It’s all about my subservience to the chicken.
What can I say about today? Not a lot. I was nit worked by the chickens because they now live on the other side of the house. You’d have to sleep in the loo tot the kitchen to be woken by them. So that meant I actual had a bit of a lie in as I had fed and watered them sufficiently in their new home last evening. A breakfast of poached egg on fresh toasted bread and a coffee at 9 with Al Jazeera’s news of the world..
So what to do today to keep me off Twitter and its ilk. Two of my sisters are scheduled hospital appointments today after cancer ops today, so I’d quite like to keep myself busy myself. I toy with the idea of a sauna, but remember that I need a fresh prescription. The health centre answering machine says repeat prescriptions have to be made in writing, so that is chore quickly done.
I know I need to move the chicken hutch from Guantanamo to The Gulch but it seems like too big a job for one person on his own. My house guest is out for the day.
I make my way to the old chicken coop with tape measure in hand and discover that the hutch will not come out of the gate to the coop let alone around the narrowest corner of the garden where the fence almost meets the house. That can only mean dismantling the whole thing and reconstructing it. I have done it twice before, so why not have a go now?
Taking apart a well-worn chicken hutch is easier said than done. First you have to remember how it was put together originally. Then you have to deal with the burred screws which have not stood the test of time. This was a third hand purchase and it has seen better days. A quick break for Youtube DIY videos – all very illuminating but a. I don’t have a thick elastic band to hand (said to be the easiest way of digging burred Phillips screws out, in all three seminars I look to for guidance) and b. I don’t have any of the other types of equipment they recommend.
Brute force and ignorance can come in very handy, although not always the wisest move with timbers that are close to the end of their shelf life. Nonetheless I managed to dis-assemble the hutch and transport it piece by heavy piece across the a garden. It has taken half a day and I shall need at least the second half to put it all back together again. And it needs a bit of a clean too.
The birds are still rather tentative about their new home, and make it clear that they know where the real garden is and object to being shut in. So I try to explain to then what is going to happen, and they settle down scornfully a corner to watch my efforts to rebuild their house. Much to my amazement, I manage it and long before the sun goes down. There are a few hitches, and I doubt that Building Regs would sign it off in its present form, but I am too knackered to complete the ‘snagging – that can wait for another day.
It is up, suspended between outcrops of rock so it has the feel of an Alpine chalet. The brood does not look particularly impressed. There have only been two eggs today, instead of the usual four or five, and one of those was a rather bloody testament to their stress levels. I try to make it up to them by concocting a tasty mash, but even that leaves them grumpy.
Well, I tried. The ‘new’ hutch is clean with fresh hay in the laying area, and a neat little step latter to the front hatch. I wish them a good night, and drag my weary bones inside. I put spuds on to boil with some green veg to go with the leftover of my roast pork. And who that is anther gas, I each the attest f this years artichokes, with and olive old and balsamic vinegar dip.
That just about sum up my entire day (apart from reporting some fascists on Twitter). For once a day without reference to the latest statistics about the coronavirus.
Musing during the day I think I shall finish this diary at my Day 100. That should have exhausted my patience. Perhaps I shall spend a bit of time trying to see if someone would be interested in publishing it. By then I should have run out of excuses for avoiding other writingI should be doing.
