TALES FROM THE COOP

An unlikely pen-pal relationship with Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire, inspired Arthur Parkinson's passion for poultry... and helped him through childhood depression and his parents' separation. Now his acclaimed memoir reveals how his chickens came home to roost

- Arthur Parkinson

 I WAS a toddler the first time I met a chicken. The hen had tiny eyelashes, a strawberry-jam face and a voice of purring clucks. I sensed a happy spirit of inquisitiveness. From that moment on I always loved the company of chickens. Life in our tiny cottage in Hucknall, an ex-mining town in Nottingham, was rich in colour and creativity, and I discovered the love and satisfaction to be found in caring for living things when my father built me my first chicken house. The first of many.

By the time my brother Lyndon and I were born, Hucknall was left with the old slag heap, now planted with thousands of saplings. All around its lower slopes were allotments, and my grandparents knew one of the allotment holders, John, whose hens were the main attraction. John had a merry flock of laying girls - several dozen of them - living in a big turquoise-painted shed. Gathering freshly laid, palm-warm eggs was the main treat, each one a totally perfect piece of work. The hens laid their eggs in deep old wooden fruit boxes lined with straw.

My first hens came from Dad's friends, Tony and Anne, and we returned from their smallholding with two brown but now very individual (in my mind at least) hens.

One of the hens laid her first egg after an hour of settling in. They were very good hens happy to be picked up and carried about the place, and they certainly laid well.

But most importantly, they provided me with a crash course in poultry practicalities.

Town allotments had been the first setting of my life with chickens. The other would happen thanks to my grandparents' passion for holidaying in Derbyshire - it was our version of going to the seaside.

We would instead spend days walking across the Peaks, but a day out at Chatsworth House the historic seat of the Devonshire family was the treat of our holiday.