To Lowestoft on Saturday, which is always fun, but much further away now that we don’t have a stop-off in Ipswich en route. We would have stayed over, but we still had the chickens’ new home stacked up in the garden waiting to be built, and the house was full of the last delivery of boxes from the flat, waiting to be emptied.

So we set out early after a rushed breakfast and were there by ten to find the kettle boiling and the rabbit amusing itself in the garden. It was a fantastic sunny day, and it really did feel like the first day of spring, although Lowestoft was just far enough north for the daffodils to still be tightly closed up. At home they’re in full bloom.

We went to the pub at lunchtime, just for a drink, and were home in time for Sandy, Doug, Kevin and Janice, lunch and an afternoon of cards. We played Donkey – as we always do – and it inevitably got rough as everyone scrambled to grab at an ever-diminishing pool of spoons. Nobody quite lost a finger.

In the event we got home just before midnight to be told off by the cat for leaving him alone all day.

Sunday was another early start. I cleaned the chickens, put them in the greenhouse and dismantled their coop and run, scrubbed it thoroughly and rebuilt the coop bit.

We’d thought there would have been four of us working on the new compound, which is easily big enough for 20 or more birds (our target is 10), but Jenny and Chris came around from next door and we had a really neighbourly build along, with Chris and mum cutting the chicken wire; Jenny, Rich and I hauling and supporting the panels, and Andrew screwing everything together, he being the best of us all with a drill.

It took most of the day once we’d taken a trip to B&Q and another to Homebase, nailed on some gravel boards, bought and screwed on a handle and covered the floor with bark chippings so they wouldn’t get too muddy.

The chickens got very excited about it all, almost like they knew what was going on, and tried to peck their way out of the greenhouse. Margot was all overcome, couldn’t control herself and laid an egg in the border which we spirited off to the kitchen before anyone stood on it.

We got it all done just in time, putting them in to their new home as we worked on the gravel boards, and hammering in the last nail as the first of them went up to bed and the solar lights clicked on.

A long, busy day, it left us worn out, and no doubt our helpers felt the same. But it had been fun. A lot of fun, and the chickens will no doubt enjoy their new home with all the space it gives them to flap their wings and clamber around on the pile of logs we put down in the corner.

Woke up on Saturday morning with the lights still on, two cups of tea by the side of the bed (with the bags still in them) and no recollection of having got in and gone to sleep. Spent the next two hours trying to sit or lie very still and stop things from hurting. Not easy when you have a hungry cat jumping around the duvet waiting to be fed.

We’d been next door the night before for drinks and nibbles. I’d been expecting us home by 23h (we’d set out at 20h) but in the final analysis it wasn’t until some time after 01h30 next morning, after copious quantities of fish and playing with the cats. And wine, hence the sickness.

Now normally waking up like that would be nothing more than unpleasant, and ordinarily you’d want to sit somewhere cool with a mug of coffee until it all wore off, but after some delivery cock-ups we were due round at Galleywood to pick up our new chicken compound. And compound it is. Rich drove (my legs were shaking) and when we arrived we found half a forest-worth of timbers, supports and cross-beams, all strung together by a heavy-duty mesh to keep out the foxes.

We’d borrowed a big white van, but even that was too small to fit it all in and we ended up driving it back across town, in loose convoy, with the back doors tied closed with some old brown rope.

It did, fortunately, make it all the way, and with a lot of heaving and hoing we managed to get it unpacked and round into the garden, by which point we’d pretty much sobered up and noticed we’d skipped breakfast.

Sadly we didn’t get it built due to a drill deficiency, and now it’s all sitting propped up in the back garden waiting for next weekend or the one after that when we might have time – and the tools – to build it.

One thing’s for sure, though – 12ft by 8ft is a whole lot bigger in real life than it looks in an online shop.

Last week it was snow; today it’s floods. I’ve not known a winter like this for years.

I arrived home last night soaked to the skin, and we woke up this morning to find the reserve under water. Enough water to come almost to the top of my boots as I waded out while keeping to the highest parts of the path. That’s what a month’s-worth of rain in one night does.

You couldn’t see where the river stopped, the banks began and the reserve continued. It was like waking up in the Everglades.

The radio was full of doom and gloom. The trains were running, but the roads were clogged, and the Environment Agency had put a severe flood warning on Chelmsford – the only one in the country. They said we should be ready to evacuate. So I closed the cat flap to keep him in in case we should need to coerce him into his carrier and retreat to higher ground, and I put the chickens in the greenhouse so they could dry off their feet and perch on the potting bench.

I switched on the computer and worked from home, waiting for an ominous knock on the door telling us to pack our essentials and get out.

As the morning wore on, the water crept higher. By lunchtime it was right across the reserve, all over the playground at the end of the road and through the back fence of the house opposite. The benches in the park were up to their seats in water…

Chelmer Valley Nature Reserve

Further down stream the water was much deeper, and at the back of the university you could only see the very top of the bench. It was a good four feet deep, at least…

Very top of a bench in the Reserve

For the time being it looks like the march of the waters may have paused, and we’ve not had any rain since early morning. What we don’t know, of course, is how much water there still is to come downstream, or how the snow melt, which will have been sped up by the thorough drenching it’s just had, will contribute to the flow. Some of the allotment is flooded, and that must be heartbreaking for whoever’s plots were affected.

Whatever happens, one thing’s for certain: this is going to take a lot of cleaning up.

Well if, if and if. The biggest ‘if’, of course, is ‘if’ he qualifies, but Alexander Rybak is surely a shoe-in with Fairytale if he gets through.

Best (potential) song of this year’s contest I’ve heard so far. Fingers crossed.

Have you ever had one of those days…

I love the way that the woman at the desk doesn’t even look around.

I emailed my Member of Parliament for the first time today. I was asking him to support an Early Day Motion calling for more honest labelling of chickens sold in supermarkets, as part of Hugh FW’s ChickenOut campaign.

Bizarrely, the automated response I got back explained that he would reply by post, not email, which he apparently also does when responding to phone calls, which doesn’t entirely encourage interaction:

I wonder if all MPs do that.

In the 2006 / 07 financial year, his office spent £2,267 on postage, which could have been reduced some if he used email instead.

Looking him up on the BBC, I read that ‘Simon Burns has been a Conservative MP since 1987, but has never made a huge impact on public consciousness.’

That’s disappointing. So what does the man who represents me in Parliament do and believe? I looked him up on TheyWorkForYou to check his voting record and it seems we disagree on at a lot of the most important political points of the day. It says that he:

Voted strongly against a transparent Parliament.
Voted moderately against introducing a smoking ban.
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
Voted very strongly against the hunting ban.
Voted moderately against equal gay rights.

So we don’t agree on any of those points.

We do agree on stopping climate change (although he only voted ‘moderately’ in favour of that), and he did want an inquiry into the Iraq war, which whether you agree or disagree with going to war you should support just so we have an accurate historical record if nothing else.

He wouldn’t have been getting my vote at the next election anyway, but after reading just how much we disagree on some of the fundamentals, I’ll be far less blase about putting my X in another box, as right now I don’t think I’m represented in parliament at all. Not on the important points, anyway.

Woke up to find the garden under five inches of snow. Granted that’s not a Greenland statistic, but it’s deep for here.

Looking out of the window now, the reserve is full of people building snowmen and throwing snowballs. I’m sitting in the study working from home; the cat is asleep in the bedroom, having already been out, got himself a chill and thrown up his breakfast on the duvet.

It’s always nice to work from home now and again. You get so much done when your phone isn’t ringing and there’s nobody hovering by your desk waiting to ask a question. Today it’s forward-planning and feature writing, and it’s fortunate that there is someone in the office to email out some documents.

What this kind of weather does show, though, is that despite the fact we spend our days working with words and layouts, you still can’t quite produce magazines from an entirely remote location. Not yet. That’s a shame as it would be so much better if none of us had to get on the trains twice a day.

The chickens were freaked by the snow. It was only when they realised they could eat it that they got over their fear. Now they’re trying to clear the whole of their run by mouth. Greedy things.