I don’t normally write a blog at midnight, but this is quite exciting.

My sister in law has been sitting on eggs for the last three weeks. But of course I am joking! She has bought an incubator and seven (hopefully) fertilised chicken eggs. Five green ones and two dark red ones.

After posting a picture of them online, the interest was immense. We all watched as the incubator turned the eggs and kept them warm. Then two days before they were due to hatch, it stopped turning (I suppose it’s for the chicks to find which way is up so that they try to hatch through the floor of their incubator).

Tonight was the night. I texted to see if any feathered offspring were out and promptly received a message, ‘I heard chirping. Want to come and watch?’. So I left my husband  with the last episode of the highly addictive series of Narcos (excuse the pun) and at 9pm rushed over.

They say ‘watched kettle never boils’. And they (whoever THEY are) are right. We chirped. We cooed. We drank wine. We drank tea. We drank wine again. We chirped louder and more insistently. I even reiki-ed the eggs.

To our delight (and indeed causing us to produce some very girly squeals – to our dogs’ excitement) the ova (plural of ovum – you learn something new every day) rewarded us with slight rocking from side to side, scratching from the inside and some very quiet ‘cheep, cheep, cheep’.

Suddenly it was almost 11pm and we were both falling asleep (watching seven eggs sitting on a warm plate, with minimal or no movement, will do that to you) and Fred the dog was giving me a look. As I left, the chicks were still safely encased inside their  colourful shells.

I will be doing some distance reiki tonight…