My Stories ||Hens Yielding to Prayer

"Any eggs?" asked one of my regular customers, hope on her face. "No, sorry," was my reply. Every time. She gave up asking after a few weeks. It was frustrating. The chickens had never done this before. One or the other would continue to lay throughout the winter months. But now, with a larger proportion of pure breeds who stopped laying when broody, moulting or when the days had little sunlight, and, in turn (I'm sure) influenced the hybrids, we were lucky to get one a week.

Then, finally, a few weeks ago, we had our first dark brown egg. It was one of the new chickens. Then there was another. Then a white one, a blue/green one. More brown. All of a sudden we had a dozen.

Have you read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith?

I don't recall reading it as a child, so read it for the first time a few years ago.

"Goodness, Topaz is putting the eggs on to boil! No one told me the hens had yielded to prayer. Oh, excellent hens!

And this is the line I thought of when the eggs finally appeared.

My Stories ||The Darkness and the Moonlight

"It's as black as your hat," says my dad when he comes to stay. He's got a Derbyshire accent though so "your hat" becomes one word: "yerat". Every time I step outside my back door in the darkness, especially at this time of year, I think of his expression. Because it is. Extremely dark. You cannot see your hand in front of you.

At our last home, on the housing estate, we had a street light right next to our house. It would glow outside our bedroom window, leaching an orange haze over our sleeping forms.

But here? There are no streetlights. There's nothing except the distant pinpricks of light from the dual carriageway. Eventually my trees will grow and we won't even be able to see that.

I have to go outside in the darkness every night to shut in the chickens. At first, before we got the dog, I would not go out in the field after dark. I once cast the torch around (to my left, straight ahead, to my right, behind me, argh what's that noise?!) and saw two eyes staring at me from the bottom of the field. The eyes were well above ground level. It freaked me right out.

It's funny, thinking back, that I used to be so bothered by the darkness. Because now I don't give it a second thought. Yes, I still quickly scan my torch all around me, checking the shadows to my left and right, but I'm actively looking for glowing eyes.

Then there's the moonlight.

I knew the songs, of course I did. Dancing in the moonlight. Moonlight shadow.

But actually seeing moonlight? Seeing the shadow of our house cast by the full moon? I didn't really understand that it had existed other than in a Famous Five novel. Living in a town with light pollution we lose that wonder of seeing a giant elm tree reflected on the ground as a moonlight shadow.

But once every few weeks I can go outside, as long as the sky is clear, and not need my torch to see in the dark. The moon is bright and luminous. Shining down, my shadow walking ahead of me.

My Chicken Story Stories is a collection of my thoughts as I pull together the first draft of my memoir.

My Stories || Working Girl

Let the river run

Let all the dreamers

Wake the nation.

Come, the new Jerusalem.

Carly Simon from the film 'Working Girl'.

I would pull on my socks over my black tights and put on my trainers, before slipping quietly out of the door.

I was living in East London. Leyton. My route to work took me up Dunedin Road to the main street, where I'd turn right towards the underground station. It wasn't here I'd start singing Carly Simon's words in my head. No, I was too busy waking up.

The clang of the shop front shutters jarred my head, making me wince, and the fumes from the cars, the stale takeaway smells, filled my nose.

Approaching the station I'd take out my travelcard, feeling a bit smug, like a proper Londoner. Despite being surrounded by proper Londoners. It was easy to get a seat at Leyton, unless there had been a delay further down the line. We entered the train above ground, the doors would beep and we'd set off, building speed. Soon the darkness would enclose us, my inner ears tightening with the difference in pressure. I'd feel a fission of excitement each time. Obviously I was new to the city. That world weary tube traveller thing hadn't happened to me. Yet.

I'd alight at Liverpool Street Station. A station I'd only known throughout my life as a strategic place to buy on the Monopoly board. I'd walk and walk. I was heading to my temporary job. I made good progress in my trainers and Melanie Griffiths would pop into my head, Carly Simon's vocals on a loop.

Now, almost two decades later, whilst I still love the song, still enjoy watching the film; at the end, when the camera pans away from Melanie in her new office, the office she has fought so long and hard to achieve, well, I shudder.

To me, it looks like a prison.

And I thought that was what I wanted.

My Chicken Story Stories is snippets of my thoughts as I pull together the first draft of my memoir.