Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [151]
Christmas was wonderful. Richard and Chris, and Ruth and Derek, came down the night before, and after dinner Richard did the the honors with the Santa Claus outfit. Julie had suddenly been expressing a certain amount of skepticism about the whole thing, and since she was only five years old, it was sad to think that the bubble would probably burst quite soon. We all had a great time. Melia cooked a delicious lunch, and all day we opened presents. My favorite was a white Mexican Stratocaster with a gold anodized scratchplate that Melia had seen me eyeing up in a local guitar store. On the back of the guitar she had written a lovely dedication, and all the girls had signed their names. It’s the best present I’ve ever got.
On Boxing Day, I went out for a drive with Derek and we talked about his prospects for Ruth and himself. I thought he was a really good guy, and they had been seeing each other for a couple of years, so I had no real objections to their marriage and happily gave my consent. I asked him if he wanted me to make a formal announcement before we all parted company, but he said he had not actually proposed yet and wanted to bide his time. I was impressed by his sense of prudence. After lunch we said good-bye to everybody and drove down to Jamie Lee’s to set up camp for our shoot. Jamie and his wife, Lydia, have two lovely girls, Jessica and Georgia, who are a little older than ours and get on famously with them; also, Paul Cummins was coming down later with his wife, Janice, and their little boy Jamie, so we were all excited and looking forward to the next few days.
We shot at three different venues, back to back, all high and difficult birds, and had a great time. Melia shot really well, with Alan Rose, the famous instructor from the West London Shooting School, standing beside her, giving her tips and the occasional word of encouragement. The company was good, the weather was fine, and the shooting was great. I was really pleased that Melia actually enjoyed the day, and that shooting game and not clay pigeons didn’t put her off. It’s obviously not everybody’s favorite sport, and some people can get quite worked up about it. I remember a few years earlier, with trout fishing, I actually hit a kind of brick wall myself. I was fishing down on the Test when I suddenly stopped and thought, “Why am I doing this?” I had caught a couple of fish, killed them, and put them in my bag, and I thought, “This is not right.” I was confused, because I really enjoyed fishing, but it seemed that if I couldn’t justify it to myself, at that exact moment, then I was going to have to stop. That’s when I decided that, from then on, I was going to eat everything I caught, and that catching large numbers of fish was no longer really an option. I have tried to apply the same principle to shooting, which is all well and good, but it’s a tall order, trying to eat all the pheasant and partridge I shoot. Nevertheless we try.
The Christmas break had been a welcome rest from touring, and all in all the horizon looked good. What had seemed like an impossible mountain to climb was, for the most part, now behind us, with three more months to go. The only bad news to come in over the holidays, which unfortunately was as equally devastating as last year’s news, was that Ahmet Ertegun had passed away, after having been in a coma for several weeks