Paradise Lost

Living in rural Northumberland is a conversation with the place. Its landscape, with its mesmeric soundtrack, engages you inescapably. It claims your attention, it speaks with a voice you cannot ignore, it acts on you and it intervenes in your life. It takes over.

In one of my earliest incursions into this magic domain, back in the summer of 2005, I remember a late-night drive up the A1 and then west, past Rothbury. The moonlight was flooding every visible object, moving or inanimate, and it was saturating the air with such intensity that it seemed to make a sound. Wherever you looked there was life, throbbing life. The landscape on both sides of the road was a riot of activity. There were the creatures you knew, some of which you could actually see - rabbits, lambs - but you could also sense other forms of life you did not know, could not see and could not put a name to. They were plural, diverse, and collective. Elves? Giants? Spirits? Tutelary deities? I didn’t know, but they spoke to me. It was not an aural hallucination I was having, but it seemed so clear that I was in no doubt as to what I was hearing.

‘Beware’, they said to me. ‘You enter this kingdom on sufferance. You may be wheedling your way in by means we had not foreseen, but this is not your territory. You watch your step, because we will be watching you.’ I noted the warning, and I drove on, on towards the magic. I entered this fantastical land with full awareness of my alienness and of the conditional nature of my presence here.

And yet, at every step from then on I felt drawn in. This realm of haunted hills, giants and fairies beguiled me. If they were not so imposing and otherworldly, I might say that they were playing with me. In spite of the forbidding tone of their warnings, they also called out for me. I could hear their intoxicating chorus among the trees, behind the hay bales or by the river, on sunny days, on balmy evenings, on moonlit nights or in the rage of storms.

Did I watch my step, as commanded? I did, I am fairly sure on that. I gazed on the landscape with awe and affection, I loved my loved ones to extremes of devotion, I respected their elders, dead and alive, and I cared for the young. I even worked to promote the music of this land, in ways I am touched to see still echoing. I remained alert to the voices of the land, even though soon louder ones inside the house would drown them out for much of the time. One soloist bird, whose name I never had the chance to find out, sang every May and June a playfully melancholy solo with variations, at dawn and at dusk. Five lovable cats called, wailed and growled with an expressivity better than any human’s. A dog sneezed with pleasure. The Northumbrian pipes resounded with a depth that awakened every giant, saint and tree that ever stood on this land. How I loved all this.

One reverse of fortune was the hill. An already narrow passage separating the hill from the back of the house began to get narrower. This seemed to be the result of rainfall and erosion. Rocks and mud would build up on the ground, requiring work with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. I did this a number of times, but before long the rocks and mud would be there again, in ever larger quantities. This became a battle between a man and a hill, and the hill was winning. Eventually the passage disappeared under a heavy mass of rocky soil which was pressing right against the house. I lost peace of mind and many nights’ sleep about this. K was always calmer about things of this kind. Eventually inspiration struck and a strategy was devised, involving diggers shovelling dirt and rocks up from the top of the hill. This made it possible to remove the accumulated matter and to correct the angle of the slope to prevent further erosion. We planted various plants and trees to give the hill cohesion and we built reinforcements at the bottom, at a generous distance from the house. The expense was high, but the problem was solved, and the battle won.

Life went on, happier than before. Kids grew, dog sneezed, cats were born, pipes resounded, music was composed.

The floods of the winter 2015-16 were the second reverse of fortune. We got off lightly considering what was happening elsewhere in the area, but the situation was worrying nonetheless. My error was to think I could fight back again. A battle between a man and a river? It seems comical now. I followed the runoff routes, I studied the river’s behaviour, I called in experts for advice. We implemented as much of the advice as seemed practicable to make the house safer. The fact was, it was a freak year and nothing remotely like that ever happened again, and, judging by statistics, it seems safe to say it won’t. But the unequal fight shook the roots I had been putting down in the place. It took us a couple of years, this place and me, to resume a normal dialogue. Come the summer of 2018 the relationship had been fully restored. The season started blissfully. Day after day in May and June, the word ‘paradise’ was hard to avoid when describing the warmth, the brightness, the beauty of the place.

Then came the third reverse of fortune. It was much more catastrophic than the first two, and this time I made the opposite choice: I did not fight back. I took what came with a resigned fatalism. Was that another error, a graver one which may have cost me everything? Did I have a choice? I am trying to figure that out. Nothing more can be said here. Only that the warnings heard thirteen years back seem to have been fulfilled, and that this time I seem to have lost my place in paradise. I can imagine the wise old men, the giants and the elves shaking their heads. “I always knew it”, they will be saying. “Once an alien, always and alien”. But I knew otherwise, and I still do. I am the only one who knows, and my lips are sealed.


Voices, deities, creatures, spirits: you know I have revered you. With all the respect due to you, I do not accept your verdict. Your paradise is my territory. Its soil is sprinkled with my sweat and my tears. I put all my energies into loving its occupants and caring for them, stealing also some time to sing your praises with new music. I lived and worked in this paradise with intensity of commitment. I came into it motivated by love, and I was true to it. Even where I failed I was doing my best to contain worse damage. I do belong in this paradise. It does belong in me. It will never leave me, and in my heart I will never leave it.

I thank this blessed land for the beauty showed, the inspiration given and the lessons taught. I thank The Farmer for his friendship. I thank the other local figures who helped with some practicalities and who enlivened things with their character. I thank those wonderful cats and dog that enriched life with their playfulness and their readiness to receive and give love.

And yes, above all, I thank that very small nucleus of the main protagonists in this story, the ones who were and are my world. Strange to be addressing you in this way. You mean everything to me. Your safety and your happiness are what I most want in life, and I will not stop working for them. The last word in this epic has not been written. I have faith. Paradise lost can be regained, and for me, ultimately, paradise is wherever you are. Meanwhile, my love and my loyalty are with you, always.

Tiger

Strange time for a cat to go. The news came on 23 December in the form of a phone call from The Farmer. The information had to be embargoed so as not to darken the festivities.

Eleven years ago, Tiger was located online in a search for a Bengal kitten. She was a half-Bengal; our contact with her seller was early enough for the new-born kitten to be named Tiger, our name of choice, from day one. When she was ready, we drove down to Lincolnshire to collect her. At her birthplace, the children of the house seemed sad to part from her; the children’s mother had seemed caring throughout the preliminary contact. “She is a cat that doesn’t purr” she warned us as we left her house. In the car, during the long drive back, we cuddled the kitten, stroked her and talked to her soothingly. Tiger purred.

Back in Northumberland – we lived in the Coquet valley at the time – Tiger’s arrival caused a commotion. Douglas, the slightly older black kitten, was delighted to see us after what had been our longest absence from him – about twelve hours. Douglas ran from K to me and back to K, as if to make sure we were really there. At a suitable time we introduced him to the newcomer. The look on Douglas’s face was something to remember. Thunderstruck first, then incredulous, then hypnotically entranced. His first attempted action was, of course, to come up to her, but his advance was not welcome: Tiger hissed and recoiled. This was the beginning of a difficult acquaintance. Things had not been going badly for Tiger on her journey north; she might have enjoyed her new house by the Coquet, but a needy black cat was more than she was ready for.

For her first night we put Tiger in the kitchen, the warmest room in the house. The following morning she was nowhere to be seen. It took a long search by two people to locate her: she was crouching in the narrow space under the cooker. She had to be forcibly pulled out. As days went by, she showed herself to be a needy cat, quite affectionate if on the demanding side. She did not have the best digestive system. And she remained wary of Douglas.

She grew up to be a lovely cat, with attractive tabby shades and a most elegant white glove on one of her front paws. She seemed inordinately proud of this, judging by her habit of stretching the gloved paw in front of her. She liked to be the centre of attention, and she often demanded this with an imperious miaow that was almost a scream. This was immortalised in a tune K titled after her, Tiger’s First Bird.

Tiger had an unfailing attention-seeker’s instinct, always present when there were visitors, often assuming what she uncannily knew to be her most fetching poses, such as the one with the outstretched white paw. She also ensured she never missed a photo opportunity. I had a goodly collection of images from this time, but it was lost when, ironically, Tiger herself pulled my Powerbook’s cable when the computer was charging, sending it crashing down on the stone floor. This was before the days cloud-based storage became widespread; the loss of this and many other valuable documents marked a turning point in my storage habits.

When, in her second year, we moved to Redesdale, Tiger found herself surrounded by vast fields in which to explore, play and hunt, and more prey than she could catch.  She slowly came to an entente cordiale with Douglas and with Fluffy the dog, and her digestive problems seemed to vanish. Tiger thrived in her new environment.

She particularly enjoyed walking the dog, almost invariably joining in when I or K took Fluffy across the fields or along the river. If the excursion had not started with her, she would demand to join in halfway, announcing herself from a distance with her unmistakable call. Although normal to us, this often caused the hilarity of visitors and passers-by. 

Little by little, though, we became aware of a change: Tiger did not always come home. She disappeared for days, then for weeks, and then for months. More than once we gave her up for lost, but every time she would return. Sometimes she would answer my call around the neighbouring fields; other times she would come back of her own accord. Each time we noticed that her features had become rougher, her voice had grown gruffer and her frame more sinewy. She was no longer a pretty princess: she had become a feral cat.

It would be only too easy to blame the arrival of a younger contingent - Rumble and then Rumble’s kittens - for this change in Tiger’s behaviour. But the fact is that her wandering habit began earlier than that, not dictated by any external circumstances we could see. What kind of inner dictate guided her actions is anybody's guess. 

She certainly was far from welcoming to Rumble when he turned up, hissing at him viciously. Unluckily for her, Rumble grew up to be a plucky fighter, and soon it was Tiger who was in retreat. Rumble acquired a vicious streak of his own, attacking Tiger in and out of the house, sometimes cornering her in such a way that Tiger would start wailing in an uncharacteristically defenceless tone. We found that heart-breaking, and punished Rumble with exclusion whenever we witnessed that behaviour. The tide turned further against Tiger when Rumble had kittens and they grew up, the hostility becoming tribal, and entrenched. Tiger was now a pariah.

We got used to Tiger’s long absences. There were enough cats in the house to look after – four without Tiger, and this only after three of Rumble’s kittens had found new homes. Every now and then, at irregular intervals, when out in the fields, I would hear that imperious call demanding my attention from afar. It was an unexpected joy when that happened, even though the call was getting hoarser every time, and could by now be described as the growl of a wild animal. Sometimes I would pick her up, all wet and sinewy, and would carry her back to the house to ensure she had a good meal and some warmth before resuming her wanderings.

This December, Tiger’s visits became more frequent. She was not an inch friendlier towards the other cats, but she avoided confrontation, and she did not disdain opportunities for human affection or even a nap in a warm place. In the couple of weeks before Christmas, K reported that Tiger had come home almost every day. Was she again a regular member of the family? That would have been a pleasing thought.

On 23 December in the evening, The Farmer phoned to say that he had seen Tiger lying dead on the side of the road. He thought that a speeding car must have run her over. He offered to send a farm hand the following day to give her decent burial. He was insistent that I should not tell K until after Christmas, but K had been in front of me throughout that call and it would have been futile to deny that something was amiss.

Later that night, I decided that Tiger’s funeral should not be The Farmer’s responsibility. When the time came for Fluffy’s night walk, although it was raining I took a shovel with me. I walked in the rain to the spot described by The Farmer, but found no dead body. I walked a long stretch of the road in both directions, but there was no sign of Tiger. The following morning I drove up and down, still to no avail. In the evening, The Farmer dropped by for a Christmas Eve chat. As he was leaving I asked him to clarify where the spot was, but he was evasive; he said he had dealt with it.

So Tiger, the coquettish kitten princess who became a wild animal of the forest, braving foxes, badgers, hostile cats and countless winter nights in the woods – Tiger ended her life not succumbing to any of those extreme dangers, but a victim of a more mundane threat: the stupidity of a human driving too fast.

It is a tribute to this unusual, courageous cat that what overcame her in the end was not any of the dangers she had chosen to face, but the fiercer power of human destructiveness. In the contest between a cat and the forces of nature, Tiger won.

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Bales of hay

Bales of hay, not on my field. Below, right, The Farmer taking them away.

The inclement weather forced The Farmer to return a second time to turn the grass he had previously cut and turned once. I did not observe the work, but the result struck me as artistic. The grass, quite dry by now, lay in a dishevelled rumple and you could almost see its joy for all the air that was now able to go through it. The field was a blow-dried landscape of lovingly tousled cuttings; to stride on it was to experience a tufted softness that even Fluffy seemed aware of, as the caution of his first steps showed.

Only two days later the baler came around. Childcare duties prevented me from leaving the house to watch the process. But when I came out that night the field was transformed. Underfoot was the hard ground again, something not experienced for many months, and, at irregular intervals, there stood these monuments of compressed grass. They have the shape of squat cylinders, more or less as wide as they are high, so it is debatable whether it is right to say that they are standing when part of their curvature – rather than one of their flat ends – is touching the ground. Or should one say that they are lying on their side? Whatever the correct terminology, the hay bales were imposing. They only came to the height of my chest, but, as you knew if you tried to push one to roll it over, they were very heavy. None yielded an inch to my push.

The night was dark and, ever fond of natural light, I was not switching the torch on unless it was necessary. You could feel that you were about to hit a bale from an intensification of the darkness at a couple of feet’s distance. It may possibly have been an aural phenomenon too, the sound of your steps reflecting…no, the bales’ surface was much too rough for sound reflection. Sound absorption was more likely; a deadening of the sound of your steps forewarning you of impending contact with a bale of hay.

The following nights were not quite so dark, and you could make out the bales’ silhouettes against the background of the cloudy sky. Their random placement around the field seemed less random each night, till their positions became fixed in the mind as a purposeful configuration. Without a doubt they had presence. They looked innocent enough in daytime, but in the dark their latent power unfurled. They were the sentinels of the night.

It was sad when, a few days later, The Farmer came to take them away. It had been during their sojourn on my field that a photo camera had seemed a pressing need, but by the time I did something about it the bales were gone.

No answers

No answers means either nobody reads this blog or nobody knows about the cascade of lights. I would believe that I imagined it if K had not seen it too. Never mind.

The Farmer came around a few days ago, knight in shining tractor, to perform the annual shearing of our field. I meant to be courteous when I shut the gates after him, forgetting that he always returns a day or two later to turn the grass. He did that too, but last night the rain started again, putting an unwelcome spanner in the works of hay-making.

Fluffy and the girls have enjoyed being able to circle the field again, as we had been prevented from doing by uncontrolled growth.

Bovine visits

As I write the view from my window is of cows and calves grazing outside. We have no cattle, but one day The Farmer announced that, if he opened a gap in his fencing and reinforced ours, his cattle could have access to our field. He did all the work with invisible efficiency. All we knew was that one day there were cows in our field. We saluted their formidable presence; large, serene faces ruminating with slow persistence, looking at us with a quiet confidence that belied their condition as newcomers in our land.

But we were delighted. K loved the calves, their grace and their agility. I celebrated the fancy that the place looked like a working field. Besides, although we prize the solitude of where we live, the proximity of these large beauties felt exactly right, as if in some way the family had grown. The first night the cows spent near us there was a different feel to the place, one of solid confraternity among creatures. It was with disappointment that we saw them disappear.

We never quite understood what made the cows – or their Farmer – decide when to come across to our field and when to leave. The fact is that their visits proved as erratic as they were welcome. Sometimes days would elapse, perhaps a whole week, without any cattle being seen. And then one day K would phone me at work to tell me that the cows have arrived; she likes to call them coos, with a warm intonation in her voice. I would then look forward to coming home and driving past them down the drive. K was less pleased when occasionally a cow would lean across the fence to eat the holly tree or even the much lower-lying daffodils, but these were forgivable offences. Things changed somewhat when, at the corner where the eaten holly and daffodils, the fence gave in.

Since the beginning of the bovine visits K had expressed the hope that they would be restricted to cows and calves; bulls, she thought, were intimidating and could be aggressive. Fate dictated that on this particular day, the first time cattle spilled onto the drive and the garden, a large bull was among them. I was working in Newcastle; K was alone. She phoned The Farmer for help, but he was out, so she left a message. Then, realising that there was nothing to stop the cattle venturing out on the road, the bridge and the outside world, K walked among the cows, past the large bull, up the drive, and she closed the gate; then she walked back among the cattle. Apart from that, all she could do was wait to see what happened. The next development was that H, one of The Farmer’s helpers, knocked on the door and apologised for the inconvenience. By this time the cattle had been herded back to their farm.

That evening The Farmer dropped in, as is his habit when you have left him a phone message. He explained that there had been a breach in the fence which had now been repaired. In any case, he added, lambing was due to start soon and he did not think allowing the cattle out of their field would be a good idea. I didn’t understand the connection but who am I to question The Farmer’s wisdom?

This morning the cattle came out through the same gap again. Being at home, I did as K had done before me: phoned The Farmer and closed the gate at the top of the drive. The bull’s countenance was such that it made me take a deep breath when walking past him towards the gate and back. And I knew I was not going to try to herd him anywhere. The Farmer was not long to come. He adroitly coaxed and menaced the animals back into the field, except for one black cow who somehow ignored all entreaties and stubbornly failed to join the herd. Thus she attracted her owner’s personal attention. It was a joy to behold The Farmer mounted on his quad, border collie next to him, giving chase to the black cow as it cantered up the hill towards the farm.

Our neighbour returned later to repair the fence again. When he finished the job he apologised.

Far from me to cast aspersions on my neighbour’s fence-fixing, but the evidence of my senses was that in the evening there was a fresh cattle invasion. In what was now a familiar routine, I rang The Farmer and shut the gate. Once again he turned up without delay, but there was pleading in his voice when he asked “Shall I let the cattle spend the night here? Tomorrow there’s a lad coming to fix all the fences up the hill”. I knew my good friend had planned an evening out in town, and time was short. Of course I didn’t mind. So I am sitting in the study, recurrently looking out of the window as a small army of cows and calves under the large bull’s command tread on our admittedly long-neglected garden, patio and drive and help themselves to as much greenery as they can find. Some of them come within touching distance, and although I like the brutes I am glad there is a window pane between us. One needs some privacy to work.

A night at the Riverdale

Bellingham’s Riverdale Hall Hotel is a survivor of a bygone era. Not because it is in any way dilapidated; on the contrary, the building, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, and its appurtenances, of a distinctly pre-World War Two character, are rather well kept. It’s the concept. The owner, John Cocker, oversees everything with a personal eye that gives the place the stamp of his warm, slightly bohemian persona. In spite of the constant flow of guests, betokened by the quantity of vehicles usually sitting in the car park, John seems to know every customer by name, both the locals and the visitors. The place must, indeed, be of considerable attraction to the latter, magnificently perched on the north bank of the North Tyne, with the promise of abundant fishing and an excellent restaurant. But it is not the fishing or the restaurant I mean to write of; it’s the bar.

A small space with a red floral carpet and floral curtains, the bar has no more than five or six tables, but most of the action takes place around the bar itself and in the clearing at the centre, which is warmed by a log fire of incendiary strength.

On this particular occasion K and I went to the Riverdale at the suggestion of The Farmer. It was a Friday night and, as is often the case on Friday nights, there was musical entertainment, in this case provided by the singer Leevi, whom I knew in her incarnation as a music student at Newcastle University.

We arrived around ten and there was already plenty of what can be called an atmosphere: animated conversations in tones that had lost their reserve. The Farmer knew everybody and at once disappeared among his acquaintances. K and I stood by the fire. Soon a local singer, KD, from Falstone, came to say hello. Some other people recognised K and greeted her in passing. From his stool beside the bar, The Farmer glanced over every now and then. After a prudential time, he came over to our spot by the fire and introduced us to his friend B, who was to be the discovery of the night. Tall, brimming over with vitality, a tanned face betraying outdoor work, eyes sparkling with mischief, B engaged K in a whirl of talk, banter and drink. His twitchy body language made it clear he would have liked to dance too, but he confided that his health prevented him for the moment – a reminder that, despite many signs to the contrary, he was in his sixties.

Leevi began her show. She sang pop classics to the accompaniment of pre-programmed backing tracks and of her own guitar. She surprised me with her confidence in front of her audience, and the ease with which she charmed them into listening and participating. She may be learning at university under her student guise, but as Leevi running her own show she certainly knows what she is doing. The songs, varying in pace and character, were unknown to me but not to the audience, who sang along to many of them. There was also dancing at times, of the sedate kind you would expect to see in a cross-generational crowd such as this. Except that at one point out of nowhere came The Farmer with a young blonde grabbed by both hands. Usually measured in action and speech, he was now as if possessed by a demon. He twirled the girl at high speeds, he pulled her towards him and pushed her away without letting go of her hands, he lunged forward making her arch backwards and stepped back to allow her to stand vertical again, and he performed many other moves, too fast for me to register. Our good Farmer had turned into a berserker, and the blonde looked too surprised to resist. When the song came to an end The Farmer gently led his abductee back to her table in a corner of the room, where her male companion waited with a bemused face. Then The Farmer went back to his drinking as if nothing had happened, never looking again in the direction of the blonde who, it seemed to me, had become rather intrigued by the thunderbolt that had hit her. Puzzlingly, several times since that evening I have heard The Farmer tell exactly this story but attributing the actions to his friend B. This must be The Farmer’s personal brand of bashfulness.

All this time glasses of wine – white for K, red for me – had been coming our way from various quarters and I don’t think we had the opportunity to buy more than one in the whole night.

I lost K for some considerable time, so I went to investigate in the direction in which I had seen her go. I found her in an adjacent room, still part of the bar, talking animatedly to a woman I had not met before and, apparently, neither had K. She appeared to be the companion of J, a tree expert who had just devised for us a strategy to deal with the trees around our house. K wanted me to hear it from J, but, once introduced, J was only interested in talking to me about music. He was evidently proud of the presence of several musicians in his family. Pressed by K, he summed up the tree strategy thus: ask R for the smaller tree jobs, but for the bigger ones get somebody with the right insurance. This advice was to capture K’s imagination, making trees one of her principal enthusiasms for some time to come. R, it was clear, was not present at this time; he was to take a while to materialise, but I will expand on him some other time.

Among the younger contingent, in the same group as KD the singer, was Young R, who had served us at the now-extinct Oscar’s and at the till in the local Co-Op. She could not be much more than school age, but clearly she was working hard. In conversation I found out that Young R was studying for her A-levels, one of them in music, and she now had a new job, at the restaurant in a nearby town.

And of course I talked to Leevi, in a more relaxed fashion than it was possible to do at university, and she was introduced to the Farmer, who did not fail to exercise his charm on her. Meanwhile KD had bought K one more glass of wine, which was more than K could drink, so I offered it to Leevi, no thanks, driving, and to Young R, no thanks, underage. K and I together made a brave final effort as we got ready to go home. By this time a new group of drinkers were asking me where I was from, and at this billionth repetition of the same question I said I was from Albania, but this was received so earnestly that I didn’t have the heart to keep it up. I said where I was from on the way out, prompting some to try out a few Spanish words, along the lines of adiós or hasta la vista.

We left with the conviction that the Riverdale would play a part in our lives.

A Christmas offering

Yes, K did get the Maran she had wanted. I, too, had been keen to have a home-based producer of the lovely brown eggs of which The Farmer had given us two examples. In late September I answered an ad in the Hexham Courant, in time for a Haydon Bridge-based, personable-sounding lady to agree to reserve me her last two specimens until after my return from Bolivia, two weeks later. After my trip, it took several phone calls to arrange a viable collection time, partly because I was busy and partly due to the need to give the lady good notice so she could catch the hens. When the day came, the lady’s farm was not easy to find in the dark, particularly not after the first right turn off the road to Haydon Bridge led me, without any warning sign, up a dirt track and right up to the edge of a steep bank from which, had I not slammed the brakes in time, I would have plummeted to the bottom without any prospect of coming back up unassisted. But after that I got the right farm, found the personable lady waiting with the two Marans in a box, and I drove back listening to the subdued accompaniment of their sulky twitter coming from the back of the car. The lady had told me not to expect any eggs before Christmas. One of the new hens was for the Farmer, and he came to pick it up without delay. Fearing a hostile reception from the three older hens, I gave the Farmer the smaller one and kept the larger one, thinking her physical size would equip her better to face the bullying. We called her María.

It soon became clear that María was a different kind of animal. Her mistrust of humans knew no bounds; it was impossible to approach her without sending her into a wild run with loud squawking. This made it difficult to help her when she was being pecked at or forcibly excluded from meals. More critically for us, it made it impossible to herd her into the henhouse, or anywhere else. While Bob Johnson, Rocky and Delilah had always been happy to follow wherever you allured them with a handful of corn, María would not come anywhere near you, and would only bring herself near the other hens with the greatest caution and for short periods at a time. Had she had a traumatic childhood at Haydon Bridge? Or are all marans afflicted from birth by the same pathological shyness? The fact is that it was a very long time before María began to interact with other hens with a semblance of normality. About two months to be precise. By mid-December she was joining her seniors for meals and foraging. She had grown, she had become able to stand her ground, and she even managed to approach within four feet of you if you had some corn to offer, even if the movement of you throwing more corn on the ground would still cause her to run away, sometimes half-flying with her surprisingly nimble wings. The balance of power between the henly generations may also have shifted because Bob Johnson has be moulding for sometime, and at the moment she appears reduced to a pathetic wraith of a hen.

In the morning of 24 December something happened that was to change the hen dynamic in the household. When I went to check the nesting box I found the usual speckledy egg, but also a very small one, of a deeper shade of brown and with speckles similar to Delilah’s or Rocky’s. Only some of the hens are laying these wintry days, so it is hard to tell from numbers alone who was laying what.

On Christmas Day, alongside a normal egg was again an unusually tiny one, this time light-coloured and perfectly smooth, such as might have been produced by Bob Johnson. Was she emerging from her winter moulding and doing it with caution first? Or, more excitingly, was it possible that María the Maran had produced her first two? The thought was too attractive to rule out, and the unprecedentedly small size could be taken as evidence, albeit inconclusive. Later on, we noticed something strange about María: something was hanging out of her backside. On closer inspection, it was a pink, fleshy matter that clearly had come out of her inside, hanging heavily down almost to the ground. We tried not to think too much about it on this special day, and certainly not to look, but I was worried enough to phone the Farmer for advice. In reply to my message, he turned up on our doorstep. He looked at María and declared that nothing could be done for her. She would last another two days, he predicted. There was no fatalist air in these pronouncements; they were matter-of-fact. K reminded us of her uncle’s advice that we should avoid getting attached to hens.

On Boxing Day, the surprise egg was as small as the first two, but this one had no shell and was on the henhouse floor, not in a nest. María herself looked much better: the fleshy matter was not there anymore. We could not find a tasteful explanation for it, and a Boxing Day miracle would have seemed far fetched. We went to see the panto in Newcastle and forgot about María.

On 27 December María stayed in her nest. On 28 December I found her dead. I wrapped the hay she had nested in around her, dug a deep hole in the field and buried her.

María had a brief time in our midst and, unlike all the other animals, was not happy there. Her relationship with the world was uneasy at the best of times. She was more troublesome to keep than any of her peers and at times she caused some irritation. But she made an effort at Christmas time to show that she appreciated our care. The timing of her first two eggs could not have been better chosen. But the exertion proved too much for her. She was either too young or too weak inside to be productive. Gratitude killed her.