Chicken surprise.

There was another bonus that came with the property (although at first I certainly didn't see it as a bonus) which was chickens.

Now all I saw when I looked at the corner of the paddock was a wire box with horrible scratchy, smelly, NOISY chickens.

My wife Jo fell in love with them, making a string of approving sounds such as "awwww" and "oh lovely". I WASN'T so keen, knowing full well (like with previous examples of pets of kept animals) that it would be me trudging out to look after them, feed them, water them, clear them out and generally keep them after her initial enthusiasm of throwing a few food pellets through the wire had worn off.

To cut an extremely long story short (and indeed, cutting out a lot of detail that would take me pages - and days to write) we managed to get the property, and all the other boring processes had begun, like planning applications and other legal whatnots.

One thing I knew I had to do was to finish the fine job of putting up a chicken wire (or as we country outsidey folk say - rabbit fencing) fence around the entire paddock that the previous owner had started. The other job I just HAD to do was to make a new gate/door for the chicken run, because the old one was completely rotten, the hinges rusted up and it was generally falling apart.

Suddenly I realised that I was actually able to do it myself (I did an apprenticeship in Carpentry and Joinery when i was 16) so I went to work making a new door, which actually turned out to be really good fun and looked the part too - which was a bonus.

This gave me a little boost, and I started to think of other jobs I was able to do. I carried on with the fencing - getting materials very cheaply from builders merchants I had either managed or worked at in the past - at last all those days of putting things on shelves, shuffling paper and getting it in the ear from moany employees was starting to pay off!!