Battue en cours

It's the start of the hunting season. Not the mushroom one, but the serious, bloodsoaked one with firearms and dogs. Yesterday we headed, on Armistice Day, which is a holiday in France, for the Tanneron, to walk the mimosa-covered hills.

When we got to the carpark at the beginning of the walk, we saw a lean, almost famished dog - very old fashioned looking - wandering in the woods. We thought nothing of it. Then we saw the sign: "Battue en cours".

It was an organised hunt for wild boar. The dangers were threefold, and none of them attractive, namely to be savaged by the dogs, charged and eviscerated by maddened wild boar, or gunned down by trigger-happy retards with big toys. We decided, without saying a word, and yet with perfect and instant agreement, to move on.

As we drove slowly off, I realised how close we were to the last eventuality, as behind the bushes on the side of the road, posted every thirty metres or so, there was a leering hunter in camouflage gear, with an incongruous orange cap on his head, and massive artillery trained onto the road we were driving down. Evidently the tarmac, in their eyes, was an ideal free-fire zone, where they could indulge in a little blamablamablama, as Steve Bell puts it, when drawing the Juki Imbrah. We accelerated and held our breath, with a prickly feeling down the backs of our necks. Exit from the fire-zone seemed to take for ages.

Our walk took place elsewhere, but with our eyes and ears ready for the slightest signs of further venery. The barking of domestic dogs, and the slam of car doors in the distance, carried on the calm air, made us jump.