It’s gonna be a long, lonely summer

I’ll be completely honest with you and I don’t care if you call me sad; I’m really missing my shooting.

It’s not all bad. There is still more than enough sport about for me to get my fix, but I remain unfulfilled and have started to try, and am failing badly, to recreate the excitement of the past shooting season through whatever medium I can lay my hands on.

I have swapped walking between drives with walking my neighbour’s dog; aiming at high pheasants has been replaced by high green aliens down at the local video arcade; and I sometimes find myself contemplating whether or not to wade into the bush on the village green just to see if I can flush anything out.

You might say ‘get down the shooting ground’ or ‘seek medical help’ to combat this affliction (and I have already planned on doing the first one) but it’s not just the pulling of the trigger that I miss, it’s the banter with guns, beaters and their four – legged companions.

I must have played every sport imaginable in my younger days, and nothing compares to the sense of community people in shooting enjoy up and down the country.

Maybe there is a support group for people like me, people who are marking the days until the shooting season starts again. If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

A glance at the office’s 2008 planner certainly makes for depressing reading – there are more than seven months until the season starts. That’s a lot of pound coins at the pleasure park.

Until the Olympics come and go in August, it’s going to be a long, lonely summer; and when that’s over, as Billie Joe Armstrong once sang, wake me up when September ends.