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Get out your Torches

27/2/2015

 
Wattlebury is thrown into disarray this morning. We don't know if we are coming or going. A roving Electricity Man was seen in the village earlier this week and he said that we are being Dis-connected from the Supply between 9 am and 2 pm Friday 27th February - today that is. The word spread quickly. And the school and the little garage and the micro-brewery and the woodman have all made plans to work around our lack of power.
Wattlebury is in a rather rural part of the country - we don't have any Gas nor Mains Drainage. Just Electricity. And when we don't have that, we slowly grind to a halt. I am speaking here of Hoomans, not us Chickens. Luckily we don't depend on regular intakes of Coffee and Tea. Just fresh water - we do have water at Wattlebury.
Mum got suspicious about the Electricity Man however and rang the Headquarters. They knew nothing of the impending disconnection. No notices had been delivered, as they should have been. Who was this man? What fun to hold such power and to propagate such confusion and derangement by uttering just one sentence to one person! Only time will tell --
And on a brighter note, probing search lights were seen scanning the skies last evening. I craned my neck over the stable door and watched them as they swung across the clouds, illuminating patches into the unknown. Why were they searching upwards? Were they looking for An Unknown Being? I had my own theory, but it turned out to be from the theatre where Kizzie works 6 miles away promoting 'The Dark Reflection' - an investigative thriller film directed and produced by former British Airways airline captain Tristan Loraine who lives near us. Personally I think it is the Hoomans at Wattlebury testing the batteries in their torches ready for the Power Cut!
Gordon xx

Poor Beryl

26/2/2015

 
I cannot show you a picture of Poor Beryl - yet. She would be far too embarrassed.
Beryl is a tiny pullet. Her lineage is somewhat hazy. Roger the Lodger was a distant relative - we think! (Roger was a fine Black and Tan Cockerel that was left at Wattlebury for Dad to discover one morning many summers ago). She most definitely has a lot of Frizzle blood in her veins and somewhere along the line is a bit of Sulmtaler, because she has a Notoclinus Stickyupus. No matter - Beryl is a very sweet, kind little creature. But in all fairness I think it would not be fallacious to describe Beryl as bald. Now some Frizzles are smooth and some are frizzled. Some, like Beryl, are over-frizzled. According to Harvest the Duck's Chicken Compendium:
'The gene for the curling of the feathers is incompletely dominant over normal plumage; not all members of the breed display the desired frizzling. Frizzled birds are heterozygous for the gene; when two are bred, the offspring inherit the gene in the usual Mendelian 1:2:1 ratio: 50% are heterozygous and frizzled like the parents, 25% have normal feathering, and 25% are "over-frizzled", with brittle feathers resembling pipe-cleaners'
Beryl has pipe-cleaners. There is no doubt about that.
So Mum took Beryl under her wing yesterday and had words with her.
"Beryl" she said. "You are to come home to Wattlebury Cottage for a few days and rest in the Special Cage Unit. Just until your quills have recovered."
Well - you should have heard Beryl protest! She opened her dainty beak and out came the most enormous and ear-splitting string of maledictions that the Farm has ever been privy to.

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We all stopped in amazement and for a brief moment silence reigned. Then all hell let loose. Cousins took to the rafters, Friends flew to high perches and we all joined in the protest to support Beryl.
It did no good at all, of course. Mum swiftly popped Beryl into a box and headed away with her. Beryl laid an egg immediately. If all that protestation hadn't helped, perhaps an egg may.
"You're not getting round me that way, Beryl!" Mum chickled as she put  magic powder on Beryl's sore arms and back.
And if like me you weren't sure about the 1:2:1 thingy - it was all down to a chap named Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who founded the modern science of genetics and the laws of inheritance. Between 1856 and 1863, he cultivated and tested some 5,000 pea plants that he had planted in the backyard of the church. Now I am not comparing Beryl's ancestory to a pea of course - far from it. Peasful is the last thing that Beryl was! Gordon xxx

Feeling Sheepish

25/2/2015

 
I knew it would end badly. It was that moment when Mum walked purposefully across the yard and announced that one of our Farmer Friend's sheep was stuck in brambles by the pond.
"Harvey and I could see it - poor thing. I have brought Harvey back and I will return, Gordon."
She looked resolute. Determined. The sort of look that said 'If I need an amphibious excavator, I will get one'. Instead she reached for the old gloves by the kettle.
"I know that the Farmer will soon be round on his Quad Bike, Gordon - please don't look so disapproving - but his friends have left him there and gone off."
I sighed. And off went Mum. Harvey craned his neck to follow her progress until she was out of sight and confided in us that if he had been allowed to help, the sheep would have very soon been brambleless. We didn't doubt him for a moment.
All was peaceful for a while. Then we heard the mutterings getting closer. Mum was back.
"Well Gordon. It is done. The worst bit came when I had to get under the barbed wire fence. I picked the highest of the bottom strands and tried to crawl under. But I got stuck. By the anorak. Free it I could not. I had to sink into the mud and I dread-to-think-what-else, and then wriggle out of the coat so as to extricate the barb from the back. Having done that I was away! The poor creature was tangled in some gigantic thorns and was dangling over the pond in a most precarious fashion. But all was well Gordon - it soon ran off to find it's friends."
And I for one am most grateful for that.
"But look Gordon! My poor coat!"
And sure enough, along with an array of sheep's wool on the lower strand of the barbed wire fence were Mum's Polyfibres. You could hardly tell the difference! Gordon xx


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    About Us

    Hello! My name is Gordon and I am a Gold Sebright and my best friend is Sylvia. She is a Silver Sebright. We live with our foster parents on a small farm in the country.  We thought that we would put our take on life and what we get up to through the year into a diary for you. All the characters are real and the events are a true record,  interpreted with a modicum of poetic licence. We hope you enjoy it. Love Gordon and Sylvia

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