Jo's shop and a chick update

Having been quoting Yeats on Thursday, here we are with Dr Johnson now, who I think said something like "Be neither idle nor solitary". On Friday I shook myself off, like a dog emerging from water, and set off to meet bodran for lunch and to have a look at her new shop. I had thought long and hard about why I had been feeling so bad - something to do with my desire to stop working and a deep, deep fear of what happens if I do. So no easy or immediate answers but time to be kind to myself, to acknowledge that I am stretched too thin just now and that it might be best to just to let things go for a while. There is a time for action and solutions and a time to deliberately step aside, to turn away, to let time pass, see what the mind can do by itself when I let it be, below conscious thought.

Jo's shop is in Denbigh, a small Welsh town which hasn't yet made it as a tourist destination despite a fabulous castle and some lovely old buildings. It is less well off than some of its neighbours but feels like a town teetering on the brink. Which will win? the beautiful old library, the market hall, the sweeping beauty of the views? or the charity shops, the battered old Woolworths, the sense of decline? For the town to feel more prosperous again it needs its High Street to flourish and shops like Jo's are part of what brings people into town.

The shop is towards the top of the hill, near the library, in a higgledypiggledy building added to over years. Yesterday it did not look when I walked in and found jo on her knees as though there was any chance that it could open today. The shop itself had been painted and decorated with some fabulous wallpaper and a clean calm style that makes you want to smile. But there were boxes and boxes of clothes waiting to be hung and steamed and shoes in boxes and where was the jewellery and weren't there some scarves somewhere? We went for a quick sandwich and then I thought I would give Jo a hand for an hour. Four hours later when I staggered home she was still going strong with another friend arriving and hours more to do.

God knows how she did it (no sleep, amazing energy and a great eye for what looks good might be part of it) but she opened this morning at half past nine. When I arrived today for a look at about half past two the whole place was shining and gorgeous, scented geraniums in the window, at least half the stuff we had painstakingly put out already sold and the shop full of excited customers practically falling on Jo's neck with joy and gratitude for finding a shop like this. There was a French market in the town and instead of its usual slightly abandoned feel the town was full of people and as far as I could see practically all the women over thirty passed through Jo's shop. The clothes are just gorgeous, organic cotton, simple and immensely flattering and not silly prices either. You could see people wondering whether it was worth coming inside and getting giddy with the affordability when they did.

I wish you all the luck in the world Jo. It is a great place and deserves to be a big success.

And here is quick chick update for those who have been wondering: all seven of the survivors are well and eating for Wales. They are feathering quickly so are losing the impossible cuteness of fluffy chicks. If you take the top of the box now they fly up onto the edge, curious and interested. I am still trying to handle them every day, really hoping to get these tamer than our other bantams which, though ready to feed from your hand, are very reluctant to be picked up. Another couple of weeks should see them feathered enough to go out into the shed which will be good for the smell of younger son's room. We will have to work out how to make them a totally bombproof, dogproof run but so far, so good!

How does a day work?

I've been thinking about life again. You would think I would grow out of it. I am all inside out and discomfited (is that a word?). Things are out of joint. I think it is Yeats:

Turning and turning in a widening gyre
The falcon cannot see the falconer.
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.

I try to work but can settle at nothing. My attempt to work from home this week seems to be leaving chaos behind it, with good people failing and falling and sending me things which are poor and need to be done again. I think this is my fault. They are too inexperienced and trying to supervise them from a distance is clearly not working, not enough support, not enough interaction. I can tell that they do not understand what they have done wrong and although I am patient, partly because I think it is my fault, I can feel their anxiety. It is not comfortable.

Perhaps I do not have the temperament to work from home. Without people to talk to, meetings to attend, adrenalin to rush, I drift and fail to engage. Ian is away too so there is just too much time on my own, too much time at the computer, not enough chat and laughter. I am tired to my bones so that even three days of waking in my own bed with no travelling to do still find me hollow with it. I look in the mirror and see an old face. Where have I gone?

I am not a worrier: I am a doer. I used to have scant sympathy with my grandmother's fretting, worrying about everything and everybody as though the world would stop if she left off her worrying work. But I don't seem able to set aside the knowledge that some of my own people are not ok, not well or not happy. And Ian is tired too, pulled here and there by the needs of others.

I have tried the usual cure alls. I have walked round the garden and looked out and away at the view. I need to dig deep and be still.

A chick update

We installed the chicks in a cardboard box with wood shavings in it along with a bowl of chick crumbs and their water dispenser. The heat lamp is normally used for lambs and we decided it was a bit fierce (based on our extensive or non-existent experience!) and brought them into younger son's room with an anglepoise lamp positioned over the box. Thank you to mountainear for the suggestion. We taped a couple of new but oldfashioned mop heads together (thank you to snailbeachshepherdess) as a surrogate mother and covered some of the top of the box over with the thin insulation sheets from the cold frame, trying to ensure there would still be plenty of air.

They have survived over Thursday night and Friday and Saturday, eating like little chicken horses and adapting to the box so that they no longer huddle frantic in a corner but wander about exploring and peeping. They seem not too interested in the mopheads so we have replaced them with a folded cloth which they are climbing up and down in an exploratory fashiom. They are feathering practically as you watch and with every day must presumably be less vulnerable to the cold. The challenge now is to cope with the fact that we are not here twenty four hours a day and need to be sure there is enough food and water for the times we are away. I would be absolutely gutted if anything happened to them now, both because I put so much time and got so nettle stung rescuing them and because it would feel even more strongly as if it were a failure of our care if they died.

I find myself plotting to see if I can work at home the next couple of weeks. Have I got meetings? Can I do everything by conference call and email and is this fair on the staff who are working for me? I think my commitment to my job would be questioned if I explained that I need to stay home to supervise my chicks but I could do it I think, it is the culture of presenteesim that makes it hard not to show one's face, not a feeling that the job can't be done properly without being in the office. I shall continue to mull it over.

Basil planted out, Ian's tomatoes put out into the greenhouse bed, bread made. So much living to do, so little time.

Hatchings and dispatchings

Today was the day I was going to tell you about the chicks growing up. I was going to tell you how funny it is to go out in the morning to the broody coop and find the hen still sitting as if she were on her eggs, no sign of a chick anywhere. Then a little head peeps out, and another and out from under the mother come the chicks one by one. Surely they must get squashed you would think but they seem quite happy, squeezing themselves out and striking out for the food bowl. Often one of the chicks would climb onto the mother's back and sit up high in the corner, cheeping away to itself. Then down it would come, sliding down the smooth feathers like a child in an adventure playground, the mother all the time seeming to ignore that she was being used as a climbing frame.

Sometimes she would take them out. She would walk them round the outside of the coop. A quick repeated cluck seemed to be an instruction to come here, to scratch here, to gather round. It was funny to see in our own garden something that was part of the books of my childhood and my children's childhood. I went to my grandson's and read to him about the mother hen who lost her egg:"I've lost my egg" said Mother Hen. "It's not in here" said Big Dog Ben. The story has a happy ending.

I went out at about eight o' clock this morning and checked they were ok and had water and food. We had been putting bricks around the edge of the pen in case something dried to dig its way in and when I had finished giving them more chick crumbs I put them back again, having shut the run tight. There is a cover for the run which I lifted back on as the feed bowls were outside the coop and it was raining very gently. At night we weight the roof down with large stones but I didn't do that, knowing I would be out again soon.

At about ten o' clock I peered in as I wandered the garden with my cup of tea, taking a break from work. Pecking, cheeping, scratching. All was well.

At half past eleven I picked up the bag of chick crumbs and thought I would replenish supplies. As I came through the gate I clocked that there was something lying on the grass by the raspberry canes - a large piece of bark? something blown in from the field? As I walked down I saw simultaneously that it was Edith, the mother hen, and that the two young dogs from next door were bouncing about in the corner of the garden. There were feathers everywhere. I bent over her. She was quite dead.

"Robyn" I shouted and the younger dog turned and ran, the older one racing after it up the drive. The roof of the run was skew whiff but the run was still standing and still closed. A frantic peeping from the coop revealed a single tiny chick, squashed into the corner and shouting fit to burst.

I went it and picked it up. It's tiny body trembled in my hand and it continued to peep. There was no sign of any others. As I came out I saw first one and then another, wet and dead on the ground. I carried the living one up to the utility where, one handed, I found a cardboard box, covered the bottom with wood shavings and gently placed it inside. I installed the cardboard box in the greenhouse and went back for food and water. The chick squashed itself into the corner of the box and continued to cheep.

Outside the garden was noisy with birds. I walked back up to the coop, my throat thick, looking for any sign of any more dead or dying. Flattened into the grass by the raspberry canes I found another tiny body. I picked it up but this one wasn't wet so hadn't been in a mouth. It was still soft and downy and perfect. It cheeped faintly at me. I was quite unreasonably cheered by the idea that there were two living, rather than just one. A chick is not meant to be solitary. Gently I put it in the cardboard box with the other one and it burrowed immediately underneath its sibling, looking for protection perhaps but failing to find much.

I wondered if there was any chance of finding the other chicks and whether there might be any more alive. Behind the coop is a area thick with nettles and brambles and bordered by a holly tree. Standing looking down at the tall grass I decided that one of the noises I could hear was the persistent distressed noise of a chick cheeping rather than birdsong or the cheeping of other chicks in wild nests.

For an hour and a half I worked my way through the grass and nettles. I found one quickly and, encouraged, decided I could hear another. I went back into the house to put on a jumper to cover my arms which were tingling with nettle stings. Slowly I found more, two together, one so far under the holly I had to lie in the dirt, an old curtain over my head to stop my hair tangling in the dense prickles. Back and forward I went to the greenhouse. The chicks were still terrified, piling one on top of another in the corner of the box, trying presumably to recreate safety and warmth but creating a tottering tower of frantic yellow chicks, peeping incessantly.

Final tally: one mother dead, two chicks dead, seven chicks living, one chick not accounted for. The garden is quiet now. Whatever happened to the last chick I do not think it is still alive. But seven still are, so time to turn to how to keep them alive without the mother hen who, although this was her first brood, clearly had all the instincts strong and true. A friend sent me a weblink to a useful site. I consulted my books. They are a week old and they still need heat for another month or so. Another friend says she has a heat lamp and will bring it over.

I have just moved them into a bigger box and they are still in the greenhouse. Every time I reached in for one the noise was frantic but now they are quieter, they have eaten and scratched and, while close to each other, are no longer trying to disappear into the corner of the box in a pile of fear.

I suppose this is how it is when you raise things: creatures die. You wonder what you could have done differently to protect them. Younger daughter is coming home for the weekend tonight and was so looking forward to seeing them. I do hope they make it through the night. I might just need to go out and check up on them again. Edith was a great sitter and a great mother hen. I am so sorry to have lost her. Let us see if we can raise the chicks that are left.

We have chicks

We have chicks.

I arrived home from London and late and knackered on Wednesday. The other side of the valley was still flooded with sunlight. Wonderful June where getting home after nine still lets you have some of the day.

"I've got a surprise for you. "

"What?"

"Well it's the colour of scrambled egg for a clue."

There were two tiny chicks huddled amongst the eggs when we lifted the chicken. She squawked protestingly. They were so tiny and yellow and fluffy they seemed almost too chick-like to be true, like fancy dress chicks, Disney chicks, surely they should look wetter, scrawnier, more like chicks from the school of hard knocks, but no, there they were so perfect you could have put them on an Easter cake.

Today there are another three, all five still firmly under the hen, for warmth I presume. I have put a chick water holder in there, specially designed to let out only a little so that they don't fall in and drown, and chick crumbs too. For the first twenty four hours or so a chick does not need to feed, living still on the nourishment from the egg, but now the older ones should be ready to take something. I am crossing my fingers and relying on the hen to sort it all out although as far as I can see she is just sitting there as determinedly as though they were all still eggs.

There are another seven eggs in the nest and presumably at some point a decision has to be made as to whether they will hatch or not but so far so good.