Chickens or Swallows... the choice.

Spring is finally tottering towards us, the swallows will soon be back.
This means I cannot shut the top half of the stable door, at present the winter quarters of the chickens.
If I leave it open all night then, in short order my hens will be joyfully removed by the vixen who trots through the garden every night at exactly 7.20pm.
I baulk at the idea of hauling the henhouse back to the run so invest in a new one and it is duly installed, with a ladder at the same height as last year.
The chickens are now truly feral in daylight hours, roaming the garden at will, eating my crocus and scratching in the flowerbeds.They are particularly fond of the warm space under the solar panels. Chicken Heaven.
They do not take kindly to the restriction imposed by the hen run. They sulk. Egg production drops.
I decide to compromise, if they are good little hens and go back to the run come dusk, and put themselves to bed they can have the front garden to play in all day. After all, what are a few demolished pansies between friends?
Does this work. No it does not. Hen number four, also called the Lone Ranger due to her tendency to explore, get lost, panic and freak out, decides that she will not, yea cannot, climb the ladder.Despite the best efforts of "Hope" to demonstrate, every night as dusk falls you will find me, on all fours, scooping her from under the house and stuffing her without ceremony in through the pop hole to join her smug mates who have already taken the best perches. 

Its too high she shrieks every morning as I let her out and she flings herself off the ladder in despair, vainly flapping her ridiculously small wings as she tries to slow her descent.
Perhaps I will let natural selection take its course and spread a little happiness amongst some fox cubs!

The road less travelled.

How delightful, sitting in a hotel room in Luxor, to see courtesy of CNN that: "the economic capital of the world is closed due to snow".
Amazing that London is still considered the economic capital of any where!
Returning to snow bound Heathrow, the journey to Malvern proved to be a circuitous route.
The Heatrow express failed to express. My direct train thus left 90 seconds before I boarded it.
The subsequent journey involved alighting at Moreton in Marsh, being driven by a fellow traveller's husband to Worcester, many thanks once again to the unknown knight, then waiting at Foregate Street for an small eternity for a train to Malvern.
It barely seems worth mentioning that a train pulled in accompanied by the announcement that "the train on platform 1 is the Paddington train" No hopeful traveller boarded it. It pulled out.
The stationmaster then informed us that "that was the Malvern train."
For one brief second I was as one with the lynch mob.