Patrick Galbraith: 'The publishing company I had just begun working for went pop pretty spectacularly. Capitalism is a bucking bronco and occasionally you hit the ground'

Thirty-two is a funny age. You are no longer kicking about trying to find your way in the world — you should probably be beyond that stage — yet you’re hardly at the height of your powers. Many of my friends have bought their first house, but don’t have children yet. We are in that relatively happy period where we can still go to the pub on a Tuesday night or head out to stalk roe deer when the mood takes us. Yet, for all that, there is a growing sense that we should be taking our professional lives seriously. All of a sudden, things have become more expensive. Pals who were fishing gillies or were making cider now seem to be heading to the City or becoming barristers.

The last year has been a strange one. The publishing company I had just begun working for went pop pretty spectacularly. Soon after I started, it was revealed to employees that we were facing that age-old problem in business of having a lot of debt, chunky outgoings and fairly limited revenue. They could have let me know before I climbed aboard the ship, but so it goes—capitalism is a bucking bronco and occasionally you hit the ground.

I now know a fair bit about going into liquidation. ‘What sort of assets have you got?’ a kindly accountant asked. ‘We have some vegan cookbooks,’ I replied, ‘and a few copies of a book about gender.’ They nodded gravely. Some hardheaded people have suggested the world of publishing ought to get on with commissioning books people actually want to read, but let’s not get into that now.

Consequently, I am now holed up in East Anglia writing and shooting deer. The former pays moderately, the latter doesn’t. This morning, I shot a roebuck and drove to the local farm shop to have its liver and kidneys vacuum packed, frozen and sent to London for a Norwegian regular. By the time the money hits my account, I’ll be up some £18.

Last weekend, I was at a wedding in Devon with people I’ve known for some time. All of them, I got the sense, were trying to work out what they want from life. In the pub, we got onto the subject of dogs. One of the party told me how much he wanted one, but it’s not possible because he works five days a week at an insurance firm in the City. The money, he told me, is quite remarkable — ‘not as good as law’, but they don’t often have to work weekends. What a thought, eh? As the pints continued, he told me that what he really wants is to live in the country with a dog and to shoot deer.

After the wedding, we drove to Norfolk and my parents-in-law invited us for dinner as there was no food in the house. The conversation, as it invariably does, came around to my life on Grub Street. What I should do if I want to make money, my father-in-law sensibly suggested, is work in the City. Of course, he’s right in a sense, but then I thought of that boy at the wedding. Really, he simply lives for the weekend. Life is too short to be spent sitting at a desk, he had concluded after pint five.

Next day, a local veteran gamekeeper called with big news. The previous evening, shortly before midnight, he’d seen a red-deer stag in velvet. It had clearly been quite an occasion; it had been some time since he’d seen one and he reckoned he knew exactly the route it was taking across the ground he manages. That, I thought, as I hung up, is real wealth. That level of excitement, when you’ve been in the job for decades, is what success looks like.