Early morning discovery

Again six degrees at 8:30am. The benches dotted along the mulattiera up to Carmine Superiore are pools of warmth in the sunshine. A good excuse to sit for a while and ponder our luck to be living here between the glittering lake and the snowcapped mountains.

Hawk strike on palazzo pollo yesterday. Luckily, the chickens thought with their spinal cords and to a girl fled to the warm darkness of the coop, a place where not many right-thinking hawks will boldly go. "Luckily, no-one was hurt", but there were plenty of ruffled feathers - all over the floor of the run.

So this morning I was out and about in the 6am pre-dawn repairing the protective wiring (having had a rather disturbed night populated with dancing penguins, carnival transvestites on stilts and hawks with scimitar beaks). I found the chicks - like the sprogs I left behind in the house - still sleeping. As the pre-dawn painted the sky behind the mountains and studded it with a single star (God doodling), I worked away with little white widgets, green netting and near-frozen fingers.

Then I made a discovery. The only sound in the gloom was what has to be one of the most soothing sounds in the world (after a night of dancing penguins and carnival transvestites on stilts) : the gentle purr of chickens snoring...