A Cumbrian Quasimodo

I know, they’re cockerels, not Quasimodos. The photo library has its limitations; they’re probably not even Cumbrian cockerels. Read on. All will – or at least might – become clear.

I now live next door to a farm. At least it may be a farm. Or possibly a smallholding. Quite a few sheep are dotted about, munching, but the most numerous and noticeable residents are the free-range chickens and exotic ducks.

“And bantams!” says my neighbour. What exactly is the difference between a chicken and a bantam? I need to find out.They  seem to mate randomly with each other down the muddy lane outside. They obviously assume that their joyous shenanigans are conducted unobserved, but no! I wonder about the results – chucks? bickens? bantaducks?

When does a cockerel crow? Absolutely anytime he wants to is the answer. He quite often comes round to the communal green I look out on from my kitchen window. He stands there solitary amidst the shoulder-high communal grass, crowing for the sheer exhilaration of it.

But I – at the mo – am feeling like Quasimodo. I suppose I shouldn’t have hoped to get away with ten hours of motorway driving followed by a day of wandering around a cobbled northern town in a light drizzle waiting for the keys to be released, then all the unpacking and the hassle over a soon-to-be -non-existent electricity supply. Turns out there is, though not for much longer if I can help it, a pay-as-you-go meter in this property.  It has a plastic key thingy that you pay money onto, and the day I moved in it had only £2.86 of credit left! It took me a whole day of frantic phone calls and drives back and forth up country lanes to the local Paypoint (a little supermarket) to retrieve that situation. But that’s another post, and one which I doubt I shall write. So today, from exhaustion, I am strangely warped and twisted.

I’m fine sitting on the sofa but as soon as I attempt to get up I have a distinct forward bend, with a list to starboard. Also I have strained a muscle in one leg. I try to walk normally but it feels as if the left is three inches shorter than the right. Apart from the cockerel’s sudden serenades it’s very quiet around here. But – ah Esmeralda “The bells! The bells!”