A task he takes very seriously:

Every day:

Of course, all reasonable people are used to this backwards and forwards nonsense with every kind of food and drink under the sun and routinely laugh it off with a good dose of “all things in moderation” common sense. Only the media seem to suck it up like a sponge, with this latest egg story apparently being headline news everywhere.

I was blissfully unaware until it was given a prime slot on the BBC evening news, the highlight being the way they managed to wheel out the amusingly named Lucy Egerton from the British Egg Information Service without cracking so much as a childish grin.

The cynical side of me though, as always, responded with a weary “who paid for this ‘research’ then?” No surprises in the answer, or the fact that you have to dig a bit deeper than the news stories (a.k.a. press releases) to find out. It was of course the egg industry, which also seems to double up as the acronym industry, what with the BEIS (British Egg Information Service), the BEIC (British Egg Industry Council), BEPA (British Egg Products Association), the BEA (British Egg Association) and many more.

None of this though, should detract from the fact that you should eat eggs. Because they’re nice. Poached, boiled, scrambled, fried or omeletted – you can’t go wrong with an egg. Ok, you could – there is eggnog, for example. But in general, my advice, which I say is just as valuable as some ‘scientific’ research paid for by a vested interest, is to eat plenty of eggs. I wouldn’t advise eating eggs produced by an industry though – instead, eat eggs produced by a free* and happy chicken, preferably your own.

*As with free software, the “free” is as in freedom, although of course if they’re your own chickens you don’t pay for the eggs)

A couple of weeks ago I was out for the evening and when I got up the next morning and went out with the dog, Nibby was watching from the window while I let the chickens out, which seemed a bit odd. The reason became apparent when six new chicks came chirping out of the chicken house.

We haven’t hatched any eggs this year – these ones arrived (on the sly) at a few weeks old. The cool-looking white one in the picture is apparently a Barbu D’Uccle. The others are crosses between that and various other strange-sounding breeds.

Unfortunately, it was that same cool-looking white one that I saw flying across the orchard while I was mowing this morning. Not under its own steam, but in the jaws of the dog. After a long chase, I managed to retrieve it and apart from being covered with slobber it seemed to have survived the ordeal unscathed, so hopefully more pictures of this feathery footed beastie will follow over the coming months.

Firstly, the garden is infested with rats, living under the garage and sheds by day and brazenly strolling around at night. They’re so cocky I came face to face with one last night, close enough and for long enough that I could see that it appeared to have had half its face ripped off. On further inspection though, it was not bloody but smeared in the fallen plums it was casually dining on. Unfortunately, just as I was about to stamp on it, it sensed the change of mood and hurried off. I’m quite fond of rats really and if it wasn’t for the vast range of diseases they threaten to inflict on our determinedly barefoot toddler, they could stay. Instead, I’ve made a pact with Yoda (pictured right) whereby a dead rat is exchanged for a pouch of Whiskas and she seems to have got the hang of the arrangement already.

A more immediate threat comes from the fox that’s been spotted twice this week circling our orchard. I rather like foxes (there’s a pattern emerging here) but those chickens and turkeys are destined for my stomach, and any possibility of a four-legged attempt to intercept them needs nipping in the bud. We’ve had a successful visit from Mr Fox before and it’s a very unpleasant experience. The birds are on an early bedtime regime until further notice, and better still the farmer’s son is on the prowl with his shotgun. Hopefully the fox will take the hint and stay in the woods where it belongs.

I’ll spare you the tedious details regarding the moles, flies and wasps, but at least the last two won’t be around much longer. To cap it all off, letting the turkeys out this morning I had to dodge sideways to avoid one that was coming straight at me, and in doing so blundered straight into the path of another which hit me very hard on the side of the head. On the plus side, the force of the blow indicates that they’re growing as intended, and apparently they’ll be too big to fly soon anyway.

Despite the sudden explosion of techy posts on here, life in the real world goes on. The highlight in recent weeks was my sister’s wedding, which was a brilliant day. Mia, in particular, enjoyed it immensely, singing away to herself throughout the service. Afterwards she played the church organ and followed that up with running round and round the outside of the church at high speed with me in tow. You might think that would tire her out, but she later spend a solid four hours on the dancefloor at the reception.

We’ve also done a couple more laps of Swinsty Reservoir, where I was pleased to discover that the keystone god I found last year has a colleague at the other end of the reservoir.

Menagerie-wise, the ducks may have moved out, but the turkeys (six) have moved in. They’re very cute and lovable at the moment, although I have a sneaking suspicion they will become irritating in a month or two. The two new chicken chicks are doing well and had their first outdoor adventure this week, while the previous batch of eight are now so huge I’m wondering if we need a larger oven.

Two quick snippets of unrelated randomness:

1. The things that were recently tasty eggs are now cute chicks, as of last Sunday, hence the picture. Only two though – one yellow, one black. The majority weren’t even fertile this time around, so perhaps Fred is losing his touch.

2. I was planning to go to bed two hours ago, then I started playing with Mnesia, which is Erlang’s distributed database. Very interesting indeed, but I need to stop doing it immediately and go to sleep instead.

Having been abandoned for the evening, I was feeling rather peckish, and all we had in were eggs, so I decided to poach a couple. The eggs in question are earmarked to go into the incubator tomorrow, and should emerge as cute baby chicks in exactly three weeks.

For some reason, it felt rather odd eating these eggs, compared to ‘normal’ eggs. This was doubly strange, considering that I ultimately intend to eat them anyway when they become big fat chickens.

As an aside, something else that’s odd is that pretty much everybody who discovers that we intend to eat our happy and healthy chickens expresses their horror with a “how could you?” and then zips off down to Tesco to purchase a tortured beast that is frankly lucky to be dead, having spent its ‘life’ in a dark cage.

Anyway, back to my ‘point’ (there isn’t really one of course) – a vegan wouldn’t eat the egg no matter what, that seems pretty straightforward, but I believe that a vegetarian would eat an egg. However, at some point during the next three weeks, it will magically turn into something they wouldn’t eat. When does that happen? At the point where we said “these eggs are going in the incubator”? Tomorrow? Next week? When it hatches?

I can’t figure it out, but they were very tasty eggs anyway.

The young chickens are not quite sure what to make of them though, and much fun was had today herding the ducks towards them and watching them scatter left, right and centre. I tried to capture the excitement on video, but I guess you had to be there:

Talking of the young chickens, they’re doing very well. Unlike the ducklings, they’re extremely friendly and like nothing more than to be picked up and stroked. They have no idea that they’re going to end up on my dinner plate, and that’s just the way it should be. In the meantime, they’re a happy bunch, at least when the ducklings are not bearing down on them.

I seem to have gone into ranting mode this week, so I’m going back to cute pictures until I can think of something nice to say about someone or something.

So here’s a picture of my big fat cock.

Just Daddy & Mia today, as Nibby is off doing some horsey thing all week. The day started with me trying to feed 1 toddler, 8 ducklings, 8 chicks, 3 hens, 1 cockerel, 1 cat and 1 dog, put the child seat in the Merc and get going in time to get to Wetherby for 9:30, all in most awful torrential rain. By some miracle, we pulled out of the drive at twenty past, which is more than enough time for the short journey. Unfortunately, we’d only got round the first bend when progress was obstructed by a selection of fire engines and ambulances, seemingly due to the fact that one of the many morons who drive down this road had finally achieved their intention of hitting another vehicle head on.

Due to an unfortunate quirk of geography, in the form of the River Wharfe, the shortest alternative route is a good 10 miles (I’d guess) which in this morning’s weather conditions took half an hour. Along the way, several other morons* attempted to hit us head-on, and we negotiated various flooded sections of road.

Anyway, we made it into town eventually – late, but not too late, for my first experience of Jo Jingles. It was pretty much as expected really, with me literally breaking into a sweat trying to keep the wilful and rambunctious Mia under control while everybody else’s toddlers appeared totally compliant. Mia’s primary point of interest was attempting to take over the CD player, and when repeatedly thwarted, switching it off at the plug. “Don’t worry, you’re not doing any worse than your wife does” I was told ‘encouragingly’. Still, it was good fun all in all.

This afternoon, a trip to Sainsbury’s, which involved driving though several rivers and lakes which had appeared where the road was supposed to be. The highlight for me was buying a litre bottle of own-brand shampoo for 29p, and noting that the ingredients were the same as all the expensive crap in our bathroom. Also a 29p bottle of shower-gel, which has the same ingredients as the shampoo. If my hair falls out as a result, I will post pictures here.

Talking of ducklings (I did mention ducklings several paragraphs ago, try and pay attention) I’m sorry to report that the imprinting thing doesn’t work quite the way it does in the cartoons, and I’m not mummy duck after all. I didn’t spend enough time with them in the first few days, and they’re totally wild and petrified of me, which made cleaning their pen out last night a traumatic experience for them, and indirectly me. In the end, rather than try and get them out I had to ‘build’ and new floor and slide the walls from the old one to the new with the ducklings in between.

Right, that’s more than enough typing for a day when I’m not working. The original question of whether anything interesting happened is totally subjective of course, but I suspect the answer is no for the majority of people.

*The morons along this road come in two categories, dopey housewife and be-suited sociopath in BMW. They’re only distinguishable close up though, since the driving is the same. Too fast, not in control of the car, and frequently not even looking where they’re going.