One always has to do everything oneself, or at least check on it. Not that it was Wince’s fault in the least, when he kindly filled up the chicken feeder, that he didn’t mention to Wink that it was the last bag of corn. I was away at the time and she was in charge, but there was no reason for her to know. It was completely my responsibility but, having been away in America and then in Reading, I lost track of when I stocked up. So I went to tip a new 20 kilo bag into the feeder last night and the storage bin was empty apart from bags of chick corn and oyster grit. There was enough for a light breakfast for them, but I had to go out first thing (no breakfast for me, I didn’t deserve it) and get them more food. It was raining, so I just took a bucketful of food for the day and have left the rest in the boot of the car for now.

The girls are averaging about 4 eggs a day now, so there’s a gradual buildup. I didn’t bother with pancakes today and I have fish at the beginning of the week, but I had an egg for my late breakfast and I’ll eat eggs the rest of the week to catch up. Thank goodness that fasting for Lent isn’t required nowadays (and never was in my family, I suspect my parents would have thought it a bit ostentatious) because all those lovely new-laid eggs would have to be stored for weeks and weeks. Lent is really at the wrong time of the year for those who followed it strictly.

The Arts Society lecture, as NADFAS is now known, is tomorrow and the friend on the committee to whom I made a half-hearted offer to help with the website will probably want to talk to me about it. If it’s complicated, I’lll have to plead old age and an inability to learn – which will be true if I can’t do it on my Mac. I can use a PC, just not very well.

We have been without a post office in the town for the past year or two – or rather, with a temporary one in a room of the Council offices, with only one postmistress (I can’t think of a gender neutral term and it does describe Fiona) and space for one customer at a time. Everyone else has to queue outside. The silly thing is that the proper post office building has been unoccupied for the five or more years – could be a lot longer, I can’t remember – since it was closed down. It moved to a newsagent, but that shut down, so it was homeless. Anyway, it’s been announced that the post office has got a new permanent home at the Gay Shopper, a small supermarket in the town, next to Boots the chemist and just behind the main bus stop, so it’s a very good situation. Not as good as the proper post office building, of course, which was always busy, but we are glad that we’ll be able to queue indoors and at least poor Fiona will have some company.

This week, I’m thinking of my family in America. Dan’s daughter has been having stem cells removed from her blood, for them to be donated to him to attempt to cure his rare form of leukaemia. They’re all looking on the positive side, he’s up for a long and gruelling time and he’ll have to quarantine at home for the whole year, only going out to doctor’s appointments. Victoria will have school, but Rhonda will be almost as isolated as Dan is. They’re facing it all head on, with courage, and there’s no alternative if he wants to live more than a very few years, it’s a very daunting prospect though. My heart is with them.