HD (Hen Day) minus 2!

Only two more days til the hens arrive and I'm starting to worry.

(By the way, I think till should be spelled til, don't you? It is not a cash register, and surely it should align with until?)

Have I ordered the right feed? Organic chicken feed or layer pellets, what bedding should I get, will the shredded waste paper from the office do? Seems very green, but is it okay? What about old clothes, nice warm fleeces? Some web sites say straw, others that this encourages mites, so wood shavings, others say not as they are too dusty? What is a new hen owner to do? Last time I felt like this I was pregnant and dreaming I had forgotten to buy a cot and I had to make a bed in a drawer?

Like having my baby and thinking up names ( I was also sure she was a girl) I had lots of ideas on chicken names - they went as follows: Charlotte, Emily and Anne, with Branwell as an option if I ever added a cockrell. Penny, Pippa, Precilla, Gertrude, Geraldine, and Margot, Barbara, Clarissa, Jennifer, Rosie, and Jemima. For a while Geraldine and Jennifer (two fat ladies) were favourite, I love old English names. Then I made a complete arse of myself at the ski lake. (Main hobby for last 10 years or so is, waterskiing - and making a compllete arse of myself) telling people, I wanted to name the hens old fashined names like Geraldine, only to realise a lovely fellow skier - Geraldine - was sat right behind me and was laughing, indeed howling at my lack of tact. As anyone who knows me would expect, I did not manage this with any degree of grace or humility, but ploughed on, my mouth would not stop, as I dug the hole deeper and deeper, my lake friends watching the train wreck in horror, and even while still banging on about what a pretty name it was, how it was the name of The Vicar of Dibley, my mind was screaming - stop talking! But no, my mouth continued to blurt rubbish in a ridiculous attempt to cover up my embarassment. Open mouth, insert foot!

Anyway, now I am pretty sure I like Connie (or Constance) and Evelyn (or Eve), the names of my two dear departed grandmothers. Lovely old fashioned English names that hopefully will make my family smile, and amuse my daughter.

Connie was deaf as a post, but knew exactly what was going on, you could not get a thing past her as I learned to my cost when trying to hide an early addiction to cigarettes, no chance, she knew I was smoking, and lying. Connie and her husband Bill had a huge garden and she was always pickling, jamming and cooking the produce, and they had lovely homegrown dried flower arrangements.

Evelyn was a tough old girl, who survived the unfortunate and early death of her husband (Bicycle accident, fell onto road spikes!) and whom I remember taking me out on the bus in the summer holidays, quite the aventure to places like Flamingo Land. She hardly ever seemed to listen, and watched Coronation Street like it was a religion. Evelyn smoked like a trouper, so had no idea about my secret addiction, in fact she was a perfect cover!

I wonder if I name the hens after these two ladies, one will never hear and one will never listen? I quite the fags so neither of them can grass me up now.

I need another name, as there will be three hens: Two Meadowsweet Rangers (Ginger Nuts) and one Miss Pepperpot. Lizzie wants this one to be 'hers' and wants to name her Pepper, I think she was up all night thinking of that one. I still think Geraldine. I guess I just cannot back away?

I guess, like having babies, it sort of doesn't matter what I think now, they will arrive and they will let me know what their names should be. The whole time I was pregnant, Lizzie was Hannah! Hannah Elizabeth, yet when she arrived, late (a life time habit) and forced out of her warm resting place (another lifetime habit) she simply wasn't Hannah, so it all got swapped around and Lizzie she is.

Right, off to the local pet store to spend money on every variety of feed and bedding they have!

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