We had to be silent as the fox came past, or we might send him running back into the hounds. "And that," said the lady from the Countryside Alliance, "would be really unfair"
Christmas Day was spent with a 14-year-old girl and her mother, who is struggling to get off heroin. The girl used to live with her father, an old friend of mine, but he is now in prison, so she is back with her mum, in a temporary hostel in north London. All year long, her mum had managed to stay clean, but the loneliness and boredom got to her by December. "I just slipped up," she says. "I was losing my mind." Weeks were lost in a muddle of methadone, more slip-ups and hideous rows about money. When Christmas Day dawned, the daughter opened her presents alone; her mother stumbled home a little after 6am. Reserves of guilt, pride and vodka got her through the morning, peeling potatoes and swaying at the sink, while her daughter lay silent on the bed. They ate in separate rooms, and she fell asleep in undercooked turkey. "I just can't wait," the girl said quietly, "until I'm old enough to get a hostel of my own."
At the moment, the teenager is on the child protection register. But every statistic suggests that it won't be many years before she becomes, in the eyes of the law, not a victim but an offender. No probation report will ever convey to those who sit in judgement what this Christmas was like for her; the legal language of neglect doesn't come close. My husband spent the day photographing the Queen at Sandringham for the following morning's papers. Christmas lends itself to naive thoughts, and I found myself unable to comprehend how journalism could choose Sandringham, not this girl, for a front-page story.
A peculiar self-deception has defeated me every time I have given up smoking. Each spring, following several smoke-free months, a voice in my head suggests that, as I'm no longer addicted, where would be the harm in having a cigarette? The same thing seemed to happen with fox-hunting. As abolition edged closer last year, I felt unexpectedly tempted to give it a try. Why not? Even if I found out I liked it, it would be too late in the day to take it up.
By coincidence, my work sent me out to watch a hunt. I followed it on foot - an inexplicably popular spectator activity that involves a lot of driving around and standing in fields, hoping to see the hunt pass by. It seldom did, but the hours of waiting about with a Countryside Alliance press officer revealed the sophistry behind fox-hunting to be at a level way out of my own league. "We love Charlie," the woman assured me. Charlie? "Charlie Fox! We just love him." No one loves old Charlie Fox more than a huntsman, she was still claiming, when suddenly she held up a hand. "Shhhh!" The hunt was approaching from a distance. The fox might be about to run right past! If we made a sound we might frighten him and send him running back into the hounds. "And that," she whispered, "would be really unfair on Charlie."
It is odd how other people's sophistry is so much more transparently risible than one's own. The press officer drew the line at a blood sport she had seen while on holiday in America. Invited to what she thought would be an afternoon's clay pigeon shooting, she found herself in a gathering below a specially constructed tower. A man climbed up carrying a live duck. He lobbed it off and everyone blasted away. "I mean!" she exclaimed, eyes wide. "Call that a sport?"
Among the Countryside Alliance's many delusions is that townies think rural people are all posh. If anything, the truth is exactly the opposite: they think country folk are peasants. I spent New Year with a group of London friends in Wiltshire, hoping they might consider relocating. They don't share my enthusiasm for country life, doubtful that it affords their accustomed calibre of social conversation. To prove them wrong, I took them to the pub in a village often voted the prettiest in England. An unusually exotic dog lay dozing by the fire. What kind of breed is that, asked a friend. From behind us in the corner, a man with a barbed-wire tattoo across his chin stirred and grunted. "That thing? He'll shit on yer shoe, you know."
Journalists can seldom stay sensitised for long. When my husband left for Banda Aceh, family and friends expressed all the appropriate concerns. Wasn't I worried about him seeing so much horror? Wouldn't he be distressed? Nothing could be further from the truth. We were both inordinately grateful to be out of each other's firing line during the annual rage of nicotine withdrawal.
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