Power of a Shire with the speed of a sprinter
Sometimes it’s healthy to fall out of love with the most familiar things in life. Sometimes loyalty isn’t a virtue and it’s good to allow the novel and unfamiliar to become an infatuation. Recently, I’ve waved goodbye to more than 25 years of Land Rover ownership, put down my last Blackberry and no longer have a .22 rimfire in my gun cabinet.
My daydreaming is rudely interrupted by the orange blob in the handheld thermal imager, running straight down the tree trunk and into the long grass on the field margin. Now represented as a slightly fuzzy, extended white blob, it bounces out on to the newly rolled pasture, dipping and then sitting upright.
Leaning to my right, I exchange the technicolored world for a crisp sight picture set at 8x, nestle my cheek on to the extended laminate stock and breathe out slowly, letting the cross-hairs alight on the fifth fence post. First 90m, then count out five more for! And another tree-munching alien meets its maker.
