Grouse

Friday

Bruce Anderson

Let them eat grouse

Over the weekend, although I hope that I was not committing blasphemy, it occurred to me that two splendid festivals virtually coincide. The first is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin: the second, slightly earlier, the feast of the ascension of the red grouse. I used to think a grouse needed a two-week hang. I was wrong. A couple of seasons ago, a blind tasting was held One of life’s great pleasures is introducing a girl to Venice. Obviously, this will include the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The architecture is not that magnificent, but is there a more glorious name anywhere? And as for the interior… We enter and as we process down the nave, I tell the neophyte to imagine that this is indeed the Feast of the Assumption.

Adam Hay-Nicholls

Wiltons vs the Ritz: who wins the great grouse race?

‘Bang! Bang! …Thud.’ It’s Friday 12 August, better known to tweedy types as the Glorious Twelfth, and the inaugural grouse on the West Allenheads estate in Northumberland has met its maker. The 26°c temperature yields a slow morning, with the moorland birds reluctant to come out of the shade and the beaters and guns mopping their brows, yearning for elevenses. After the first drive, the bagged game is slung in the back of a Defender and divvied up in the gun room. And now the real challenge begins. Imagine a sort of Beaujolais Run, except instead of getting Gamay wine from France to Fleet Street, our mission is to dispatch grouse from Hadrian’s Wall to SW1. The destination for ten brace – i.e. 20 birds – is Wiltons on Jermyn Street.