Best Laid Plans

The Day of the Dragons has dawned. And poor Small Boy has been up since dawn, pacing and planning.
"I can't eat anythin'," he moans at breakfast. "My tummy is already full - of butterflies."
His pale little face is etched with worry as he bends over his carefully inscribed checklist of things that are needed to ensure the smooth running of the petting zoo (catchily named "Petz Corner") at the school Dragons' Den Fair this afternoon.
"You will remember to get the dog cage out of the shed, won't you Mum?" he asks, for the seventy-third time this week.
Suddenly there is a commotion outside the kitchen door: loud squawking and an inordinate amount of hissing. I rush to open the door and find the cats are producing the hissing whilst prowling around the boxes we use to transport them to the vets. The squawking is coming from inside the boxes. The cats are evidently deriving great pleasure from the spectacle of these small birds crammed together into the boxes, which, when the cats are forced into them for their yearly visit to the vet, cause Psycho Cat to pee herself and Jet to howl with misery. "We feel your pain and we are enjoying it," they seem to be saying.
The Dog, who hates to miss out on any excitement, chooses this moment to rush out and stick her nose excitedly up Psycho Cat's bum.
I close the door on the scene and return to my anxious son.
"Why have you put the chickens inside the cat boxes, exactly?" I ask.
"Duh, s'obvious," says Small Boy with an exaggerated eye roll.
"Is it? I thought you were using the dog cage to keep them in - it's a lot bigger," I point out.
"Mu-um!" wails Small Boy. "They would rattle around in that! We have to transport them in the cat boxes and then transfer them to the dog cage once we are at school. That's why I need your help this morning."
I am impressed. He has thought everything through. Mind you, he has been Skyping his Best Friend William about this event on a daily basis, talking through every angle of this venture. I tell myself I can leave Small Boy at school with four Pekins in the sure and certain knowledge that his plans are meticulously laid out and perfectly thought through.
"Fine!" I say. "So you've got nothing to be nervous about. Sit down and have some breakfast."

We arrive at school to find the teacher looking flappier than the flightiest hen. The room set aside for Petz Corner is already full of over-excited children peering at frightened guinea pigs and squealing at a quivering tortoise. The teacher's eyes widen with alarm at the sight of the squawking cat boxes.
"I think you should put the chickens outside," says the teacher firmly.
"But we can't!" protests Small Boy. "It's raining and their feathers will get wet."
It is indeed raining, and a water-logged Pekin is not a pretty sight.
Luckily Molly arrives to save the day. Her pet hamster was due to feature in Petz Corner until he prematurely and inconveniently died, so, having no animal husbandry to attend to, Molly has taken charge of logistics instead. Molly is good at logistics.
"Don't panic!" she says. "I have brought tarpaulin, so even if the chickens kick their poo out of the cage, it won't go on the carpet."
"Poo?" echoes the increasingly alarmed teacher. "No one said anything about poo."
He is clearly regretting not asking enough questions in the Dragons' Den briefing earlier in the term.
At last the Pekins are extracted from the cat boxes, settled carefully in the beautifully clean sawdust-strewn floor of the dog cage, and all is well.
"William!" cries Small Boy, espying his Best Friend. "I thought we said you wouldn't bring all of yours!" He is pointing, aghast, at his Best Friend who is setting down a box the size of a coffin. He lifts the lid and proudly reveals a potpourri of poultry in all shapes, sizes and colours. "We haven't got room for all those!" Small Boy protests. (Though, by the look on his face I think he is more concerned about the fact that his poultry seem rather, well, paltry, in comparison with William's.)
I am about to leave them to it, when the second commotion of the day starts up. This time it is chicken-on-chicken action. (I hestitate to get involved, remembering the last Skype argument William and Small Boy had. It went something along the lines of Small Boy berating his Best Friend for wanting to bring his cockerel, King Louis, into the Petz Corner. "You can't!" Small Boy had snapped. "King Louis always tries to hump my Pekin Titch and we can't have any humping in the Dragons' Den.")
I note with relief that the noise is not being caused by such unsavoury activity, but is in fact a spot of good old-fashioned hen-pecking.
"William!" cries Small Boy. "You've put your Pekin in with mine! And she's pecking mine! Get her out!"
At that point I do decide finally to leave them to it. I am now less sure than I was at the start of the day that this venture will run like clockwork after all. And as for Small Boy and William, there appears to be a large storm cloud approaching in the direction of their friendship.
I drive home, the phrase "Best Laid Plans" echoing ominously in my mind . . . 

Trouble in the Dragons' Den

Things are hotting up for Small Boy and his mates as the deadline for pitching to the Dragons approaches.

“It’s a disaster!” he wails, running out of school, pain etched on his small pale features. “Molly’s hamster has died so we are one pet down for the Petting Zoo!”

“Oh dear,” I say. I cannot say I am surprised. That hamster had it coming. Molly’s mum was forever telling us how she did not think the creature would survive another night, and that she only hoped it would hang on in there for the Dragons’ Den challenge.

“Yes, it is ‘oh dear’,” huffs Small Boy. “Cos now I have to beg James to let us have his rabbit, Graham, and James is not even in our group. He is saying that he will rent Graham to me but when I told him that we had already spent our budget on renting the guinea pigs from Ollie and on all the bottles of hand gel we need, he just laughed and said, ‘No money, no bunny.’”

I stifle a laugh of my own. “Well, it doesn’t matter that much if you are one animal down, darling. A hamster is only a very small pet. People will be much more excited about the chickens and the lambs.”
“Yeah, s’pose,” says Small Boy, sniffing.

“And calling a rabbit Graham is a bit – odd,” I add.

Small Boy grins reluctantly. “I know – that’s Grandpa’s name! Imagine Grandpa as a rabbit!”

I would rather not. I have met this rabbit and it is decidedly cute. Indeed I had enjoyed having a lovely snuggle with it until I discovered it had the same name as my father-in-law. I had handed it back pretty swiftly after that.

“So you see? You’ll be better off without Graham,” I say firmly.
“But the other problem is that now Molly does not have a pet to bring in but she is still in our team, and our thing is the Petting Zoo, so now that she is without a pet we have had to think of another job for her to do,” Small Boy says.

“I see.”

“So she has come up with this idea that we will take photos of people holding the pets and then sell those photos to make more money,” he continues.

“Very enterprising,” I say, impressed.

“But it’s not a good idea AT ALL!” he wails.

“Oh?”
“NO! Because while she is going off printing the photos, who will be there to take even more photos of the people who are waiting? She has not thought about Supply and Demand,” he cries.

“Well I think these are the lessons school is hoping you will learn from doing this exercise,” I say.

“But I don’t want to learn any lessons from it. I just want it to be FUN!” he complains. “I bet the real Dragons’ Den people, or Apprentice people or whatever, don’t have these kinds of problems,” he adds.

An image pops into my mind of Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones arguing over whether or not someone should be allowed to rent a rabbit called Graham. “Not these exact kinds of problems, no,” I agree.

“I hate team work,” says Small Boy with feeling.

Poor Small Boy. It is slowly beginning to dawn on him that life is not as uncomplicated as he had thus far believed it to be. Sadly I feel it is all downhill from here on in.

The Remarkable New Chicken Hotel

It is STILL the holidays. Small Boy's best friend and partner in crime, William, has been a regular fixture at our house this holiday. Their main project has been to construct a new chicken house out of an old chest of drawers and copious quantities of nails, with the aid of the entire contents of Husband's toolbox. I go out into the garden to find the two small boys, heads bent together in earnest chatter, fifteen million different types of screwdriver, hammer and drill-bit strewn about the lawn.
"What I think, is that it's obvious really, and it's that you need to make one of those doors which goes up and down," William is saying. "Coz that's what Adam Henson does on Countryfile, so it must be the best way to do it."
"Well, what I think, is that this is for my chickens and it's my garden and my dad's toolbox, so I am going to try my idea first," says Small Boy, somewhat tetchily.
I regard the rickety construction dubiously. The boys have placed one drawer on the ground, taken a second and upended it on the first to make a closed-up box. They have hammered hundreds of nails at random points all around the sides, but have not succeeded in bashing them all the way through the wood, so they are now whacking the nails flat against the edges "to smooth things off".
"I - er, I hesitate to say this," I begin.
"Yes?" Small Boy juts out his bottom jaw in challenge.
"Well, it's only that I'm not sure you've made this chicken house big enough for any of the chickens to fit inside," I say.
Small Boy draws himself up to his full height, hands on hips and yells, "Are you telling me that I have wasted MY WHOLE DAY MAKING THIS?" He sounds alarmingly like me.
"N-no, well, yes," I admit, backing away quickly. "Why don't you just finish off and then we can do a trial run with the Pekin? She's the smallest," I point out.
Small Boy grits his teeth dangerously. William puts a mollifying hand on his arm. "Let's finish the door which goes up and down first," he says.

Two hours later, the door which goes up and down is indeed going up and down with the aid of an unfeasibly long piece of string. Titch, the shivering Lavender Pekin, has been put inside the box, the door has been lowered and we are all assembled for the Grand Opening. Titch is making some very unusual and distinctly distressed noises from inside the new house.
"I now declare the Remarkable New Chicken Hotel well and truly open!" cries Small Boy, yanking the string which lifts the door and sends fifty-six jaggedy nails flying in all directions.
A small, terrified chicken emerges in the doorway to rapturous applause.
"And now, Titch on Film!" declares Small Boy, waving his iPod in my face.
He proceeds to show me a terribly moving clip of the tiny bird entering the Remarkable New Chicken Hotel with much over-enthusiastic pushing and shoving from two giggling small boys, set against a backing track of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep".
"Lovely," I say. "All we need now is Bill Nighy and Dame Judy Dench, and we could make a fortune out of this."
"Oooh! Enough to buy some more nails and chicken wire so William and me can finish the run to go with the hotel?" cries Small Boy.
"Just about enough for that, yes," I say wearily. "Just about enough."

Chicken Run

We are sitting around the kitchen table, arguing about homework and whether courgettes are an acceptable vegetable to serve to children.
"Personally, I think it is child cruelty, forcing us to eat those things," says Small Boy disgustedly, poking his meal with a fork.
"Why does Dad grow them? They're rank!" exclaims Daughter. "You should feed them to the chickens instead."
"The chickens!" shouts Small Boy, leaping from the table, sending knives, forks and discarded rondels of green vegetable cascading down on to the floor.
The dog immediately wakes from her deep sleep and pounces on the food to wolf it down, only to wrinkle her nose in disgust before spitting everything back out again.
"See?" says Daughter triumphantly. "Even she won't eat them." [Dramatic pause] "And she eats human sick."
"Thank you," I say pointedly. "And - er - where you do think you're going?" I call after Small Boy, who is hurriedly cramming his feet into his wellies, a look of consternation on his pink little face.
"Look outside! It's getting dark! The chickens are out!" With these three sentences thrown at me in disdain, he has disappeared.
Daughter and I sit in silence contemplating the courgettes.
Small Boy is back in under a minute, out of breath and crying, "She's gone! Titch has gone!"

Titch, the Lavender Pekin, has had her beady little eyes set on adventure since the day she came to live with us. I am convinced that her cute fluffy exterior is simply a cover for what is in fact an extremely wily character. She certainly is proof, if needed, that it is often the more surprising things in life that come in small packages. The other night I was on the phone when I noticed a strange grey shape perched on top of the bird feeder. I approached the window cautiously and found myself eye to eye with the Pekin who was roosting precariously and clearly very much out of her comfort zone, two metres off the ground. She was even further from her comfort zone once I had screeched and dropped the phone, causing her to fall off her perch in fright.

Small Boy is beside himself at this latest catastrophe.
"You have to help me look for Titch!" he urges, hurtling back out into the dusk.
Daughter's normal reaction to all chicken-related conversation is to roll her eyes heavenward and withdraw to another room to text about the weirdness of her family to anyone who will take note. But she is no bird-brain and knows a good opportunity when she sees it. She pushes her courgettes away and rushes out after Small Boy to help search for the errant chook.
We run around the garden, searching under bushes and in trees, but all we find are trails of feathers down the far end of the garden near the hole in the ground which we have long suspected is a fox's den.
After a tearful bathtime, during which we are subjected to a "This is Your Life"-style slideshow of Titch's Best Moments on Small Boy's video camera, we agree that we have Learnt A Lesson and will not be leaving the chicken run open in the evening again.

At dawn I hear Small Boy clatter out to the chicken run to dutifully tend to his two remaining chooks. I sadly plod to the bathroom to begin the mammoth task of sticking my face on (a task made monumental by lack of sleep and chicken-related anxiety attacks), and am approaching completion when a little voice says, "Look who I've found!"
Small Boy is standing in the doorway, a tiny, grey, shivering bird clutched in his grubby hands, a bright beaming smile on his face. "Titch! She was hiding all the time!"
We are all delighted and cluster round the chicken as though she is a sacred thing. "She must have had a guardian angel looking after her," I gush dramatically.
"Yeah, a Kung Fu chicken guardian angel who kept the fox away with karate chops!" enthuses Small Boy, waving the bird dangerously around his head.
Knowing a chicken's propensity for pooing at regular intervals, I swiftly remove boy and bird from the cream-carpeted room and usher them downstairs.
Psycho Cat is already in the kitchen, stalking along the work tops. She is very unamused: the morning's excitement has meant that she has had to wait all of ten minutes for her breakfast to be served. She perks up on seeing Titch in Small Boy's arms though, and the look on her face says all too plainly what is going through her fiendish feline brain: "At last, some real food for a change."
"Quick, take Titch outside and shut her in the run," I say urgently, pouncing on the cat and holding her in a head lock.
I somehow think it would take more than an innate feathery feistiness, or indeed a Kung Fu chicken guardian angel, to protect the poor Pekin from a Whiskas-deprived Psycho Cat.
In any case, I'm not taking chances.

Quantitative Easing, or How To Get What You Really Want

Small Boy is sitting in the armchair in the kitchen reading Country Smallholdings magazine and humming the tune to "Crazy In Love" by Beyonce while tapping his foot vigorously to the beat.
I choose to ignore the choice of song, but am curious as to where he has got the magazine from. My son has always been an afficionado of the RSPB magazine and BBC Wildlife, but this is the first time Country Smallholdings has made an appearance in our house. I am a little worried to see he is flicking through articles about keeping pygmy goats. At least he has given up pestering me for terrapins, which was last week's craze.
"Where did you get that magazine from?" I ask casually.
"William," he answers, just as casually.
"Oh?"
I feel a stab of panic. William is much loved in our house and is Small Boy's best friend, but that does not lessen the murmurings of disquiet that accompany the mention of his name, paired as it usually is with some new hare-brained scheme to increase the animal population in our house. William's family have a smallholding which is, quite simply, the envy of Small Boy. It is an envy which consumes him. William has daily access to pigs, cows, ponies, chickens, quail, a Harris hawk, a cat and a dog. William has thus become the benchmark by which Small Boy measures our own animal husbandry, which of course pales in comparison.
"You know this Quality Veezin' they keep going on about," Small Boy says suddenly, breaking into my anxious thoughts.
My mind does a couple of backflips as it attempts to translate.
"Oh, you mean 'quantitative easing'?" I say, as the light dawns.
"That's the one," says Small Boy. "It's very interesting how the banks are going to be printing loads of new money notes, but what I want to know is--"
"Hang on!" I interrupt. "That's not quite what's happening."
"Yes it is," Small Boy contradicts me indignantly. "You said that the bank is going to Create More Money to Solve The Crisis. You said!" he protests. "And if they are going to do that, then I want to know if I can get a rise in my pocket money."
"No," I say.
"But! What! Hey! But that's not faaaaiiiiiir!" Small Boy wails. "If you are getting more money then why shouldn't I?"
"I am not getting more money! No one is. You see--" I begin.
"Well, what on earth is the point of printing more if no one is going to get any then?" says Small Boy with disgust.
"It's not as though you need any more, is it love?" I point out. "The last time you counted up your pocket money you seemed to be doing pretty well."
"But I don't have enough to buy what I really want, though!" he protests, waving the magazine at me ominously.
I peer anxiously over his shoulder at the pictures. "What exactly have you got your eye on?" I ask.
"Well, I think that if I just had another say, hundred pounds or so," he says carelessly, "I could afford one of these coops." He points to a luxury two-storey chicken house.
"I quite fancy that myself," I said, impressed. "I could use it as an office."
"Don't be stupid," he berates me with a withering look, "it's for Marans, obviously. 'Cept," he adds thoughtfully, "I don't really want Marans cos they're too big. But a chicken house like this one would fit hundreds of Pekins!" he brightens.
"No," I say firmly. "No more chickens."
I feel the three hens are living on borrowed time as it is. I had to prise Psycho Cat away from the edge of the run yesterday, as she was licking her lips and getting perilously close.
"All right then - what about an incubator?" Small Boy is not giving up easily tonight. "William says it's really easy to hatch your own eggs and then you get really really cute fluffy chicks!" he puts on his best pleading, baby voice in an attempt to appeal to my softer side.
"NO!" I am getting annoyed now. "I am not letting you hatch chicks and you know very well why not!"
"Is it because you don't want a cockerel?" Small Boy says. He is getting irritated now. "Well, all I can say is, you are not a very animal-minded person. Not like William's parents."
"Huh!" I bridle at this. I am the one who picks up the dead rodents The Cats bring home, I am the one who picks up the dog's poo, walks her, bathes her, takes her to the vet . . . But he has heard this all before and is not going to let me get a word in.
"Anyway," he says, defiantly. "It doesn't matter if we hatch a cockerel. There's an easy way to deal with it. William says."
"I should have known," I sigh. "I suppose William will give a good home to any cockerel we don't want, is that it?"
"No," says Small Boy simply. "But his dad will ring its neck for us."
There's no real answer to that, is there?

Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!

I have had to take myself in hand since hitting 40. And "hit" it I did. There was none of the graceful, nonchalant "turning", which was how I entered my thirties. No, reaching the eve of my next decade, I took a run up, closed my eyes and hit it with a level of force comparable to that of a teenage wizard hurtling towards the entrance to platform 9 3/4 in the hope of a better, more magical world on the other side. I have been disappointed. There has been a transformation, but it has been very much for the worse. There are bits of me which, admittedly, could never have been termed "areas of outstanding beauty" but which, on this side of 40, are now definitely more in the category of "brown-field site in need of improvement".
So it is that I must make my way to the hairdresser's, at intervals of every increasing frequency, to have my unattractive badger-like stripes attended to. Fortunately for me, our local hairdresser's is a place of warmth, friendliness and laughter, which often verges on the hysterical, so that I find I actually look forward to going there.
Especially after the way this day has started. Small Boy is jabbering at me in one ear about his latest obsession, namely his desire to incubate eggs and hatch chickens. Daughter is jabbering in the other ear about how best to apply concealer and whether it is normal to get spots in places on the anatomy other than the face. The dog is concerned that she is being left out of things and is vying for attention by thrusting her wet nose into my groin. The Cats are taking advantage of the mayhem to sneak off and find an unmade bed to roll around in and leave muddy paw prints. I am attempting to drink a cup of coffee and make sure everyone eats something before hitting the school run. Husband has long since left the building.
"So if I could just get Granny and Grandpa to give me the Remainder Twenty-Five Pounds, I could buy the incubator entirely myself and then we could hatch our own chickens!"
I take a deep breath and try to intervene. Small Boy waves his hands at me to prevent me from speaking and continues with a rush: "And I know what you're going to say, Mum. You're going to tell me you don't want any cockerels. Well, I've organised that. William says he will kill any cockerels that hatch and we can just keep the hens."
Oh well, that's all right then. As long as William is prepared to have blood on his hands . . .
"Mu-um! Listen to me!" Daughter is tapping me on the arm repeatedly. It is beginning to hurt. "Can you see where I've put concealer? Can you?" She thrusts her face into mine while the dog shoves her nose into my armpit.
"Time to go!" I cry, leaping from my seat and sending the dog flying.
"And Dad is such an idiot." Small Boy is still talking. "He says I could keep geckos in the incubator! But I obviously can't, as an incubator turns things round and round, so the gecko would have to keep doing somersaults and that would be Cruelty to Animals."
Unlike murdering cockerels, I think. But I don't say it aloud.
Daughter and I spend the school run discussing the finer points of criminal law and whether it is morally correct to defend someone you know to be guilty. Small Boy chips in with impossible-to-answer questions about Life, the Universe and Everything. I begin to wish I had studied something a bit more useful than Modern and Mediaeval Languages at university, and turn up the volume on Chris Evans as he starts to say something incredibly interesting about dinosaurs having feathers. We get stuck in horrendous traffic and narrowly miss being squashed into scrap metal by a particularly vindictive bus driver. I break my vow to stop swearing while driving and get roundly rebuked by both children.
Finally I get rid of everyone, stick on some decent radio and speed off to the haven that is The Courtyard Hair and Beauty.
"Hello, Anna! Would you like a coffee?" asks Lovely Emma.
"I wish we had cake," says Gorgeous Tanya.
"Or biscuits!" salivates Very Spanish Pili.
"Or a Krispy Kreme," coos Hilarious Harriet. "Did you know there's a new shop opening in town?"
"Oh no. I have to be in the right mood to eat a doughnut," Emma shakes her head in disapproval, handing me a steaming mug of coffee.
I smile, sit back and allow myself to be pampered and cosseted for the next hour and a half. Yes, that is how  long it takes to repair the damage that 41 years on this planet and a houseful of children and animals have wrought.
But would I have it any other way? Well, I could do without the badger stripes and the wrinkles, but otherwise, probably not.

Lay a Little Egg for Me

The long-awaited day has arrived. Small Boy cannot contain himself and is illustrating this fact by running around the kitchen in ever decreasing circles, punching the air and chanting, "Chick-ens! Chick-ens!" much to the alarm of the current members of our menagerie. The dog has retired to her basket and is pretending to be invisible, clearly worried that Small Boy's behaviour will otherwise be blamed on her. Psycho Cat has leapt on to the back of the armchair and is hissing a warning that she will act if Small Boy does not shut up immediately. Jet has, sensibly, gone out and left us to it.
"So we're really going to do this, are we?" Husband sighs. He checks the website for the millionth time, in the hope that it might have disappeared since the last time he looked. But no, the breeder really does exist and really does have the types of chicken Small Boy has set his heart on.
"You did say we could go and get them once we were back from holiday," I remind him. I am secretly as keen as Small Boy to replenish our empty chicken run, as the past few chicken-less months have been strangely sad.
I have, of course, conveniently forgotten the downside to owning chickens: how much I swore at Little Brown, Cheeky and Storm whenever they escaped and dug up the veg patch; how I was caught by the postman running around in circles trying to catch Cheeky and shouting high-pitched obscenities. (Absence does funny things to the heart. I even miss Psycho Cat when we're on holiday.) And then there's the dark threat of The Fox and the problem of the Pecking Order (not called that for nothing). Our first foray into chicken-ownership included the upsetting experience of losing our Black Rock, Speck, to The Fox, followed by the exciting episode of welcoming Storm the Silkie into the fold whereupon she was pecked to within an inch of her life by the two haughty hybrids, Little Brown and Cheeky. These, and other, adventures were brusquely concluded by the devastating finale of the entire coup's raid and destruction early one morning, resulting in our losing three chickens in one go.
Since then we have waged war on Not-So-Fantastic Mr Fox and Family and have constructed a Fort-Knox-style enclosure with the help of Grandpa and his electric fence. We are now as ready as we will ever be to try chicken-ownership once more.
"OK." Husband knows when he is beaten. "I'll take you to get some chickens. But we've got to get at least two sensible breeds that will perform their duty. I want some return on this investment," he says, trying to reclaim some authority.
"Oh, Da-ad!" Small Boy whines. "But I've done all this research and I want a Polish Frizzle and a Barbu d'Uccle and--"
"No way. I am not looking after a bird that looks like a 70s Michael Jackson and another that looks like a bearded lady," I say firmly. Even I can see the lunacy in Small Boy's plans to populate the chicken run with prissy Show Birds. "Dad's right. We want some eggs out of this. And we already have one neurotic animal in the house," I add, staring pointedly at Psycho Cat who is having an argument with her own tail.
We finally agree on going for two hyrid birds who will be good layers, and one utterly useless yet gorgeous Lavender Pekin.
A two-hour round trip later and we are the proud owners of a Welsummer called Hazel, an Arucana (blue eggs are promised...) called Chi-Chi and a Lavender Pekin called Titch.

The poor beggars have so far been subjected to harrassment by the dog, stalking by The Cats, chasing by Small Boy's mates and far too much cuddling than can possibly be good for them by everyone else.
I have a feeling they'll be using Grandpa's electric fence as a form of revenge before too long. And it's not The Fox who'll be first in line.