After elevenses, there are two more drives. I only know this because I asked, feeling as if I still had double chemistry to go before my best subject at school, which was lunch, and wondering why it was that so much of English country life was arranged to suit the comfort and convenience of the Englishman; I mean, what are we women supposed to be doing while our menfolk blast innocent birds from the sky?

Well, it appears that what we do is clamber in and out of the backs of Land Rovers, which is easily the most energetic aspect of the entire day’s activity.

Meanwhile the beaters, pickers-up and loaders all pile on to a long trailer with haybales for seats, with their dogs and sticks and flags and muddy boots all mixed up together. No one, least of all them, seems particularly keen to bridge the class divide. I give a wave to Colin Watts, who is beating, earning some extra cash, and who seems to slot right in wherever he is, but otherwise – I feel it’s all upstairs downstairs.

In the back of the Land Rover, jolting down rutted tracks, I don’t particularly mind sitting jammed together, pressed up against the other guns and their wet dogs (one very over-enthusiastic Labrador definitely got to third base with me when we skidded across a verge) but so far as I can determine, the day involves an awful lot of fields but not much sport.

As we bounce about, cheek by jowl, with guns rearing priapically up between male legs and dead birds at our feet, I say, apropos nothing, ‘Er, in shooting, why doesn’t one walk, between drives?’

‘Because one never does,’ Ralph answers.

‘Is that why it’s called a drive, then,’ I ask, ‘because instead of walking a few hundred yards, you drive? Or have I missed something?’

Ralph does not answer this and contributes instead to a discussion about how many birds Granville laid down for the season (can’t remember, but it seemed an awful lot of birds to breed, feed and so on, in order to be shot by City bankers after a large lunch, in conditions of extreme personal safety).

I feel I am wasting my breath. Shooting, like fly-fishing, is one of the things Ralph never jokes about. He has just given Cas an air rifle. They are both taking it all very seriously.

Cas goes about saying, ‘Never, never should a gun pointed be at anyone.’ The air-gun always goes into the locked gun cupboard, and I don’t even know where Ralph keeps the key. He won’t tell me as, according to him, I can’t even be trusted with a penknife, let alone a loaded gun.