Shortly before the end of term there had been a day when, for some reason, I’d felt a little sorry for myself. It was a Friday and I had gone to the pub with colleagues after work and the sun had smiled on us, so all the ingredients were there for a jolly start to the weekend, but although the sun warmed my face, my spirits remained cool. I took Rusty down to the beach on arriving home and whilst I was there, my lovely boss messaged me to ask if I was ok. I explained I was just having an off-day and after a few interchanges, the idea of a Toby Hunt was born. We earmarked a day in summer for the occasion and it would be an all-day event, the purpose of which was to scout around for a titian god-like creature called Toby and perhaps have a bit of fun along the way.
By the time the day arrived, it had turned into a expedition involving around a dozen of us, all from work. Of course, some things had changed since the idea was first mooted, like my wrist breaking. Actually, that was the only thing really, but it was enough. It meant I had a good excuse for having a wash and blow dry for the event, at the hands of The Italian. I decided that it would be the last time and I would struggle through somehow after that, as I was concerned that wrong ideas were flying around with abandon. I’d become friends with The Dude again, too, after emotions had become less raw and I had concerns there, too. He’d actually regretted ending our relationship and tried to claw back the hurtful words that had been thrown my way in the heat of the moment, but for many reasons I wanted to stick with the relationship ending.
So anyway, we met on the boardwalk and The Toby Hunt kicked off with a jug of Pimms. We moseyed around down on the seafront for a while, enjoying the sun and eventually, slowly, made our way into town and hit the cocktail bars. At some point we ate some food, because we were downing copious amounts of booze and someone sensible (one of the science department, I believe) pointed out that it would be prudent to cushion the litres of alcohol sloshing around inside our stomachs with some food. I think we settled for something very hip like nachos which probably didn’t help much at all, but by the time they arrived even the science department were necking 2-4-1 cocktails and so there was no-one left to look after the proceedings in a responsible manner.
In the initial stages of The Toby Hunt, it seemed that our number multiplied with every bar we visited, until there was a sort of crescendo around 6pm, when I wasn’t sure if I was seeing double or if there really were lots of people in attendance. Then the opposite happened; with every bar we visited between that time and midnight, we seemed to lose people, until very late at night, when we actually ended up in the folky pub where it had all happened and there were about 4 or 5 of us left. 1 or 2 people really needed to go home by then, but of course, the more people need to go home, because of drinking to excess, the less they realise this fact, or want to go home, even if they do realise.
So, there we were, relaxing with one last drink before going on our homeward journeys. I started to recall the night I’d met Toby, as he was the reason for the day out in the first place. We were at the bar and one of our number thought it would be a good idea to interrogate the barmaid about Toby. He didn’t run this past me at all and when I realised the situation, I gave him some stern looks that said ‘N0! No! No’. But he ignored me. Another friend had done that exact same thing in the early days, but that was different; since then, I’d become a bit of a regular and I felt known in the pub for that reason and I didn’t want to become known for being a mad, needy weirdo! Gosh, I thought, if I’m worried that that’s what I’ll seem, maybe I am a mad, needy weirdo . . .
‘Erm – excuse me – do you have a regular in here called Toby?’
Argh! The embarrassment! And of course he isn’t a regular, I thought . . . I’m in here so much, I would have met him by now if he was!
‘Hmm . . .’ she replied, ‘there is a chap who comes in here sometimes called Toby.’
What? No way . . . Is this Toby Hunt actually going to prove fruitful?
Colleague turned round and winked.
‘He’s a friend of the Rastafarian guy who plays reggae in here,’ she continued.
‘Oh -I know him!’ I commented. I didn’t actually know him, but I knew who she meant.
I felt slightly light-headed for a couple of seconds. I saw the Rastafarian playing reggae in The Folky Pub every Sunday. I’d got to know a few of the musicians, so it would be easy to get an introduction. Original Blues Guy was the obvious choice, so I texted him.
‘Can’t remember his name,’ he replied to my text, asking what the Rastafarian’s name was.
‘But you chat to him every Sunday! I’ve seen you!’ I replied.
‘Can’t keep up with you,’ he retorted, ‘First it’s Toby, now it’s the Rastafarian.’
‘No! This is all still about Toby!’ I struggled to hide my frustration.
So I left it. I can introduce myself to him, I thought . . .

When everything came crashing down the previous autumn/winter, I lost a fair amount of weight. I hadn’t really needed to lose weight, but I was quite happy being slimmer. I felt it was the silver lining to an otherwise dull cloud of doom. But as I started to recover from (soon-to-be-ex) hubby leaving, the weight had surreptiously sneaked back on so I was back to my usual, passable weight. At the start of the summer I was looking forward to doing a bit of walking, cycling, maybe riding, to get a bit fitter and maybe lose a little weight again. But a fitness regime was thrust upon me, somewhat. I couldn’t drive, of course, so walking everywhere, just after one week, shifted more weight than was necessary, but I was down with that. A pleasing thing to come out of a not-so-pleasing thing. And because I had to walk/bus everywhere, I had no reason to curtail my drinking while I was out, as I couldn’t drive home anyway. Another pleasing thing.

I bussed into town the day after surgery. Or was it the day after that . . . the memory is a little fuzzy roundabout that time. Possibly a side effect of a cocktail of painkillers, as were the nausea and acute tiredness. I found myself overwhelmed by a desire to curl up in a corner of the Co-op and sleep like a dormouse, on more than one occasion. And I had to get off the bus early on this particular journey into town, whichever day it was, as I was certain that the no 27 bus was going to be treated to a technicolour yawn. Hence, as soon as I felt I could withstand the pain, I weaned myself off pill-popping to give myself some quality to my summer holiday.

So, I met with (soon-to-be-ex) hubby to talk money and divorce. It would be the first in a series of meetings involving coffee, to talk about the aforementioned things. I felt guilty to be the pathetic owner of a wrecked wrist. It looked like a cheap ploy to invoke pity but there was little I could do about that. I told (soon-to-be-ex) hubby about the wedge too, again, feeling guilty that it seemed like a ruse but I was struggling to keep it to myself and as we had been close once, it felt natural to tell him. I’d been referred by this time so I just had to wait a couple of weeks for my hospital appointment. After some time we parted and I made my way to meet Rhiannon who wanted company to go to the hairdresser.

There was no appointment made so we wandered around a part of town where there was a cluster of salons and randomly chose one to check out. The man at the front desk had his head down as we entered and spoke, still with his head down, engrossed in paperwork, when we first entered. Immediately the voice sounded familiar and when he finally raised his head I realised why: it was The Italian!

We exchanged niceties, I explained about my arm and he booked Rhiannon in to have her hair cut right then. Suddenly, I became self-conscious about my hair. Having a broken arm that must stay dry, meant that my hair had become rather lank and greasy. The embarrassment of him stealing occasional glances at my locks forced me to ask him if he wouldn’t mind washing my hair? So after he’d cut Rhiannon’s hair, I was treated to a professional hair-wash and he insisted upon no payment. Maybe he felt guilty about the Buddhist altar situation, or maybe he was just a nice guy. But anyway, I went back a few times over the summer and in return, I took him out for a drink to thank him for keeping my hair shiny and happy.

House viewings were the order of the month and they were time-consuming, without the ability to drive. Joseph accompanied me to most of them and he also kept the house sparkly for potential buyers, which was necessary for the process to play out, but so very appreciated. Viewings were sparse, which was frustrating as we had found the house we intended living in. But that’s how the process of house-moving has earned its accolade of being one of the most stressful events in one’s lifetime.

The previous summer I had bought myself a pretty, 50s-style full-skirted dress, complete with petticoat. I had barely worn it, so I’d promised myself a few outings with said dress this summer and one still, warm evening I decided to wear it to an Open Mic night. I wriggled into it, as best I could with a useless right arm, but struggled with the zip. The bus was on its way, I hadn’t left yet, there was no time to change . . . I was in a corner. I had no choice but to go for Option 3. I grabbed a light jacket which would cover the open zip and therefore my exposed flesh and went for the bus. But I was rather hot and sticky by the time I arrived in town and anyway, I wanted to show off my dress without a jacket ruining the style. So I asked Original Blues Guy to help. This couldn’t be done in the pub, so we exited the pub and slipped down an alley-way which ran alongside it. So there’s Original Blues Guy, trying to fix my zip, his face right up to my zip which runs down my left side and it’s difficult because I keep laughing, which fills up my lungs and makes it harder for Original Blues Guy to do up my zip, which makes him laugh, until we’re holding onto each other, laughing and me still with my zip undone so I look like one of us has half-undressed me, and one of the other Open Mic guys walks past this otherwise deserted alley-way and just stops, and looks, and makes one of those knowing laughing sounds . . . It is no wonder that it took me quite some time to convince the Open Mic fraternity that I was not in a relationship with Original Blues Guy.

So, when a good friend kindly took me to see Miss Saigon in the West End, I opted for a pretty polka dot dress that had no zips, buttons or other awkward bits that needed closing. It simply stretched on and stretched off and so there was no need for him to accompany me to any alleyways and be subjected to an embarrassing situation which he might not have found as funny as Original Blues Guy did. Miss Saigon was entertainment enough.

A short time later, when my sister was generous to enough to give me and my mother free tickets to the opera at Glyndebourne, I decided to give myself time to negotiate the zip up the zipper, so I could wear my pretty petticoated dress once more. All was well and I managed to dress myself without the need for assistance. After a long but beautiful day attending the opera and picnicking in the grounds, feeling the part in my dress with the awkward zip, I returned home, ready to sink into slumber. But my dress had other ideas. The problem lay in the UNzipping this time . . . I was trapped. I tried force, gentle coaxing, wriggling . . . but still I was a prisoner in my awkward dress. I dozed off trying. I awoke, a short – or was it long, I’m not sure – time later and tried once more. I cursed my wrist for being so useless and my beautiful but deadly dress. Which must have worked, because magically, the zip unzipped and I slid out of my cotton prison and finally fell into my bed, still clutching my dress . . .

So I left the hospital, armed with a large quantity of co-dydramol and with my arm in a cast and a sling. Jamie kindly drove us all home and we picked up a takeaway on the way. My left arm had a baptism of fire whilst it tried to learn to do all the things that my right arm had taken care of all my life. It was an interesting process . . . I’ve attended so many courses where I’ve been asked to write my name with my left hand (it’s becoming pointless as I’m getting good at it) and whereas it’s second nature with one’s dominant hand, it’s an entirely different process with the other. You have to think about what you’re doing, as your hand has no memory – so to speak – of carrying out the activity. This was my experience with a useless right arm. I was fortunate, though, to have my children home for the summer, and along with my left arm, they seriously stepped up.

The day of the operation arrived and that was one long day. My sister kindly delivered me to Haywards Heath, accompanied by my children and little did we know that we would spend several hours in a waiting room, watching daytime TV with no access to a remote control. Eventually, they gave me a nerve block, which is one of the most surreal experiences ever . . . I had no idea how heavy my arm was until then! My arm was numb, impossible to move and not like my arm at all. It was like some dead appendage hanging from my collarbone. So anyway, the op began and I was surprised to feel the knife. Apparently this happens sometimes . . . some know-alls have announced to me that ‘everyone feels something’ when you have a nerve block but this was pain. Enough to make me cry so they gave me a choice: a general anaesthetic or pure oxygen. I opted for the latter; although a nurse friend has informed me that it must have been something else that I can’t remember, as they don’t just dish out pure oxygen. Unless you’re Michael Jackson I guess. But then he probably didn’t get it from an NHS hospital. Anyway, whatever it was, it was rather lovely. They told me it wouldn’t take the pain away but I would stop caring. They didn’t tell me it would make me talk like a runaway train to the poor doctor who sat next to me for the duration, but there we are.

I had thought, up until that day, that the pain of my wrist snapping was possibly the most pain that I could withstand without just dropping dead from it. I wonder what they say to men in this instance, but when you’re a woman who’s experienced childbirth, medical professionals use that experience as a yardstick for measuring your pain. When the paramedic who rescued me asked, ‘On a scale of 1-10, with childbirth as 10, what . . .’ without hesitating I replied, ’11!’ before he’d had a chance to finish the question. So when the nerve block started to wear off that night, despite having had a nightcap of ibuprofen and co-codamol, I was shocked that my pain threshold could actually rise to 12. My poor children were kept awake by my groans of pain and when dawn broke at around 5am, seeing as they had sat with me for half the night and had lost all hope of returning to sleep, they made me some scrambled egg on toast, the taste of which I can almost taste now, it was so appreciated. I had barely eaten the previous day, due to the op so I was pretty hungry. I had borrowed a bread-maker for the summer and amazingly, I could still manage to use it one-handed. And what with the home-laid eggs from my funny chickens, it was no ordinary scrambled egg on toast.

I had to wear a splint and a sling still, as although I had a metal plate inside my wrist to hold the two halves together, it was still broken and needed to heal. I say ‘plate’ but actually, having seen the X-ray, it kind of resembled a brush . . ? But anyway, as one does, I put my faith in the medical profession and assumed that this was what a plate looked like.

With the exception of a few toes, which, frankly, don’t count, a broken bone was new territory for me. I gazed at my wrist and sobbed into the puddle. Where there should have been a straight line, there was something resembling two sides of a triangle. I sobbed some more, partly from intense pain and partly from sheer self-pity, as I was just days into the long, luscious, summer break and I’d broken a part of myself. And also because my wrist looked grotesque, to be honest and I realised that I had never fully appreciated how straight my wrist was before I snapped it in two.

I needed help, but since the drop in temperature, it had become eerily quiet down on the Undercliff. I lay there, holding my wrist, feeling as if I had to hold it together, for a few minutes until I saw a woman pushing a pram. I was by the wall and she was by the cliff, so I had to call quite loudly to attract her attention. I was stifling sobs, still, but was clearly calling her to come over and help me. She stopped and stared for a few seconds . . . she was drinking a soft drink from a paper cup with a straw and looked quite young. I called her a few times before she decided to come over – she seemed unsure about the whole situation and I struggled to figure out what her concerns were. But she came over and helped and for that I was grateful. I explained my predicament and she called for an ambulance. She passed the phone to me when the telephonist requested it and while I spoke, another lady came to help who happened to be a trained nurse and was pushing a pram too. The telephonist was unsympathetic. I was treated to patronising comments like ‘I understand that you THINK you may have broken your wrist,’ and uncaring comments like ‘I think you can make your own way to A&E,’ so I abandoned the call. A cyclist came to offer what assistance she could and it was decided, since she had wheels, that she could go to the café and alert my daughter to the situation. I was a 10-15 minute walk away from the café, so I decided to get up and retrace my steps to the café at least, where Rhiannon was and take it from there.

A chap in a mobility scooter had joined us too, so the four of us – well, six including the babes – set off slowly to the café. Somebody must have taken control of the dog, but I forget who. The trained nurse was concerned I might pass out and insisted on supporting me. I didn’t feel like passing out, but her support was appreciated. I held onto my wrecked wrist because it seemed to ease the pain slightly, yet every step seemed to compound the agony. The young mum chatted and kept everyone jolly, as did the chap in the mobility scooter who offered me a ride. I felt like I was in one of those adventure movies; the sort that involve a journey and an unlikely mix of people end up journeying together.

This particular journey seemed to last an eternity, but at some point I spotted Rhiannon plus boyfriend walking briskly towards this curious crowd. We were close to the café so I said my thank-yous and farewells to my rescuers and headed up to the café. It happened that my beautiful Greek friend ran the café and he took charge. That is, after recovering from nearly passing out at the sight of my wrist with its bizarre, new shape. He called for an ambulance and had better luck than me, then brought me Fanta and chocolate. This is what friends are for.

A paramedic arrived with a welcome, shiny canister of Entonox. This was so different from the treatment I received from the cold-hearted telephonist. He smiled, said ‘hey – you must be Lisa,’ and then said, ‘I’ll take some details from you after you’ve had a few minutes alone with the gas and air’. This was a nice man. I said – no, I think I sobbed – ‘thank-you’, then got spaced out on oxygen and nitrous oxide.

He had a car, rather than an ambulance and I sat in the front seat with the canister on the floor. Rhiannon sat in the back (her boyfriend having offered, very kindly, to take Rusty home for me) and chatted to The Nice Man while I continued to inhale copious amounts of pain relief. I remember travelling down the hill from Rottingdean to the roundabout at Ovingdean . . . again . . . and again . . . and again . . . Evidently, I’d had way too much laughing gas but as the alternative was intense pain, I stuck with feeling high and experiencing repeated journeys, that weren’t happening, on a loop.

On arrival at the hospital, The Nice Man abandoned me, presumably, to rescue other people and took the canister. I must have looked particularly forlorn, because he stopped, unscrewed the breathing tube, handed it to me and told me to ask for another canister to go with the tube. During the looong wait in A&E I did this several times but all to no avail. No-one would give me another canister, even though I actually started flagging down people in the corridor that looked like they might be employed, in some capacity, by the hospital, to beg for one, proffering the tube, as if it were proof of my entitlement to a canister.

But eventually, two doctors manipulated my wrist, by pulling it in opposite directions. Because the big bone had completely snapped in two, the two halves were at an angle with each other and they needed to pull them apart and push them down so that they were at least in the right place and pretending not to have parted company. Then they plastered my wrist and sent me off to X-ray, where it transpired that the two halves were not in the right place. So the cast was removed and they did it all over again, keeping my spirits up by teasing me about my hot-pants. I explained that I hadn’t planned on going to hospital, that it was dog-walking attire, but they laughed and said that I was obviously on a man-hunt. If I hadn’t been so high on laughing gas, I would have argued, but I just laughed, because that’s what laughing gas does to you, unless you’re in the throes of childbirth, because contractions and laughter really don’t go together.

By this time, Rhiannon had contacted her brother and so I had the very welcome company of my two children and Rhiannon’s boyfriend as he had deposited a confused Rusty home and popped into the hospital to join in with The Broken Wrist Party. They were all rather entertaining, particularly whilst awaiting the second manipulation, when one of them realised that we were alone with the laughing gas and suddenly the plastering room became full of the laughter of four people. I have a vague recollection of one of them pretending that the plastering room was actually the set of Star Trek . . . potent stuff, that gas and air. If we hadn’t all been so happy and carefree, we would have been embarrassed when Rhiannon’s boyfriend was actually caught inhaling Entonox when one of the doctors burst into the room, unexpectedly.

But anyway, to my relief, the second manipulation was successful and I remarked that I was relieved I wouldn’t have to have surgery.

‘Oh no!’ the doctor laughed, in reply, ‘You still have to have surgery! We were just getting you ready for surgery! You’re going to have a plate put in, in five days.’

I had discovered a whole new world of live music in town. Original Blues Guy played in a different pub every night from Sunday-Thursday and I was enjoying trailing round the eclectic mix of pubs he frequented for Open Mic nights. There was some overlap with musicians; some faces became familiar and I was enjoying the uncertainty of every evening’s entertainment. Some pubs were jazzy, some folky . . . sometimes covers dominated the evening and at other times it was mostly home-spun music. Some musicians were ridiculously talented while others were clearly trilling and strumming away for the sheer love of it, regardless of their talent or, in some cases, dare I say it – lack of it. There wasn’t much of the latter, to be fair and it didn’t matter because no-one played for long and if they were enjoying themselves then there was no need to judge.

After a while, it became clear that this was a whole new world of which I had become a part, even if I was on the side-lines, as a spectator. It reminded me of the world of theatre, of which I had been a part for most of my life. It is as if each city has several dimensions and you can only enter a new one by way of a very gradual process. And once within that new dimension, you become a part of the fabric of it and you can only leave as gradually as you entered. I was still – just about – a part of the world of theatre, but I was losing my hold on it. I hadn’t trodden the boards for two or three years and was keen to become a part of that world once more. Everyone told me I should, so that was one of my plans for the summer. Find a suitable, forthcoming production and audition for it.

But meanwhile, I was excited by the prospect of Original Blues Guy teaching me how to play the guitar. He was an artist too and had invited me up to London to go to an art exhibition on the same day he had a gig in Pimlico. His constant pestering for a relationship was concerning me, though. Was I leading him on? I didn’t think so; I made it clear I wasn’t interested but I enjoyed his company. He seemed to have a complicated life – I felt I wasn’t hearing the whole story about his relationship status, which was off-putting.

I wasn’t on Tinder at all, since that last fateful Tinder date. Meeting Toby in a place I liked, doing something I liked, was far more fulfilling than starting a relationship as a 2D image on a screen. So I’d deactivated my account and deleted the app. Tinder had served a purpose; it softened the blow of rejection and abandonment, but that was all I had ever needed it for. If you’re keen for a relationship and going out and about hasn’t worked, then it’s a good thing. But I wasn’t keen for a relationship and I hadn’t given ‘going out and about’ a go. When I say I wasn’t keen for a relationship, I mean that I was happy being single until I randomly met someone, again, in a place I liked, doing something I liked. I figured that I would just as likely meet my match in those circumstances as in a dating app. And until then, I was enjoying the benefits of being single.

The children were home from uni so I had cut back on the social life and was enjoying their company. I’d put the house on the market too, so I knew that summer would be busy with viewings, both of my house and potential homes for us. On this particular day, there was a calm after the storm. There had been rough seas the day before but the wind had calmed down as the sun came up and late morning was making promises of a warmer afternoon. My son was with friends in town and my daughter’s boyfriend had stayed over. As I left to walk the dog, they left for a late breakfast and so we strolled together, until we reached the cliff-top café where they would soon abandon their breakfast . . .

‘Why don’t you join us for breakfast?’ invited Rhiannon.

I turned her down, on the grounds that I’d had breakfast and wasn’t that hungry. I would regret that decision later.

I was dressed only for walking the dog, in hot-pants, a skimpy top, an over-sized floppy sunhat and with my trademark rucksack slung over my shoulder. I was enjoying the walk, but was preoccupied. I would be moving house for the second time in a year which, although my choice, seemed a daunting task. I kept reminding myself that I needed to make a doctor’s appointment, as I had found another lump in a different place. Well, it was more of a wedge, really and was painful. On the one hand I wasn’t as worried as before, as the last one was harmless, but on the other hand, I was more worried, because it was very different. I hadn’t told anyone, because I felt I’d used up my sympathy points with my friends and family. And lastly, I was allowing myself a rare moment of wallowing just a little in melancholy. As the Undercliff was pretty deserted, I started to sing Regina Spektor’s ‘How’, quietly, to myself. Pathetically, I had been playing it last thing every night ever since stumbling across her on Spotify one night when I was blubbing in bed. I had been searching for another artiste whose name began with ‘R’ and found her instead. ‘How’ could have been written for me, at the time, as it captured my feelings entirely. Like many of her songs, I found it particularly evocative and as I was trying out songs I could possibly learn to play on a keyboard, should the guitar lessons not materialise, I had learnt it from start to finish.

The temperature had dropped; early afternoon had not kept late morning’s promise of warmth. I stopped to take in the sight and sound of the waves crashing against the wall of the beach, as the cool air had started to whip the sea up into a bit of a frenzy. I took a break from ‘How’ and stole a few images of the sea-spray with my iPhone.

I resumed my walk and my singing, staying close to the low wall so that I could see, hear and even taste the sea, as the clouds darkened and what was once a gentle lapping, become a low rumble on the beach. There were puddles of sea-water, from waves that had managed to scale the wall and hurl themselves onto the Undercliff and I thought nothing of stepping in them, as I was wearing plimsolls which were battered and didn’t matter. But one such wave must have splashed onto a clod of chalk, from the cliff, as when I set foot on one such puddle, my heel slid forward as if I was stepping onto an ice rink. My whole being lifted into the air and it was as if time stopped while I hovered, because I was there for long enough to dread the journey back down. I had been thrown into the air with such force that I knew I would not emerge from this unscathed. I came crashing back down into the seemingly innocent puddle and was only too aware that my wrist was the casualty . . .

The end of term was nigh and already the summer was looking busy. After lengthy and at times, emotional discussions with the children, I had decided to make a fresh start in a new house, so I would be buying and selling a house (I hoped) over the break. I was looking forward to seeing the children of course and I was hopeful that the weather would be kind, so that I could enjoy some long, country walks with the dog, maybe the occasional bike-ride and perhaps do a bit more horse-riding, as (soon-to-be-ex) hubby had given me some riding gear for my last birthday with him, so that I could revive an old hobby.
First day of the summer holiday and I was greeted by a waft of tropical heat when I opened the back door, armed with coffee, toast made with bread from my newly-borrowed bread-maker and my iPad, gently serenading me with Rhiannon Giddens’ elegant, old-timey vibe. Rusty was at my heels and to my surprise, I heard the gruff sounds of dogs barking. My new neighbour (as of the day before) had dogs, I guess. Rusty responded so for the sake of a peaceful breakfast, I returned him inside.
Despite my disdain for my newly-acquired house, it boasted a pretty, secluded garden, perfect for taking breakfast al fresco, whilst still in my pyjamas. Which I was doing, when I decided to slide along the bolt on the hen-house, to release Dorothea and Lysistrata into the garden, to frolic and peck and generally partake of chicken-like activities, seeing as their enemy, The Dog, was inside. The two chickens are very different; whereas Dorothea is big and white, Lysistrata is small and brown. And whereas Dorothea ambles around (unless she’s launching a violent attack on potential suitors), Lysistrata runs around like – well, a headless chicken, only she’s got a head. She has an endearing habit of burying herself in soil, leaving chicken-shaped and chicken-sized dents all over the flower beds. Dorothea watched in fascination for a minute, on this particular day, until I plopped her next to her house-mate and she, too, discovered the joys of bathing in soil.
Breakfast over, I went back inside, leaving them flapping about in the flower bed, the air filling with feathers and soil.
I looked out a few minutes later and party-time in the flower bed was over. Dorothea was pecking around on the grass and Lysistrata was . . . nowhere.
I shot outside and scoured the garden for a small, brown hen but my scouring was in vain. I looked at potential escape routes but the garden was like Fort Knox. I didn’t see how it was possible, but hearing next-door’s dogs barking, I wondered if she was next-door. I ran down the driveway, hopped into their garden and called out her name:
‘Lysistrata!
. . . several times.

Why?

Why did I call her name?

Did she know her name?

Do chickens even have ears?

Would she have responded anyway?

I spotted her, under a bush, starting to bury herself. Phew. Another minute and she would have been completely camouflaged. I bundled her into my arms and as I turned to head home, I just caught sight of a curtain closing as the man next-door had clearly been watching me. In his garden. In my PJs. Calling out the name of a Greek farce. There was nothing for it . . . I’d have to change her name to avoid this kind of embarrassing situation in the future. I’d call her Rocky. After that chicken in Chicken Run who was always escaping.
I decided that she must have squeezed her way through the bars of a gate, so I blocked off the gate and got on with my day.
Ah . . . summer. Walked the dog, had a coffee in the café on the seafront, wandered home, let the chickens out again in the fortified garden and got ready to go out. I was going out Toby-hunting of course, with a dedicated single friend. The difficulty with finding yourself single again, is finding people who have the same agenda as you, with which to have a night out. Not that my agenda was anything nefarious, but people in relationships, generally, don’t want to drink too much, stay out late or flirt. There are exceptions, amongst my friends, as many of them accompanied me to The Folky Pub in those early Toby-hunting days but tonight I was partying with a dedicated single friend.
I’d bought myself a whole range of cropped tops to wear whilst Toby-hunting but tonight I decided to wear the original cropped top I’d been wearing on the fateful evening of back dimples and red hair. While I got ready, I recalled how his hand had gently brushed against my lower back and just the thought of it made my hair stand on end (in a good way). Then I noticed the time and decided to put the chicks to bed and leave, if I were to catch the next bus.
It was evening but not yet dark, being summer and I felt bad for putting the hens to bed early but the summer stretched ahead of us, so I put Dorothea in first, as she was always more conspicuous, then scanned the garden for Rocky.

No.

Not again.

She really wasn’t anywhere.
I went next-door (at least I was dressed this time, even if my top was cropped) . . . nothing.
I walked up and down the road, looking in gardens – I even asked a group of teenagers if they’d seen a chicken walk past – nothing (and they could barely stifle their giggles. I’m probably still known as ‘the mad chicken lady’ in those parts).
I wasn’t hopeful of seeing my little, funny, brown hen again but I got in the car and drove round, very slowly, hoping to spot her in a front garden and fortune smiled on me. Well, her, actually, because she would have been Mr Fox’s supper if I hadn’t found her. And I realised how she escaped because there she was, FLYING over a garden fence. Once again, I found myself in someone else’s garden, looking like I was stealing a chicken.
I drove to my night out, after finally putting my little runaway (flyaway?) to bed, because I was late, thanks to her, so didn’t drink, didn’t find Toby and was in bed by midnight.
I received a message from Wimbledon Man just as I was going to bed, wondering if I’d like to meet up. His communication was tardy, I felt and anyway, I had Toby to consider, which I knew he wouldn’t understand, so I told him I had another chicken.
And that was that.