reje

[reje @reje06]

@polblonde @Judyastley and to be expected

[reje @reje06]

@NJStreitberger @sinderinister The indignant bustles in sync leaving Hobsons shop

[Renée Hoenderkamp @DrHoenderkamp]

And yet ..

* 20,000 doctors couldn’t get a training job last year.
* Up to 50% of newly qualified nurses struggled to get a job

Don’t believe everything you read. Research it.

We need home grown doctors and nurses and we need to employ them when trained. End.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

There are four hens in the back garden of a retired widower in Yorkshire, and there is, unmistakably, a government.

Beatrice runs it. This was never put to a vote. Beatrice is a four-year-old Light Sussex, and she holds office the way the genuinely powerful always have, by being first out of the coop every morning, first to the worms, and entirely beyond challenge. The other three understand the arrangement completely. None of them has ever seen it written down. None of them needs to.

A backyard flock, it turns out, is not a democracy but a small and rigid court, and beneath Beatrice sit the other three in their settled order.

There is Brenda, a Rhode Island Red, the deputy and enforcer, who administers the order of things with the joyless efficiency of a woman who runs the village hall committee and has firm views about how the urn is filled. Brenda does not aspire to the top. Brenda has seen what the top requires. Brenda is content to be second and to make absolutely certain everyone below her knows they are below her.

There is Pam, a blue hybrid of uncertain parentage, who occupies the middle and worries about it. Pam is the first to raise the alarm at a sparrowhawk, a falling leaf, the neighbour's cat, or a carrier bag, and she is right just often enough to be tolerated and wrong just often enough to be a trial to everyone. Pam means well. Pam means well at volume.

And there is Susan, the youngest, a flighty brown hybrid who arrived not knowing the order and learned it the hard way, one firm peck at a time. Susan is at the bottom. Susan has made her peace with the bottom. She gets the worm nobody else wanted and the perch nearest the draught, and she is, for all that, the happiest hen in the garden, because the foot of a settled order is a more restful place to stand than the middle of a contested one. Pam could learn a great deal from Susan. Pam will not.

The man watches all of this from the kitchen window with his tea and believes, in the manner of all constitutional monarchs, that he is in charge. He opens the coop. He scatters the feed. He digs the vegetable bed at quarter past six because Beatrice taught him to, though he would tell you it was his own idea entirely.

He thinks the garden runs on him. The garden runs on Beatrice. The man is, at most, the weather.

He lost his wife some years ago, and a daughter who could not be there every day brought him four hens instead, on the theory that a man does better with something to get up for. The theory was sound. He gets up at first light now, every morning, because four small dependents are counting on him, and because one of them, a white hen with a black collar, will put her head on one side and regard him in a way that has become, without his ever quite deciding it, the first conversation of his day.

He talks to them. He has stopped pretending he does not.

Four hens. One government. A worked vegetable bed, more eggs in a week than one man can get through, two dead rats so far this year, and a reason for a good man to be out in his garden at dawn with the dew coming up and the kettle on.

This is the smallest farm in England. It is also, by a quiet distance, one of the best run.

Eat the egg. Keep the hens. Mind the old men in their gardens. They are doing better than they let on, and so, in their settled and governed way, are the hens.

[reje @reje06]

@Clementine22119 @SamaHoole and mine

[reje @reje06]

@KalBonner @jk_rowling Wonderful

[reje @reje06]

@Kathryn34326890 @LiamHalligan Me too

[The Disrespected Trucker @DisrespectedThe]

I learn something new everyday.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Yes.

[Mary Aspinall-Miles @MAMBarLife]

A letter from today’s ⁦@thetimes⁩ with some fine courtroom humour…

[reje @reje06]

wonderful

[la scapigliata @lascapigliata8]

Incredible news in medicine! New treatment for one of the cruellest neurodegenerative conditions - Huntington’s Disease - has resulted in 75% slowing down of disease progression, allowing patients to go back to work and potentially gain decades of life 🙏
https://t.co/3AnPFsOK5g

[reje @reje06]

@barne86578 @RightNUFC and this one

[Jane Austen First Drafts @Austen1stDrafts]

I take no leave of you, 2025. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.

[Gail Myerscough @GailMyerscough]

My husband Matt is very down.
He’s struggling to find work at the moment.
He’s a brilliant writer having written for Dangermouse, Private Eye and many more…

If you need a writer have a look at his website and please repost.
https://t.co/3acQbXwSiF
Thank you

[reje @reje06]

@BrexitBassist @DreyfusJames @exitthelemming I loved her perfect timing when she and her sister crossly bounced out of Hobsons shop ...

[reje @reje06]

@mart_brooks @SVPhillimore Instantly to mine too.

[reje @reje06]

@NiallHarbison Beautiful

[reje @reje06]

@teacoziesarefun @Hoang_HQ me too ,a favourite

[reje @reje06]

Revolting

[Peter Egan @PeterEgan6]

This is appalling : EXCLUSIVE: British hunter kills rare albino baboon on sick trophy hunting trip https://t.co/l2Z842f15u pls share @rickygervais @marcthevet @NickTaylorLLB