March hares

Back to the joy of work! There's nothing like a day shooting clays in horizontal sleet and hail to make one appreciate the merits of a cosy office life. It was Mrs Moneypenny's (of the FT Saturday magazine) annual ladies' clay shooting day and this year 70 of her closest friends were up at the crack of dawn to meet her for bacon sandwiches at Braintree Shooting School after she'd arrived at Stansted from New York. We were using 28, 20 and 12 bore guns in our efforts to fell high clays dashing away from us, low ones coming at us, impossible ones darting over the horizon, caught up in the gale force winds and ones bounding along the ground like hares. A hip flask is a must for next year. A sunny day and a fibreglass gun would have made a difference. We had fun nevertheless and raised some money for Sarah Brown's charity, PiggyBankKids and I met some interesting people including Laura Godsal who set up www.mytights.com, an essential website for busy women and Chantal Coady founder of Rococo Chocolates www.rococochocolates.com who kindly donated bars of milk chocolate flavoured with sea salt (surprisingly delicious) and dark chocolate with geranium to our going home bags. I won a John Chapman bag in the raffle and was allowed to choose one of six on a table. The one I chose was rather heavy and when I looked inside I saw it contained a pair of walking boots. I thought that these were a bonus prize until I was informed that in fact this particular bag already belonged to one of the guests. Oh dear! I took a lime green one with a pink lining instead which I thought could double up as a useful handbag on a summer flight as well as a beach bag.