Shooting and fishing: 'I had to dress up in a tail coat and pretend to be the simple son of an old retainer'

Published on Sunday 5 September 2010 12:28

You know, said my wife, that you have been invited to shoot at Balavil on The Twelfth. News to me, I said. Well indeed it might be, she said, sniffily. I suppose you don't remember?

After a certain amount of cranial rummaging a picture emerged of a lot of people, lobster and Pimm's on a pier in the rain somewhere on the Moray coast. How very embarrassing, said I, wondering aloud if Allan Macpherson-Fletcher (for it was he) remembered issuing the invitation any better than I remembered receiving it.

I have been to Balavil once on The Twelfth and it was stupendous. Huge quantities of dogs and children, teenagers and betweeded oldies of both sexes advancing in line abreast through the heather, popping away at the occasional grouse. Half way through a lunch hut appeared on the horizon and we all collapsed exhausted and had a party in the sun. It doesn't get much better.

A couple of years later Allan and his wife Marjorie employed me as a butler. They had let the house to a cider company which held a weekend house party for the finalists of a beer mat competition and for some reason wanted a butler for effect.

I had to dress up in a tail coat and pretend to be the simple son of an old retainer. It went down a storm. One of the finalists took pity on me and kept surreptitiously stuffing five pound tips into my hand saying in a thick Brummie accent "You're alright Robertson".

Once they all got over staying in a house which had starred in Monarch of the Glen and realised the drink was free, there was no stopping them. "Owsabart a ceegar then Robertson?" asked my Brummie friend. "Certainly sir". I offered him a Rafael Gonzales to the sound of strangulated protests from our host. "They're 11 each," hissed Allan. At which point they all wanted one.

The mousey daughter of a university lecturer went man mad once the drink kicked in and had to be locked in her bedroom. So you can see that an invitation to Balavil, for whatever reason, is definitely worth having.

In the end I composed an e-mail "re 12th" indicating I might have misheard the invitation – apparently it also included staying the night. Were they really, really, I mean really, sure?

About an hour later Allan phoned to say they had just done a head count and it looked as if they had asked 36 people to stay and quite possibly the same number to shoot. So: if it was all the same... would we mind awfully etc? Which we didn't. But I count it as a first – a dis-invitation to The Twelfth. You don't get many of them. Not even at Balavil.

This article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday, 4 September, 2010