It's a Small World in Buckinghamshire + Live From the Chicken Run

I'm just standing in the chicken run. I don't know if you can hear some of the hens. That's Yolko just over there. What have I got behind me here? Oh, that's Jemima. Then we've got Mo, who's the cockerel. The others are just having some breakfast. I've given them their corn. So we've got Pepper, we've got Scarlet, Lulu, Marmalade, Biskwit, Ginger. Is that everybody? Oh, and Vanilla. So yeah, since we extended the chicken run, they absolutely love it. It's given them a lot more room and yeah, they love running up and down. They've got lots of space. All the food is now on the floor. They're not very neat eaters, but yeah, they've been eating less corn recently, well, less layers pellets. I think it's because there's so much other stuff now on the ground for them.

So anyway, I've been planning to do some recordings about some of the tech that I use. So there's Voicenotes, there's Twos, and there's Kortex, but I haven't really got time this morning because we're traveling down to Buckinghamshire. Tomorrow, we're going to be doing some filming for a Sunday morning TV programme that's probably going to go live, I think, our episode in about June. I can't tell you much more about that because we've signed an NDA, but yeah, we're going down there today. Filming starts at 8 in the morning. It's mostly for my husband Chris because he's the Patron of a UK charity, and the theme is about mental health and loneliness. So he's going to be talking about that and the impact of losing his sight in 2008.

But I was looking at the location of the hotel last night, and I realized it's literally a stone's throw away from the house that my Mum and Dad lived in when they were down there. You could probably, if you're in the right room in the hotel, almost see their house from the hotel. So we're going to do a little detour, and I'm just going to have a look at the house. It's quite a while; I would have been, how old would I have been? Probably early 20s actually. So I don't really remember a lot about that house. I wasn't there. I lived in London whilst they lived there. But I found it on Google Maps, and yeah, so I thought it'd be interesting just to take Chris around there and drive down the road and describe it to him because we are just two minutes away from it. It's quite funny really.

So yeah, that's what we're doing today. I'm just standing here now. There's lots of birds, and they love it because there's corn and stuff on the floor, so they steal quite a bit of that. But I think they're also nesting at the moment. We've got a big bonfire built. We're not going to light it because we think that there's some birds' nests in there. But there's yeah, lots of little sparrows flying around. Quite quiet otherwise.

Yesterday, I was just driving down the lane, and this little animal came out of the field on the left, and initially, I thought, oh, that looks like a piglet because it was quite squat and it was sort of a reddy-brown colour. And then it raced off down the lane, and I'm following in the car. I couldn't get close to it because it's going quite fast, and I thought, no, it looks more like a baby deer. That's Mo making that noise. Yeah, so I thought it looked more like a baby deer. Anyway, I googled, and it came up with a Muntjac Deer, which looked very similar to what I'd seen. So yeah, that was quite an incredible sighting. Apparently, there are these deers in Derbyshire, but that's the first time I've ever seen one. So yeah, they must be around here somewhere. So it ran up the lane and then went into a field on the right-hand side. And that was that.

But yes, I'm just going to do the water for the hens. I've not done that yet. I just let them out and gave them some food, collect the eggs. And then I'm going to water all the plants that we've been planting. So we've done, we did quite a bit yesterday, actually, potatoes in, tomato plants. I've got some pumpkins, I've got some other unusual stuff. So, yeah, I need to get all those watered. And whilst we're away tonight, Phil's going to look after the hens and hopefully water all the plants again as well tonight and get them up in the morning. Well, the hens, that is, not the plants.

So that's it from me. I shall update you after our little trip. I might record a few messages whilst we're there, if I can, being suitably discreet. And yeah, I shall be back soon. Thanks for listening.