I should know better

A sleepless night as both Sig and Vomit developed a diarrhoea bug and had me up every half hour. Dosed them extravagantly with kaogel, a disgusting pink liquid which some genius, knowing it was for dogs, flavoured strongly with banana. Vomit was appalled - thought she was being punished and shivered in a corner. Siggy, being by nature streetwise and wicked, was damn sure she was being punished and fairly sure she deserved it too, and anyway didn`t care. As a result got up at 9 in a bad temper, and was lavish with the kaogel again. If you split either bitch open, feel sure that a solid pink cast of their intestines would be revealed..... However, the puppies thrive, and Vomit`s are almost walking. Next week I will buy in lots of baby food and the dreaded weaning will commence

I remebered what I said here about my childhood diet of rabbit and can see that I forgot eggs. Eggs, legit or otherwise, were always on the go, and frequently off.

During the was my father worked at Babcock, where you could get anything, either lifted direct from the shopfloor, or made on works time.

You could get off the egg ration by keeping hens, in which case you got a chickenfeed ration and the eggs were yours to keep or barter. One of my father`s friends decided to go down this risky route, and was casting about everywhere for something to use as a henhouse. Even the Babcock illicit enterprises brigade couldn`t supply this, but my father had another friend who had a friend who worked for Rolls Royce, making jet engines to defeat Hitler. He was of the opinion that the packing crates in which the jet engines were shipped to the aircraft manufacturers would be just right to keep hens in .

And so it was arranged that on the first possible night an empty crate would fall off a lorry conveniently close to the aspiring chicken farmer`s backdoor.

A few weeks later he awoke to the sound of a heavy lorry revving, and a dull thud. Up he got and went out in the pitch darkness (blackout!), and by the back fence loomed a large dark object. He went over and could make out a big substantial wooden crate, very promising as a henhouse. And then, as he was running his hand over it, the moon came out, and between the slats he could make out the gleam of bright metal..........

My father could make very little sense of the phone call he got at 2am. "Willie, they`re goin to shoot me, they`re goin to shoot me! I`m goin to be shot for treason, Willie! And I`m takin` you with me!"

It took all the combined abilties of the Babcock and Rolls Royce black market entrepreneur network to get the Rolls Royce Merlin engine back on a lorry, and a substantial bung to security to get it back into the factory. It is said that my father`s friend never quite recovered full mental health and spent the rest of the war waiting for the knock on the door, to be followed by the firing squad. All in a night`s work on the home front.