The Egg Incident

 At the weekend, Nigel was cultivating our smallish garden and I was inside, writing.  Every so often he would stride purposefully past the window carrying a spade or fork.

After 8 months of gardening, particularly intensive due to this year’s special circumstances, I wondered what could be left to do out there.

Suddenly he rapped on the glass, making me jump.

‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found!’

‘Is it a frog?’ Tetchily.  It is usually a frog.

But no, just by an iris, a complete chicken egg, partially buried.

‘Could it have been kids egging the house on Halloween?’ 

No – it was several feet from the house and not even cracked.  As if it had been laid down carefully.

Laid.

The Vicar next door sometimes kept chickens.  Occasionally the chickens got out.  Once in a blue moon they appeared in our garden.

We could think of no other source for this egg, so we shared the story with him.

He said that they haven’t had chickens recently due to the depredations of particularly active urban foxes.  So that egg had to be more than a year old.

Nigel shook it.  Something inside rattled.  Yep. This was an old egg.

So it makes you think, doesn’t it – if something as large and obvious as a chicken egg could remain unnoticed in our well-tended small garden, what other amazing creatures are there for us to discover on this great planet of ours?  And can we find them before they become extinct?

 

The Gin Incident

 When the R number soared at the end of October, I booked in a series of online shops. 

For each one I put in a placeholder order of a high-value item which takes me over the £40 limit needed to get a delivery.

A couple of days before the delivery I go in and remove the high-value item and put in the list of what we really need.

What could possibly go wrong?

Now my high-value item of choice just happens to be three bottles of gin.  Doesn’t really matter which gin as I’m going to take it off the order. 

I had idly thought that the profile derived from my shopping habits would portray me as an acute alcoholic, purchasing three large bottles of spirits each week.

This Monday, when the doorbell rang, I went to receive my supermarket order from the young delivery man.

“Good morning.  Would you mind taking it through to the….”

The words died on my lips. 

At my feet was only one crate.

In the crate were three large bottles of gin.

“This isn’t my order!”

The young man smirked.  He had heard it all before. 

In retrospect, I gave in too quickly.  I should have insisted on seeing the paperwork or asked that he take it back.  But I knew deep down that it was my mistake – I had amended the wrong order.

Looking around nervously in case any of the neighbours was about, I grabbed my haul of gin and retreated indoors, clanking.

My shopping will come next week.  At least the gin will make the wait pleasant. 

The Goldfinger Incident

I’m a bit of a fidget.  If I’m talking on the phone I like to use a headset and find a task to keep my hands busy.

It was time to ring John, an elderly friend from church.  So I decided to make some Christmas decorations out of materials I already had, the remnants of previous projects.

“Hello, John.  How has your week been?”

Since John is confined to his house and my adventures have been curtailed by Lockdown, it is hard to make the conversation sparkle.

“It’s been mild for the time of year, hasn’t it?”

I laid out some cones gathered from a giant redwood and drilled holes in them.

“The Autumn colours have been lovely, but the leaves are falling now.”

So far, so good.  I was having a nice catch-up with John and being creative at the same time.  I felt positively smug.

Looking at the decorations however, they seemed very…brown.

A little gold paint would make it SO much better.

I found a half-used spray can. Unfortunately the gold paint had formed a crust which meant I couldn’t depress the nozzle. 

I pressed down harder.

Suddenly, there was a crunch and the nozzle was now stuck down, in spray mode.  Gold paint was bubbling everywhere and pooling on the worktop. 

I gave up trying to have a civilised conversation.

“Oh no.  This is the only gold paint I’ve got!  I have to use it.  So I’m putting my hands in it and rubbing it over the pine cones…It’s going everywhere.  I look as if I’ve been in a punch-up with Tinkerbell – and lost!”

Judging by the chuckles from the other end of the phone, I think John enjoyed my combination of craftwork and phone call rather more than our usual sedate chat.

And the paint did stop coming out eventually.

 

Unsung Heroes of Lockdown

The new Lockdown stole up on me unexpectedly.  I hadn’t been watching the ‘r’ number, and it did all seem to happen swiftly.  But I guess that’s all part of the exponential curve with which we’ve grown so familiar.

However, sometimes it is good things which arrive unheralded. 

This Autumn I’ve enjoyed seeing the bright fly agaric toadstools near our home which live most of the year invisible beneath the soil as hyphae.

Field maples are scrubby hedgerow trees, but around now their foliage is pure gold.

Spindle trees are insignificant bushes most of the year, but in Autumn their leaves turn fiery shades, and they yield fabulous pink berries which split to reveal orange seeds.

The wild stinking iris has a drab brown-purple flower, but right now its seed pods are splitting open and showing off their magnificent scarlet seeds.

So I guess there are wonderful things out there - we just have to wait for the time to be right and to keep looking out for them.

 

 

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