Up The Sticks: Chicken Mum

Up The Sticks: Chicken Mum: "Weds July 14 Just spent the morning waving kids onto school bus, chatting to neighbour about how man-wee deters foxes and how I should get..."

Chicken Mum

Weds July 14
Just spent the morning waving kids onto school bus, chatting to neighbour about how man-wee deters foxes and how I should get my husband to ‘mark’ the chicken run (amusing image), then trying to ease fresh eggs from under a tetchy Black Rock called Tick*. Usual mornings six months ago – for ten years – would be spent hungover after press event the night before, dragging moaning children up the hill to school, running for train to work, grabbing Monmouth Coffee in Borough, then sitting in front of flickering computer screen for eight hours fantasising about this life, the one I’m in now.
I don’t want this to be one of those smug lifestyle blogs, although journalists are by nature quite smug , or rather good at their own PR. For example, I could live in debt ridden, drunken squalor in Peckham, as indeed I did for ten years, and simply point out my fabulous friends, glamorous parties, witty children – having such a lovely, busy, rounded and fulfilling life, can’t be bothered to clean boring house, or water potted twigs in tiny patio garden, or de-nit kids, or sort out tedious finances. And why would you want a proper garden when you’ve got a park?
Thinking back, I was effectively a South London Pikey pretending – courtesy of a few props: a Boden cardigan, a 70s Danish chair – that I was in fact Mariella Frostrup and lived in Notting Hill.
So now, from Londoner’s POV (which I still have, just) am a lonely bumpkin talking to cats and chickens all day and eating too many cakes, chatting to my friends for hours on the phone every night while working my way through an entire bottle of East Anglian Pinot Noir and waking with a big wine-stain Wife of Joker smile and a sore head at 6 to let the chickens out. Which is not entirely wrong.
From a Country POV (which I am acquiring) most Londoners aren’t as interesting as they think they must be just because they live in London. They’re mostly sort of less interesting than ordinary people, but they can hide it and indeed surpass their innate tediousness by being a lot more fun socially. Which I like and understand, and can’t do here - in Suffolk, one mile from the nearest village, in the next field to a strange Slaughtered Lamb style pub - otherwise I risk a local reputation, or even new local appendage such as ‘cor she loikes ‘er drink that one, bloymey!’. So, no more cartwheels at closing time for me.
The main – and quite endearing – thing about being a Londoner is that you are essentially, deep down, a misfit and a c*** who knows nothing at all, except how to make yourself appear socially accomplished if eccentric, and eventually acquiring an almost Jedi-like ability to move amongst a huge seething variety of people without getting shot at or punched. All these skills are so pointless in the countryside, all you’re left with are the middle bits, the ones that made you leave your home town and move to London in the first place.
BUT you’re a chameleon in London, therefore the assumption is you could transfer those skills to other parts of the world, blend in nicely, make friends, create another little London-on-whatever. That may be true. We thought we’d be burned alive for sporting a certain brand of wellington boots that scream I’M A LONDONER IN A FIELD, but actually Suffolk folk – to make a broad, unfair generalisation, based largely on one or two comments and the colour of East Anglia on the post-election map - are too busy worrying about immigrants that don’t even live here to judge us on our cuntish faux-country attire.
Anyway, next week is Latitude – will blog from the Family Field, which will, of course, be full of people from London, who probably own eggloos and grow vegetables on their windowsills and are doing everything I’m doing anyway, but in London. And they’ll all be thin, the bastards.
*Big mistake, letting kids name pets, ideally so they’ll bond with them and feel partial responsibility. This doesn’t work in two ways. First, they don’t clean out the litter trays or chicken coops. Second, all the animals have absurd or embarrassing names. For example, have two kittens named after characters from Twilight, Emmett and James (the shame! Makes me sound like one of those sad James Patterson fancying grown-up mums. Keep pointing out to sniggering Vet Assistants: ‘My daughter named them’. Note to self, do not wear Goth outfits to vets.) The chickens –bearing in mind they’re all women – are called Kidney, Tick, Danky Ronalds, Penguin, Zelda, Ginger and Belle (from Beauty and the Beast –the Disney version, not Cocteau). Two are unnamed, mainly because they’re about to become Power Rangers.