On a pleasantly sunny and warm Saturday, 12th June, the Cook’s Guns (the usual mix of seasoned veterans & new faces: The Master David Smith, Father of the Company Keith Powell, John Bennett, Nigel Shepherd, Jo Wood, Paul Budd, his daughter & I), met at Holland & Holland for their now traditional pre-competition practice day. I for one was certainly glad to be able to socialise once again with members of the Company “in person” rather than through the dreaded medium of “Zoom” for the first time in almost a year (in fact thinking about it with the exception of the “family bubble” & work it was my first “real-life” meeting with friends since the previous summer!
It was definitely useful to have a chance to “blow the cobwebs out”, as all of us were rather more rusty than we hoped (although some of us – myself included were rustier than others). This was when the instructors hit us with the bomb-shell announcement that “due to ‘popular demand’ the organisers of the Inter-Livery Shoot had asked for more ‘driven birds’”… With a realisation that almost half the shoot would be the dreaded “high tower pheasant” type presentations that are nigh on impossible for anything but a Royal Navy ship’s “Goalkeeper” airdefence system to hit, we started practicing in earnest!
After a somewhat exhausting (but very informative) morning where many scores (including my own) were somewhat lower than usual, we had the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the restaurant for a cold charcuterie selection before we all went back to our respective homes.
2 weeks later, on Wednesday 23rd June, (at a somewhat less civilised time in the morning… although not as uncivilised as normal due to COVID restrictions), the carefully selected team who had survived the dreaded cull of team captain Paul Budd’s dreaded algorithms met again for the actual competition… Sadly Boris had reneged on his promise that 21st would be “Freedom Day” and an end of “Lockdown and Social Distancing”, however the staff at Holland & Holland had worked tirelessly to make sure that it all ran as smoothly as possible given the ongoing restrictions.
As usual the Cooks fielded 2 teams, A (John Bennett, Jo Wood, Charlotte Kenyon & I), and B (The Master David Smith, Father of the Company Keith Powell, Paul Budd & Nigel Shepherd), and despite the large numbers of driven birds the Cooks managed to get some respectable scores.
The Company’s Top Gun was John Bennett, who at 45 narrowly pipped the Father of the Company (44) to the post (presented with 2 beer bottles in lieu of the normal candle sticks as they hadn’t been returned in time for the competition) whilst this year’s “Clay Preservation Society” award (which now has a beautifully hand crafted trophy thanks to the Father of the Company) was Jo Wood.
As always, huge thanks to Paul Budd for organising everything for the team.
Mark Herbage
