The partridge season may only be a few days old and sound of shotguns has indeed been ringing out on grouse moors since the middle of August, but all in the Shooting Gazette office is quiet-ish. Preparations for the October issue have gathered pace now that we have said goodbye to the last summer month, but there is no calling, shouting and hand waving like the markets of London, Portobello or Square Mile.

Staff writer Alex Flint only breaks from his unrelenting editing of his piece on Birmingham’s Wesley Richards to check his finger nails are still intact, such is the battering of his keyboard on a daily basis, while Neil Syer, our designer, is hunched over his computer screen checking that the finer details of Shooting Types are where they should be. Next door, editor Will Hetherington mulls over the proofs and fields calls from Mr X and Mrs Y from ABC, and may very well call me at any moment to ask about facts or spellings.

Outside it is bright, but the sun is struggling to penetrate the thin rain clouds that have been hanging over Stamford since mid morning. We have been treated to a symphony of chain saws as our neighbour trims his hedge with an army of landscape gardeners, but it’s getting tiresome. Elsewhere, the town plays host to the Burghley Horse Trials this weekend, so we have had a procession motor vehicles of all shapes and widths, some carrying horses, some not, passing along the road in front of our headquarters today. I am glad that I will be away this weekend, traffic jams are not my favourite thing.

Across the hallway, Sporting Gun’s Steve Moore whistles the signature tune from Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat as he potters about in the kitchen with sugar and instant coffee, while Robin Scott shakes the building’s roof with a sneeze or two. No Alex Terry today to keep us in line, not that we require it, such is the need to get the magazine off and done, there is but one week to go….must get on.