It’s understandable, I suppose, that people perceive us to be a bit heavy in the brow and prone to biting our lips in worry. However, the Red Tuft is here to tell you that this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, we younger royals are the very definition of thrill- seeking revellers with high pain thresholds and a wanderlust that encourages to holiday at least three times a year. In fact, there’s no time or place we don’t look to brighten up with a bit of the Harvey’s Bristol Cream.
For example, I awoke on Boxing Day ready for the first day of Christmas that I knew I would really enjoy. In my excitement, I forwent my usual nicotine gasper beneath the duvet in order to deliver myself to my wardrobe ahead of the day’s big fixture. There my personal valet, Bateman, dressed me in my heavy duty woollens and handed me my cavalryman’s sword. Then, not even pausing to peck the duffer on his cheek, I hammered down the stairs and into the hall in search of adventure. That’s where I found the Old Blazer already wearing his overcoat and selecting his walking stick from his cupboard of a hundred.
‘Ah, Harry,’ said Charles, fingering a six-foot length of gnarled birch with a heavy thumping handle fashioned from the horn of a truculent ram. ‘I thought you weren’t for joining us this morning.’
‘No fear about that, pater,’ I said, grabbing my hunting jacket and placing a deerstalker on my head so it might quell the tuft. I showed him that I was already armed for battle. ‘You know that this is my favourite part of Christmas.’
‘I’m not sure if I should wear this hat,’ said Camilla, suddenly appearing from the side room where I could hear the rest of the family chattering. She was cradling her pipe in her hands and wearing the same large fur hat she’d worn for church the day before. I’d remarked at the time that it made her look like a charging Hussar but she hadn’t appreciated the crack and had glared at me throughout the carol singing.
‘The hat looks great,’ I assured her this time, ‘but you won’t be able to take your pipe.’
‘Can’t I?’ she asked.
‘No you ruddy can’t,’ snapped the Blazer, who takes this annual ceremony seriously. ‘How many times must one tell you, Soapy: they can smell tobacco from a mile away?’
‘Bloody voles,’ said Camilla, sticking her pipe in her back pocket.
Her hostility towards voles is misdirected and proves that she’s still very much an outsider in the family. You see, for as many years as I can remember, it has been one of the Old Blazer’s rituals to spend Boxing Day hunting the voles.
‘One finds that they do an enormous amount of damage in the spring,’ he would explain if you were ever foolish enough to ask him. ‘One must do what one can to eradicate them before they can breed.’
I grant you, it’s an argument I’ve also heard many republicans make but the Old Blazer can prove that voles are a real and present danger to his profits from Dutchy Originals. He’s particularly obsessed with the Sandringham strawberries which go into his jam, or as he calls it, his royal preserve. He even has statistics to back up his case. Not that vole gnawing ratios are the reason the family gets so involved. Just the promise of blood sport is enough to get us all up early on Boxing Day morning.
‘Have a feeling I’m going to break my record today,’ said Prince Philip as he came out to join us. He was already swinging his old polo mallet. Like my grandfather, that mallet hasn’t seen the back of a polo pony in many years but it now gets regular action every Boxing Day when it delivers many voles to their maker.
‘Are we ready,’ cried Aunty Anne, next through the door and armed with a pair of claw hammers. The rest of the family followed, except for my grandmother who has never taken much interest in hunting voles and Uncle Eddie who is also funny about the whole business but funny in a very different way.
‘Won’t any of you listen to reason?’ he shouted from the top of the staircase. He was still wearing his slippers and his Starlight Express sarong. He’s a gentle soul, Eddie, but completely barking when it comes to voles. ‘Don’t you think those voles have as much right as any of us to live and love, sing and dance?’ Even his wife, Sophie, shrugged her shoulders as we all ignored him and streamed towards the front door. ‘Snouts not louts!’ cried Eddie. But like I said: barking…
Once outside, we gathered in the shadow of the house.
‘Okay,’ said the Old Blazer, taking his whistle from a pocket. ‘When I blow the signal, you all have exactly one hour to collect as many voles as possible. Bring them all back here for counting, measuring, and throwing on the bonfire.’
‘And what’s the prize this year, P.C.,’ asked Anne, her cheeks already flushed with excitement. ‘It better not be another copy of that bloody book of yours.’
This was greeted by much laughter. Like the rest of us, she’d received a copy of ‘Harmony’ from the Old Blazer, only, in her case, ‘Harmony’ had quickly been blazing on top of the log fire. In that respect, we’d all agreed that it’s the best book the Old Blazer has written in years.
‘The prize,’ said Charles, leaning on his crooked staff, ‘is so… so… extremely well worth winning this year… The person who brings back the most voles will win… will win…’
He paused for a moment. People think he does it because he’s deep in thought but I know different. It’s the result of one too many cracks across the noggin with a polo stick.
‘Well?’ cried Anne.
‘Er,’ said Charles. ‘The winner will win… Absolutely splendid prize this year… One feels so… so… deeply honoured and in touch with nature just to be giving it away…’
‘On, bladdy hurry up,’ cried Philip, no doubt feeling the chill. ‘What do we win?’
‘Kent,’ said Charles.
‘Bloody hell!’ cried Anne who’s been after another home county to add to her small collection of Berkshire and Surrey. ‘Well, let’s get cracking, shall we?’
(You might not know much about this arrangement we have inside The Firm but we often indulge in a little horse trading of the English counties. It means very little, of course, to the people who live in places like Lancashire and Dorset but we enjoy it as some might enjoy playing Monopoly or playing poker with the global economy. For instance, I own most of the North East and half of Yorkshire but I’d swap the lot for Essex, which I’ve coveted for many years but my brother won’t give up.)
With the prize decided and the terms of victory explained, the Old Blazer raised his whistle to his lips and gave a mighty blow that inflated his cheeks and produced a thin rattle inside the whistle.
And with that, we were off!
I stuck with Philip who immediately started off across the West Lawns. I hunt with him not just because I enjoy hearing his ribald tales but because he knows every inch of the Sandringham estate and he has a natural ability to smell voles from a distance.
‘Ah,’ said he, his leathering brow lowered as he sniffed the cold morning air. ‘There are voles around here, Harry, my boy!’ He led me into the woods and sure enough, we were soon following vole tracks in the snow. ‘Reminds me of the Far East,’ he said as he examined the undergrowth. ‘The Imperial Japanese Army loved to hide in bushes. You couldn’t unbuckle your periscope behind a bush without some little gizzard running at you flashing three foot of steel and shouting “Banzai”. My bladder was a mess when I got back. Still can’t pass water in a rural setting unless I feel like I’m in mortal danger.’
I told him a few anecdotes of my own time in the trenches and we passed out time searching the woods. However, we’d not been hunting for fifteen minutes before a cry went up from over towards the house.
‘Oh, what is now?’ groaned Philip from behind a bush.
I stopped swinging my cavalryman’s sword over the bush to help enhance his feeling of dread.
‘Sounded like the bladdy fool of a son,’ said Philip emerging and zipping himself up.
Sure enough, we got back in time to find the Old Blazer lying on the back of a trailer. Camilla was cradling his head and holding a bottle of whisky to his lips.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘he’s just had a fright.’
I moved to his side. ‘What happened? Did he fall or did you push him?’
Camilla scowled at me but the Old Blazer sat up. ‘Worse than that,’ he said. ‘I was rushed by a mob.’
‘Bladdy locals,’ said Philip, his blood rising and his hands tightening around his polo mallet. ‘How did they get on the estate? I told you we need electric fences and machine gun turrets.’
‘Not locals,’ said Charles. ‘Voles!’
‘Voles?’ I repeated.
‘They’re learning, Harry. Haven’t I always said that they’re a cunning beast? Well, now they’re organised.’
‘You were mobbed by voles?’
‘They ganged up on me,’ said the Old Blazer. ‘They caught me alone.’ He held up his bloodied right wrist, punctured by small holes. ‘Look what they did! This is terrible! That’s where I rest my hand when I’m typing!’
‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ muttered Anne who’d arrived on the scene looking distinctly disappointed. She knew as well as all of us that this meant that the hunt was over.
However, much to her pleasure, it also meant that Anne won Kent with a rather feeble haul of one dead vole which, by the looks of it, had been dead for weeks and was still frozen solid, and a 16oz croquet ball that she’d recovered from a shrubbery where, in a spirit of high jest and mild intoxication, I’d bowled it the previous summer hoping to stun a corgi as it did its business in the bushes.
Once Charles was back in the house and had been attended by the best surgeon in London who dressed his vole bites, it was decided that these organised voles were too much for us and that we’d have Special Branch clean out the woods in the spring. These voles might have organised but they’re not so organised that they’ll be able to out-riot a Heckler & Koch MP5k.
As for myself, I returned to my room feeling that Christmas had ended rather early.
Bateman met me at the door.
‘Catch many voles this year, sir?’ he asked, taking my sword from me.
I kicked off my boots. ‘They’re organising,’ I said. ‘Break out the whisky.’
His eyes questioned me with a look meant to say ‘Before lunch, sir?’ but he knew better than to ask. If I couldn’t enjoy Boxing Day one way, I’d enjoy it the other. The very familiar other.
Regius Gingiber!
Hahaha. You’re a very funny man.
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