The Chicken Palace

The chicken palace looks great on paper. The ground looks flat, the measurements are spot on and there are no tricky corners. Yesterday, we took down the old shed. Well, Andy set about it with a hammer and crowbar whilst I stood on the sidelines being girly and saying things like 'I'm not being much help, am I?' The old shed was full of bugs which Mrs B and Mrs M leapt on with glee. Dead or alive, it didn't matter - down the hatch it went. Beneath the shed we found a single dead rat; not the plague we had anticipated, which was a relief. The chickens helped enormously with shed dismantlement, clucking encouragement and making suggestions like 'Do we have room for a car port? Only we're thinking of getting a Nissan Figaro.' There was only one tricky moment when I was holding one of the shed roof aloft and Andy was holding the other end of the shed roof aloft and the chickens decided to perform a 'ladies excuse me' beneath our feet. But after a couple of comedy trips all was well and we survived intact sans broken ankles, heads, chickens or pantaloons.

So, shed down, a huge triangular gap is revealed at the end of the garden. We stand and stare at it, and then stare at our plans. 'Of course it'll work! It'll look great! Oooh, isn't Strictly Come Dancing on the telly...quick, we'll miss the start.' (I need to say here that it is I who am more interested in SCD than Andy....especially since he had that incident with the sequins, Lycra and hair lacquer.)

Sunday morning we repair to the garden and do some more staring. The chickens do another bug sweep. We go to Wickes and stare at wooden posts, weldmesh and trellis. We go home and stare again. We go inside and have a cup of tea and some shortbread. Andy gets distracted into making another batch of marrow wine. I get distracted into more staring.

It's all going frightfully well...