It could have been a moment of genius ...

The main objective of the working day was to become sufficiently familiarised with a Data Centre Hosting Configuration Tool such that I could support bids and projects whilst a colleague takes a three week long Summer holiday. I had a couple of sessions today and from my sub-orbital level of understanding it all looks reasonably straightforward. However, I can see that at ground level it is intricately detailed and there is endless potential to omit vital information or simply put it in the wrong place. I am also conscious that I will be dependent on the output of a Design Architect, who hasn't yet been told that he is "it" for a good chunk of the Summer either!

Leaving that, for a moment I can also report that things are going well with my Global Flea Market Campaign and I now have three items listed on eBay. All have received bids but I am likely to need to continue working as £2.97, less auction fees, isn't going to last very long at all. The lots still have nine days to run and most of the bidding action will be in the last few minutes so I am hopeful that I will turn my garage clutter in to a few quid at least.

And so I move to this week's major concern, that of Hanoi Jane, the escaped Barnevelder Hen that has gone native in a neighbours garden. After more than a week of liberty, which featured three chaotic attempts to retrieve her, I finally decided to put my monkey brain and opposable thumbs to work and spent five minutes in the garage attaching a large plastic storage box to a long length of wooden batten. My plan can be neatly summarised using the power of infographics …

It all looks so simple when you put it like this

Frontal assaults at dusk* had failed with the hen slipping quietly away in to the undergrowth,** so the plan was to come in from the rear, under cover of darkness, and simply lower the trap over the nesting bird. I appreciated that I had a slim chance of success as the graphic makes it look so simple but the fence is actually 6' high and I needed to balance precariously on the fence of the chicken run to implement my plan. Add in various shrubs, undergrowth and impending darkness causing poor visibility and I was giving myself a less than 10% chance of success.

At ten o'clock TP and I tooled up*** and headed out to the garden where I had already bridged the chicken run to fence gap with an aluminium ladder to make lowering the trap slightly easier. I took an initial recce and couldn't believe my eyes … six brown eggs and no fucking chicken. The damned thing was nowhere to be seen and the only positive thing I could draw from this is that my ludicrous plan was prevented from failing by never actually being implemented.

Later that evening, as I was emptying the dogs and shutting up the hens, I took a peep inside the coop. There on the perches sat two Barnevelder Hens. It looks like the damned thing has slipped back in to the compound unseen during the  day.

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* When the hen was roosting and likely to be far less alert
** Actually she had charged across the lawn, cackling like a lunatic, but I like the first image better.
*** got torches