The best of medicines

Feeling crook and with poor weather threatening to dampen the spirit, Tessa Waugh shrugs off her lurgy and braves the elements a day's hunting the perfect antidote to her pre-Christmas blips

- Tessa Waugh

When I woke up yesterday, it was gloomy with a forecast of heavy rain. Nothing new there. Extreme weather including snow, floods and frost have been the name of the game here for a week or so. It was a Saturday, the children were not yet home for the holidays and the hounds were meeting at the farm next door. I had earmarked the day as a last hurrah before the Christmas holidays.

But there were a couple of hurdles that might interrupt this plan; I was feeling ropey with a cold, the water in the house had gone off the night before and the plumber was incoming. It would have been easy enough to have opted for a day at home, but instead I climbed dizzily onto Jim for the short hack to the meet.