Well, it looks like our new arrivals have now settled in. We’ve had the Araucanas, Cobweb (front) and Nightshade, for about two months, and they seem to be quite happy. Or, rather, they appear to be as happy as mad little creatures of a chicken persuasion ever are – utterly neurotic, they beetle about the place as if the world is about to end, and we, virtually only ever bearers of food and other forms of chicken worship, are harbingers of doom of the nastiest variety. Such is life, when you is a chicken, I suppose. (Though not necessarily, come to think of it – Liquorice, our Barnevelder lady, is distinctly unconcerned by us, and will happily follow one around with a rather hungry look that, in a larger animal, might prove somewhat disconcerting; I tell you, it’s only their diminutive stature that prevents chooks being utterly fucking terrifying – think about it: all those claws, and the beaks! the cruel, cruel beaks! I rest my case.) The other hens don’t really seem to mind them now, and I think they’ve got off pretty lightly, really -there was a bit of ‘oh no you fucking don’t’ when they started up towards the perch for the first few nights, but other than that, and the odd bit of ‘every single morsel of food here is MINE! all MINE!’ from Liquorice (a very greedy little hen, it must be said), it’s been quite straightforward, and better than we’d hoped, really. They’re all going in and out together now, and the pecking order is thus established, I imagine. They are also delighted by the appearance of poultry spice in their diet, and, to be frank, I can see their point – made with such delights as ginger, it smells rather like potted Chrimbly. Though, come to think of it, it’s possibly rather bad taste to mention a festival so closely linked to the demise of certain larger fowl…

We have been getting anywhere between one and four eggs a day, thus far; I now have a full half-dozen little turquoise eggs sitting in the fridge courtesy of the Araucanas (though we have yet to get two blue eggs in one day; until that happy event, I shall always be looking askance at one or other of the blighters, in case they have the temerity to be a rooster, on the sly), and the original hens’ eggs seem larger this year than they were last, in their first year of laying. I’m now thinking that it might be quite nice to have, in addition to the pretty turquoise eggs, white eggs too. Eight chickens. Oh dear. I remember quite clearly the day that I mentioned, with the sort of assumed carelessness which comes only after at least half a dozen preparatory sessions in front of a mirror while on one’s own, that a friend had offered me some chooks, and that I’d, er, sort of said yes, despite Quercus and I having agreed only quite recently that we had far too many things to get on with (in house terms) to start having animals about the place. Ahem. Oops. (Blame it on Ally; she is a chicken-pusher, you know.) Have I become one of those people? You know the sort: the ones with all the animals…? I mean, two cats, six chickens, a baby… what next? A goat? (Tempting.) A sheep? (Only if it has big horns and a curly tail, thank you – I have got some standards.) A llama? (Called Dalai, obviously.) An alpaca? (Al Pacacino. Naturally.) I ask you.