CSI chicken

It is with a heavy heart that I belatedly announce Salt and Pepa & Spinderella are no more. Some of you may know already, but for those of you who don't know they're up in the great chicken coop in the sky. A fox, probably on crack, managed to get in and he killed them all, taking Pepa with him. Friday 21st January was a cold, morbid day, let me tell you. I said it was, 'like a scene from Taggart'. As usual my brain wasn't very good at dealing with a catastrophe.

However, it wasn't all doom and gloom as we had our very own crime scene investigator, detective Frank Smethwick (Eric), King's Heath only feline forensic officer. He was prowling the scene, sniffing for trace evidence, taking dna swabs and swinging a mean right hook at me when I went to stroke him. You just can't interrupt him when he's doing his profiling. His testosterone is in the ascendant. Seriously though, it was very sad. We hadn't had them very long at all, but a G Unit that works together stays together, so there was not

hing left to do but get on with work.

It was a morning and afternoon of endings and beginnings. An eleven year old cactus had also perished, which seemed to reinforce that point. However with a bit of JLS on the old dog and bone (damn good acoustics in the dome let me tell you), we were soon clearing up and moving on. To the musical majesty of Beat Again, One Shot, The Club is Alive we laboured. Parsley tidied up the feathers and the bodies of our feathered friends. I was digging up the mound of soil which is behind the dome, filling up cement and compost bags - sixteen of them! My pythons

were singing like Tom Jones by the end. Hernia schmernia! To get me in the mood I stole the phone and played some drum and bass. Cakea-giga-tonne was appalled : 'You're as bad as those rats on the back of the 50!' I was, I am still prone to flipping out the blackberry wannabe and splashing on some grime. But only in the garden.

Alan, Parsley's dad, was constructing a wicked chicken run that was going to be placed on the raised bed. It was all industry. After lunch, served on a silver plate by Cakeatonne, I moved the bags to the bottom of the drive. Three at a time - they were some big mothers. It doesn't end there as there's many more to move in the not too distant future. I will get that Greek god physique. And there will be more chickens. Read on.