December 22, 1985

IN his oak-paneled office adorned with Victorian prints of English gentlemen hunting and fishing, Somerset Gibbs was complaining good-naturedly about the boom times in his trade - headhunting for clients in the City of London, Britain's Wall Street. ''The problem for headhunters now,'' he said, grinning, ''is that there's too much business.'' Not just the volume, but the manner, too, of body-snatching has changed markedly, noted the 59-year-old Mr. Gibbs, a former senior partner in a London brokerage house. For years, job-hopping in the square-mile City was conducted by unwritten rules of civility, and the person wanting to leave almost had to ask his boss for permission to leave. ''But now it's all rough and tough and there are lawyers lurking in the background,'' Mr. Gibbs said. ''The old boy's club is disappearing very rapidly.''

AS pressure for higher-density residential development reaches ever deeper into the countryside, property owners who keep horses and use informal networks of equestrian trails are finding their cherished rights coming into conflict with those of neighbors. The growing popularity of riding has made matters worse. Long Island, for example, has about 30,000 horses stabled either in backyards or in commercially run stables, according to William Uhlinger, president of the Nassau-Suffolk Horsemen's Association. A decade ago the number was 10,000. There are even two communities of town houses - planned for Bernards Township and nearby Tewksbury Township in New Jersey - that are being laid out with stables and horse trails as part of their private recreational amenities.

CONGRESS had not even adjourned for the holidays -it did that a couple of days later, in the midst of the capital's first snowstorm this winter - when President Reagan made it clear that 1986 is going to be a year of intense political combat. Speaking to lawmakers who had worked for passage of a measure mandating a balanced budget by 1991, Mr. Reagan said he intended to seek deep cutbacks in ''wasteful and unnecessary'' domestic programs in his proposed budget for 1987. But a senior White House official, speaking less publicly only a couple of hours later, said domestic cutbacks would not be enough. Like Congressional critics of both parties, the official said that either tax increases or sizable cuts in defense outlays would surely be required. The prospect, then, is for a protracted struggle between Capitol Hill and the White House, with each side accusing the other of irresponsibility. Nothing much new about that. But this time, under the provisions of the budget-balancing law, stalemate will produce automatic cuts spread equally between domestic programs and military spending, and President Reagan's proposed budget for 1987, which is to go to Congress in February, will be the first on which the five-year plan will be tested.

An employee of a company that transcribes secret sessions in the House of Representatives has been charged with spying for the Soviet Union after offering to sell an undercover agent secret documents, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said today. The bureau said the suspect, Randy Miles Jeffries, a 26-year-old Washington resident, had told the undercover agent he had already delivered portions of documents to the Russians, including one that was classified as top secret. Michael Giglia, an agent for the bureau, testified today at a hearing in Superior Court that Mr. Jeffries had asked the undercover agent for $5,000 for the complete set of three documents. Mr. Jeffries was arrested at a Holiday Inn at 9:11 P.M. Friday, the F.B.I. said in a statement early today. After today's hearing, a Superior Court judge ordered him held without bail pending a hearing Monday morning in Federal District Court. Mr. Jeffries was the 11th American arrested on spying charges this year.

The suburbs, cities and towns around New York City are struggling with a growing problem of homelessness that is fast overwhelming local support programs, according to officials and advocates for the homeless in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Some of the most affluent communities in Connecticut, New Jersey, Westchester County and Long Island have been caught up in the growing problems of individuals and families living in shelters, hotels, abandoned buildings and even automobiles. Although the experts say the number of homeless people in these areas is smaller than the total in New York City, advocates contend that the potential for suffering is greater outside New York because of the widening gap between what homeless people need and what local and state agencies provide. And the problem is increasingly becoming a national issue. Poverty Amid Affluence ''Growing numbers of homeless men, women and children are not receiving assistance in even some of the most affluent areas surrounding New York,'' said Thomas H. Styron, a co-director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, an organization based in New York City that released a report last week on homelessness in Connecticut. ''Public officials have been extremely slow to respond.''