21. DOG ENDS

Hearing Impaired Peer Goes Anything But Quietly.

The man-hunting world was rocked on its axis yesterday with the killing of popular deaf peer and author Lord Dominic of Winterstoke.

Lord D, Master of the Chorley Hunt, had been, for many years, in the habit of claiming the generous attendance allowance on offer for regularly sitting in the House of Lords, something he was able to achieve safely and without any detrimental impact upon his mental health due to his profound deafness which made him the envy of his fellow peers.

Unfortunately, he was ensconced in the Upper House yesterday when The Veiled Vixen, from the Visitors’ Gallery, used a blow pipe to fire a revolutionary hearing device into Lord Dominic’s left ear. He didn’t stand a chance especially as the chamber was scrutinizing the finer points of the Fisheries and Marine Resources Bill. His consequent death was a slow and agonizing one not helped by the Lord Speaker mistakenly thinking his audible gasping for breath on two occasions while flipping about on the floor during the debate was Lord Winterstoke’s dramatic illustration that he was like a fish out of water as far as contributing anything tangible to the debate was concerned.

Lord Dominic of Winterstoke will not only be missed by the Chorley Hunt where he was revered, but also by the many thousands of readers who enjoyed his books that examined topics from the perspective and experience of the deaf community. Most notably his works on watching a series of John Wayne movies in cinemas called All Quiet on the Western Front, his Spring visit to a City Farm in Sheffield called The Silence of the Lambs and his literary masterpiece, part autobiographical and part fictionalised set in a churchyard in Doncaster with occasional references to the Spanish Civil War called For Whom The Bell Sways Back & Forth A Bit.

Lord Dominic courted controversy last Summer when he became the first Master of a Hunt to sanction the use of a signer for the deaf and hard of hearing using BSL so that he would no longer miss out on the screams of the hunted when they were in the last throes of life or anything they yelled in desperation or defiance. But then he realised he could save £25k per annum on the signer’s salary by cutting them out and simply hunting those with hearing impairments who were conversant in BSL.