Chicken Run

As a child, my window into the world was small. Outside of parental and sibling supervision, I was restricted to exploring just the street that I grew up on, Seanor Lane, which Google just informed me is 293 metres long, or approximately 320 yards in old money. The Google also told me that there is only one ‘Seanor Lane’ in all of the UK. I always thought that it was a special place to grow up, and I now have confirmation of that fact.

For someone who was reminded of my geographical restrictions every single time that I stepped out of the front door, Seanor Lane offered a lot of temptation. Our house was about halfway up on the right-hand side, and was directly opposite a Public Footpath that led down to Locko Brook, and beyond that, to North Wingfield and Holmewood. If I turned right out of my driveway, and walked past four houses, there was another Public Footpath that would take you to either the ‘Green’ on Parkhouse Road, or the ‘Rec’ on Locko Lane. Survive that temptation, and you’d pass one more farm on your right, and then you’d be on the unpaved single-track part of Seanor Lane, that took you up the hill, past the ‘Lightening Tree’, and all the way to Pilsley Wood. The latter was particularly verboten, with my mum always stressing that I “should not, under any circumstances, go past the end of the lane”.

From about the age of 5, there was one notable exception to the regular pattern of parental and sibling supervision, and that was that my mum would sometimes let me accompany ‘Lily the milkwoman’ on her rounds. I can’t remember if Lily offered, or I was cheeky enough to ask, but whichever it was, my mum agreed. My brother John asked me recently, whether I remembered Lily’s husband Ralph using a horse and cart to deliver the milk. I don’t remember that, so it must have been before my time. My recollection of Ralph was that he was pretty frail and housebound. The picture I have of him is sitting by the window, looking out onto ‘the backs’ (the cinder alleyway that ran behind the terraced houses at the bottom of Parkhouse Road), wearing a sleeveless, hand-knitted cardigan, knitted hat, and slurping tea, noisily. I’m pretty sure that the latter was when he’d pour some of the hot tea into the saucer to cool it down, and then slurp it from there, or maybe I’m just imagining that part.

In addition to delivering the milk, Lily also kept chickens at the bottom of Seanor Lane, in the very steep field that runs all the way down to Locko Brook. There were a couple of chicken sheds at the top of the field, and sometimes, if she hadn’t already done it, she’d let me collect the eggs with her. We’d then take them back to her house, where she’d gently clean them and pack them into boxes… all while Ralph would be slurping his tea.

One winter, when I was 6 or 7, we had a couple of those snow storms that would leave us with big drifts. My brother John would have been 14 or 15, and after the first of the storms, a few of his friends came around, and we took the big wooden sled that was hung in our garage, and I went with them up towards Pilsley Wood. We chose a long hill that came to an abrupt stop at a solid wooden fence. We spent the afternoon hurtling down the hill, and then slowly dragging the sled back to the top. I was only allowed to go down as a passenger, sitting between the legs of whoever was steering the sled, as John told me that I was “too little”. This triggered that ‘kid brother’ form of whiny indignation, which meant that I spent the afternoon being a right little pleader.

Finally, my persistence paid off, and just before we were set to head for home, John relented, telling me that I could ride the sled on my own. It was a bit like sitting through the safety demonstration on a flight, as he went through the do’s and dont’s of solo sledding. He was busy telling me how to break, and how to steer, but the one thing that I heard and retained above all else was his final words “whatever you do, don’t let go!”. It could have been because I was lighter, or that I had the combined efforts of John and his friends all pushing me to get started, but I set off down the hill at a terrifying speed. It was much faster than any of the other trips, when I’d been the passenger. It was probably the scariest thing that I’d experienced in my short life, up to that point.

For all of the other rides that afternoon, the sled had come to a natural stop before it got to the wooden fence. This time was going to be different, and I think we all realized that fact around the same time. My reaction was to freeze and close my eyes, while my brother and his friends reacted by screaming for me to jump off or to steer away from the fence. The sled’s reaction was to stick with the laws of physics, and seconds later, there was a sickening thud as I learned about the very real effects of the Impulse-Momentum Change Equation, the hard way. The first I knew was the teens racing down the hill, fearing the worst. I wasn’t badly hurt, but I was very dazed. I was still hanging on to the sled’s rope for dear life, and as he scooped me up out of the snow, John asked me why I hadn’t jumped off. “Because you told me not to let go”, I said. Retrieving the sled from the bank of snow where it lay upturned, we noticed that about 8 inches of one of the curved wooden pieces that held the metal runners, had broken off upon impact. We all decided that I’d been very lucky, and wisely decided not to mention it to my mum.

A few weeks later, and we had another snow storm. After the snow had stopped, I don’t know where my brother was, or how I managed to retrieve the sled from the garage without my mum seeing, but I decided to try my luck again. In telling me all the things that I’d done wrong before, John had instilled in me the basics of how to steer and to stop, and I was desperate to to give it another try. As I considered my options, I discounted going back up to the woods, or taking either of the Public Footpaths to find a hill. No, what I needed was a steep hill that technically was still part of Seanor Lane. That’s when I thought of Lily’s field, where the chicken sheds were.

When I got to the field, conditions seemed perfect. The snow was, as the Christmas carol goes, deep and crisp and even. Even better, it seemed to be in pristine condition. Up until that point, I’d only spent time in the top of the field, scattering chicken feed and collecting the eggs. The steep hill seemed to go on forever, and I was looking forward to a long afternoon of sledding. Positioning the sled on the brow of the slope, just beyond the chicken sheds, I checked my outfit. I was well wrapped, wearing a wooly hat, a scarf and thick gloves. I was also wearing my brand new Chelsea boots with zippers on the sides, which with hindsight, wasn’t the best footwear for this type of adventure. I’d only had them about a week, and I really loved them, because they were similar to some boots that John had. If my mum had known what I was up to, there was no way that she would have let me wear them. Actually, if my mum had known what I was up to, there was no way that I would ever have left the house, as she would have preemptively grounded me.

Running and pushing the slide to build up speed, I jumped on, and settled into what I thought would be the ride of a lifetime. It lasted for all of about 15 seconds, before I ground to a halt. It wasn’t so much that I hit anything this time. No, it was more that I had ran into something. It turned out that below the chicken sheds was a pond of liquid chicken poop. I don’t know what temperature chicken poop freezes at, but what I did learn that day was that it must be a lot colder than the temperature we get snow. As the sled had come to a sudden halt, those pesky laws of physics had kicked in again, and I’d continued to move forward, over the end of the sled, and I was now sitting in about 6 inches of viscous brown-green goo. I just sat there for a few seconds, trying to take it all in, and that was when the smell hit me, and I realized all too well that I was quite literally in deep shit!

Pulling the sled behind me, I stumbled home. I was making strange noises, as I was wailing, crying, shivering and chattering, all at the same time. The poop had soaked through my clothes, and I was freezing cold and miserable. When I got to the house, I think that my mum heard the noise that I was making before I ever had a chance to knock on the door. She glowered at me. I made as if to go into the house, and she blocked my way. “You are not going in there like that”, she said. She made me get completely undressed in the unheated porch, and leave my unbelievably stinky clothes in a pile on the floor. It took me forever to get my boots off, because the poop had clogged up all of the teeth on the zipper. I think that the rest of my clothes all got thrown away, but because the boots were new, my mum did her best to clean them. They were never quite the same again, though. I don’t remember ever going sledding again, either.