Back home,
I decanted a grateful Vera back in the chicken run with the other hens and
opened my post, glad to be back in the ordered, predictable world of adults.
One
parcel yielded a CD. 'Orriel Smith -The Worlds
Favorite Cluckoratura Arias', it said on the
cover. With only mild foreboding I put this on the CD player and my house was
filled by extracts of Mozart and Offenbach,
with the vocal parts clucked rather than sung with demented verve by a lady
with a pure opera singer's voice.
Orriel
Smith is an American vocalist whose face adornes the
CD's cover. She was wearing a sort of masquerade mask made from sequins and
chicken feathers. A letter from the lady herself explained that she'd bought Hen
and the Art of Chicken Maintenance, having seen the book and 'squawked with
delight'. She hoped I would be entertained by the CD, recorded after she
decided that a lot of opera goers probably wouldn't notice if their favourite pieces were sung in fluent 'chicken'. I pondered
the ordered predictability of adults in relation to children, found it wanting,
and, with Mozart's' Alleluia' chorus in full squawk, went back into the garden
to collect the eggs.
