The home-made elderflower champagne is still proving explosive. We’ve steam-sealed some caps onto the bottles, but even they don’t seem to be up to the job of keeping the volatile liquid contained. So for the time being we’ve put them inside a steel dustbin half-filled with cold water to regulate the temperature and put on the lid.

Of course, this means that the bottles are firing their corks into the underside of its lid, which creates an ear-splitting bang every time one goes off. The cat, rather surprisingly, seems completely unfazed by it - even if he’s sitting right beside it eating as one goes off. Neither did he seem to care when he and I were standing in the kitchen together and one exploded in my hand, showering the floor and me (although fortunately not him) in a sticky yellow liquid.

It smells really sickly sweet.

Anyhow, yesterday we put the champagne to one side and spent some time building an Omlet Eglu Cube. It’s a chunky green home for chickens, which will sit at the bottom of the garden and be home to three feathery ladies that we’ve already Christened Margot, Gerry and Barbara. There won’t be a cockerel - the council forbids it and it would be antisocial anyhow as they’re so noisy - so we can’t have a Tom to complete the set. Gerry, we’re reasoning, could be short for Geraldine.

It was a big job, but an easy one. This is the range of pieces you get through the post (seven VERY large boxes that took over the whole of the outhouse):

They took a couple of hours to put together, and required only a screwdriver and a trip to B&Q to buy a couple of bolts as we found ourselves two short by the time we got to the end.

By then, though, all those pieces looked like this:

We don’t have the chickens yet, unfortunately, and won’t be getting them until after we’ve been on holiday, so for the moment it’s sitting in the corner of the garden looking a little redundant.

Nonetheless, it’s quite exciting.

1. Cluck cluck
   We picked up the chickens on Saturday morning, so the coop is no longer echoey and empty. Barbara, Margot and Gerry, after a little...
   
   
2. Christmastime
   Christmas means many things to many people. Presents. Trees. Decorations... Errr... Goodwill to all men... And thinly veiled bribery if you're a journalist. Or at...
   
   
3. Building
   Well, the time had come to finally do something with the rapidly growing pile of components on my floor. They had been stacked neatly against...