there, and Formby was famous for its bracing air, comfortable Club House, and superlatively good wartime food. I went there at least one afternoon a week; usually I played alone, and often I had the links to myself, which was no disadvantage, since I have always been considerably addicted to my own company.
My main purpose, however, was a day with the hounds. For this I was readily given leave off Saturday morning duties, since an officer who wanted to go out hunting was rightly regarded as an upholder of prewar regimental traditions. The Saturday Meets of the Cheshire Hounds were a long way off, but nothing short of impossibility deterred me, and the working out of my plans was an effective antidote to war-weariness. It was, in fact, very like achieving the impossible, when I sat in my hut of an evening, cogitating with luxurious deliberation, consulting a map and calculating how my hireling could meet me at such and such a station, measuring the distance from there to the meet, and so on in the manner known to enthusiastic young sportsmen. On such Saturdays I would get up in the dark with joyful alacrity. Leaving Liverpool by an early train, I would eagerly observe the disconsolate beginnings of a dull December day, encouraging as far as I could the illusion that I was escaping from everything associated with the uniform which I wore, and eyeing my brown Craxwell field-boots affectionately.
Under such conditions no day could be a bad one, and although more than one Saturday’s hunting was stopped by frost, I derived singular consolation from the few hunts I had. My consolations included a heavy fall over some high timber which I ought to have had more sense than to tackle, since my hireling was a moderate though willing performer. Anyhow, the contrast between Clitherland Camp and the Cheshire Saturday country was like the difference between War and Peace—especially when—at the end of a good day—I jogged a few miles homeward with the hounds, conversing with the cheery huntsman in my best prewar style.