After a carpet of snow started melting, I walked Sam and then attended an investment meeting with my trustees before dropping in on Sally to review election plans and then joining Nigel, shooting and training on Pancake Day duly celebrated later.
News today is of a widening rift between Nato and The United Nations over how to react to the Bosnian Serbs' action around Sarajevo
There was a carpet of snow covering the landscape this morning, but the temperature was milder than yesterday and before long a general thaw was in progress. I was quickly ready for breakfast first thing and then out briefly with Sam before it was time to drive to The Shrubbery in Church Street, St Neots, for an investment meeting at my accountants, Whitmarsh Sterland.
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Senior partner, Roger Brittain was our host, and I was joined by Gerard Chadwick of Taylor-Vintners, my estate solicitor. A good meeting for an hour and a half reviewing the range of my family trusts and investments and agreeing such end-of-year tax transactions as were necessary for tax efficiency. All on all, the investments were agreed as going very well and only minor adjustments were needed.
Time to drop in on Sally and her girls to review our plans for the forthcoming round of elections in May and do some plotting and then home to make my own lunch of a smoked salmon salad before it was soon time to load up the car with my gun and equipment to meet Nigel for an afternoon pigeon shooting near Peterborough. I took Sam who first sat reasonably quietly whilst Nigel walked around, and I sat behind some decoys and then quartered excitedly for hares as I tried to control him. I succeeded by and large as several hares got up and I only lost Sam to a chase once.
Then Nigel and I took up position in a small wood and shot pigeons as they came in to roost. I sat in my position and took a bird in the only chance that came to me and Nigel adopted more of a roving brief and accounted for four more. He gave me the two more damaged ones so that I had three for dog training later. Home quickly to help Diana cook and toss pancakes as this was Shrove Tuesday but, even with two of us and two frying pans, we could only just keep up with the children who ended up eating fifteen between them!
No time to rest afterwards as I drove off to Cromwell Farm, Bury, where I again joined the advanced obedience class for dog training. Sam was not perfect, and actually marked the ring once, but he was markedly better than last week, walked far better to heel and was much more used to the inside training environment. The news today is of a widening rift between Nato and United Nations over how to react to the Bosnian Serbs' action around Sarajevo.
The ultimatum is for control of all heavy weapons within range to be surrendered to the U.N. but there are varying versions of what non-compliance would justify a retaliatory air strike and whether this could be authorised under existing mandates or whether it would have to go back to the Security Council and thus be vulnerable to a Russian veto.