Marigold is going to be a tasty chicken – she has eaten all my coriander. All the coriander that I have grown from seed and zealously guarded from the slugs and snails. I need a recipe...

We got hooked on the TV series "Life on Mars". I relived my youth. I watched episode after episode. Cramming as many into an evening as I possibly could. I would find myself scanning the backgrounds looking for clues as to what life was really like back then. How could we have managed without the internet, mobile phones.

(Sam trying to call a mobile phone number)
Sam Tyler: I need you to connect me to a Virgin mobile number - Operator: Don't you start that sexy business with me, young man. I can trace this call.

and

Sam Tyler: This place is like Guantanamo Bay.
Gene Hunt: Give over, it's nothing like Spain.

And the clothes – specifically one stripey skinny rib sweater that I can feel on my skin now. A hot cold tight nylon itchiness. The cars. The wonder of having no TV in a pub. But most of all the theme song. It has become the music we wake up to. The song that we listen to in the car. So it has wormed it's way into Kepler's life experience in the same way it worked into mine way back when.

I watched him today as we were in the car. I could see his face in the rear view mirror and he looked at me and we both sang. Loudly.

It's a god-awful small affair (a very serious expression going on) To the girl with the mousy hair But her mummy is yelling "No" (he's picking up on the volume) And her daddy has told her to go (sort of sad) But her friend is nowhere to be seen Now she walks through her sunken dream To the seat with the clearest view (rising emotion) And she's hooked to the silver screen But the film is a saddening bore For she's lived it ten times or more She could spit in the eyes of fools (reaching a fever pitch) As they ask her to focus on... (yes! this is great)

Sailors fighting in the dance hall (belting it out now)
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy (he loves this bit - no stumbling over words here)
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It's on Amerikas tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns (why?)
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on...

Sailors fighting in the dance hall (here we go round again!)
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Marrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs? (Really really loud. His mouth is gaping and the whole bottom of his face is shaking and shuddering with the swelling emotion of the whole experience and he keeps that level right to the very, very last note.)

So

Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow?

Alyosha asks what that means.
K says "It's not that he grew up to be a cow. It's that he bought a calf and raised it into a cow ... soooh! (ergooh!)... Mickey mouse has grown up a cow.
So A says: Why would he do that – he's just a mouse.
For the milk.

Of course! Why else. What morons we are (this was fully implied in Kepler's tone). In the many millions of hours I have spent over the years listening to that song it never once occurred to me that we were talking about milk. Milk.

More funny lines from Life on Mars

How can one natural thing be bad for another natural thing?

As always a long time between blog entries. And I seem to have blogged about hens before but NOW we are the proud owners of three chickens. Harina, Max and Marigold. Not obvious names – apart from Marigold – and I don't know where Harina came from. Kepler thought of it after deciding against Hank. Hank had been a favoured name until that point for every insect that he captured. It sounds Morrocan but I don't know. Max was named after our friend Max who was over here when we went to buy the hens at the market. Kepler decided Max was a good name because Max is black ... Kepler thinks Guy is black too ... and the hen is black – ergo Max.

On Helen's advice they were locked in the hen hut for a week to acclimatise. Apparently once they know their house they don't wander too far from it. That has proven to be true. They are actually very sweet in their own way. They definitely have their own personalities but they haven't as yet sorted out their pecking order. I have seen quite a few skirmishes. For direct descendants of the mighty tyrannosaurus they are quite... chicken? They tend to keep to the hedge – for cover I presume but when I go out into the garden they get a little braver and venture out into the open.

Yesterday I was digging up a patch in the garden to transplant Kepler's abandoned giant (not yet) sunflower seedlings and I felt that goose-fleshy weird sensation of being watched. I turned round and they were standing right behind me. Six pairs of very beady eyes on me. It was truly a Gary Larsen moment.

No eggs yet. Alyosha pointed out that it probably would have been cheaper just to buy the eggs what with the hen house, the feeders, the feed, a water dispenser and the chickens.

We have had the talk with Kepler about eating them. His chin trembled and he said he could never eat a chicken again. My response was that if having chickens meant that he was going to stop eating them then they would be back at the market pronto. Since we do eat chicken wouldn't it be better to know that they had had a happy life? He ageed to this provided we didn't eat Harina. She has no idea how lucky she is.

So ... NO ... that is neither Harina nor Max nor Marigold cooked to a delicious golden crisp. That is "Fatty". Anonymity makes eating flesh so much easier I think as I wipe the golden meat juices off his chin.

This one took shelter under a rug but Emmenthal got him out. I helped him escape. One dead thing a day (other than a mouse) is enough. This little fellow had obviously lost his tail once before, as you can see where a new one has regenerated. But he survived, new tail intact which makes me wonder about the tail that I found under under the rug. An unknown victim. Or maybe it was the same lizard checking out his old tail.

We got the cat to eat the mice, that ate the rice... and as it turns out, the walnuts but he is seems to have developed a taste for little robin red breasts. This is the second this year. The first almost got away. The cat chased him through the house into the laundry and I watched in that slo-mo crouching tiger hidden dragon kind of way as the bird slew through the air past my eyes, every tiny detail of his feathers in full sharp focus, the cat arcing through the air below him, tracking him with his locked on eyes. I turned and smiled. He was going to make it. Through the door. Escape outside. But he's a bird and rather than choosing the big empty half of the doorway he chose one of the tiny dusty, dirty little glass frames. In the nano second that he lay stunned on the floor the cat had him and made off, with me running behind slapping him with a damp towel. And the cat looked at me, the bird in his teeth, and the bird looked at me with his big eyes. One saying "Why are you hitting me?" and the other? I don't know – I can make a guess at Emmenthal's thought process but a bird? He looked pretty sad. The towel didn't indicate to the cat that I really would like him NOT to kill the bird so, a little miffed at his unjustified punishment, off he went with his prize.

Mama, I don't want to eat animals. An egg has an animal inside.
Actually what is in that egg would never have become a chick because the daddy hen didn't put his "didi" in the mama hen and fertilise the egg.
He looked very thoughtful about that. It is a weird one. I find it hard to comprehend myself.
Then why does she lay an egg?
I don't know (thinking... but I will find out).
Do people eat eggs with chickens in them.
Yes, in the Philippines they eat something called balut. The egg is full of the chick.
Does it have feathers and everything?
More like fluff they haven't turned into proper feathers yet.
I wouldn't want to eat that.
I know, because you don't want to eat animals, but if you do eat chicken then eating balut is the same thing. It's just that balut is smaller and still in the egg.
That's wrong..
Why?
Because it is just a baby and it hasn't had any life yet.

I did a little digging:

"Roosters have needle-like penises and after a hen lays an egg the rooster sits on top of the hard eggs and penetrates them with their 'needle.' The egg easily seals over the tiny hole after a day or two."

Really? But that doesn't sound credible. But maybe? I read it on the internet. People wouldn't want to deceive us by writing something that wasn't actually true would they? No. I cannot believe this is how it happens except in the minds of those who believe that humans sprouted fully-formed in our current state, along with all other animal "kinds". Or in the world where babies are found in cabbage patches. Thankfully, with the help of the BBC and various animal documentaries – including a very interesting one of elephants mating(!) – and some strange, and often uncomfortable, discussions with K he understands (roughly) how babies are made and I think he would see that it's not like this. A rooster with a diamond sharp penis running around drilling eggs.

This would seem more likely:

HOW DOES A HEN FERTILIZE AN EGG?

When a rooster mates with a hen, the semen is stored in the oviduct for later use. When she gets ready to lay the egg, a sperm fertilizes the egg before the shell surrounds it. The sperm is viable for about a month in the oviduct.

As to why she would lay "empty" eggs it would seem that she is just getting rid of them. They form, they grow and out they pop.

So he was content to eat an egg on top of his fried rice.