Boxing Day Hunt 2

The Boxing Day Meet outside the White Hart gives the local gentry their chance to lay claim to the county town and show off their finery. The Master and Whippers-in in pink (red to you and me), and ruddy-faced farmers on sturdy mounts are joined by some top totty at home for the holidays from uni or from London and a sprinkling of well scrubbed children. The 40 or so foxhounds weave in and out of the horses and the crowds. Stirrup cups of sloe gin are supplied exclusively to riders.

The Hunt have met in Lewes High Street on 26 December at 11am for well over a century. For the rest of the season their Meets are a closely guarded secret. Sabs have to rely on 'information received' to know where to turn up and disrupt proceedings.

As for a football match, the police direct hunt supporters in Barbour jackets with "Bollocks to Blair" buttons to one side of the High Street and bearded vegetarians with "For Fox Sake End Hunting" placards to the other. But plum pudding and Christmas hangovers take the edge off the enmity. Both sides realise a Boxing Day hunt is unlikely to catch a fox and the sabs will be too slow to cause any serious problems. When the Master leads some 100 riders off up the High Street, there are loud cheers from one side of the street, catcalls and boos from the other. The world's most inefficient way of controlling vermin, Oscar Wilde described it as "the Unspeakable in pursuit of the Uneatable". JS