hunt protesters. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, personally I think there are bigger causes to fight but they require more commitment and personal sacrifice so aren't so attractive ... Anyway, it's one thing to demonstrate and another to turn to physical violence. A hunt meet consists of a collaboration of several groups of people, not least the land owners who may or may not give permission to cross their land. Before this meet, one of the hunt masters had 174 people to visit to gain permission. One of the provisos is that any damage that may incurred to any hedges, fences, gates etc will be fixed, and one or two men drive around in a van stocked with all the necessary tools to do this immediately, following the horses around. However, today's fencing guy was coshed over the head with a canister of gas ( 3 times ) and had to be taken to hospital for stitches. The police were called and I don't know why no arrests were made then and there, but two offices then had to spend the rest of the day tagging along with the anti's to make sure the rest of the day passed off peacefully. That was the main reason we didn't follow the horses, we didn't want the kids involved in anything unpleasant.