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Preface

In 1946 the as over and I was thirty years old I ca in my mother’s house First ere in Great Missenden, and later we h Street in Old Aha hills and beech-woods and s but short stories at that time and I wrote them slowly and carefully at my own pace In this way I would complete three or so else I was totally preoccupied with the short story, and I would sell the first serial rights of each one when it was finished either to the New Yorker or to soazine like Colliers or the Saturday Evening Post Then the second serial rights would go to h stories to make a book, a book it would be

It was a pleasant leisurely life entailing about four hours work a day, seven days a week I enjoyed it and I now realise how fortunate I was in being able to come up with a new plot whenever I needed one This routine of four hours a day and never anyaround with other things Thisaround very soon took on a particular shape because I e called Claud Claud was married with two sy flat in Old Amersham He worked behind the counter in a butcher’s shop in that town and he was not in the least interested in writing In fact he had difficulty in co a sentence of s in common

We both had a passion for gareyhounds As well as that, we shared a love of trying to acquire so for it By this I don’t arden thievery We would never have robbed a house or stolen a bicycle Ours was the sporting type of stealing It was poaching pheasants or tickling trout or nicking a few plums from a farmer’s orchard These are practices that are condoned by the right people in the countryside There is a delicious eleood deal of skill is required

Claud was an acknowledged expert on suchHis knowledge of the habits of wild animals, be they rats or pheasants or stoats or rabbits or hares, was very great, and he was at his happiest when he was out in the woods in the dead of night Poaching pheasants and tickling trout and going to the flapping-tracks: these were the three things that absorbed and thrilled us most of all

Flapping-tracks are unlicensed greyhound race-s chase a stuffed white rabbit which is pulled along on a cord by athe pedals of an upturned bicycle with his hands These ypsies and spivs and all s to race Shady bookreat deal of betting goes on This sort of thing was made for abefore I was buying and breeding -tracks Claud and I would train thes housed in kennels just outside Aether In spite of the fun of poaching pheasants, I think we probably had the et a winner at the flapping-track than we had with anything else

The stories in this book all grew out of my experiences with Claud They ritten at the ti theia and with vivid o

RD 1989

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

My cow started bulling at dawn and the noise can drive you crazy if the cowshed is right under yourSo I got dressed early and phoned Claud at the filling-station to ask if he’d give me a hand to lead her down the steep hill and across the road over to Rummins’s farm to have her serviced by Rummins’s famous bull

Claud arrived five minutes later and we tied a rope around the cow’s neck and set off down the lane on this cool Septees on

either side of the lane and the hazel bushes had clusters of big ripe nuts all over them