The man who was afraid of chickens….

I have just found the man from the electricity board in the small barn sitting on top of all the building paraphernalia surrounded by about forty chickens. He’s a gibbering wreck and has obviously been shouting for ages as his voice is quite hoarse.
I can’t understand why I didn’t hear him but there again it could be because I had the radio on very loud in my office so that I wouldn’t be able to hear Dear Charlie throwing up next door. Dear Charlie says he’s a bit of a bell weather when it comes to bad food and glares are me balefully as if it was my fault he’s got food poisoning. I haven’t so it can’t have been anything I cooked. I blame it on all that popcorn he ate when we went to the cinema on Sunday. He was most beastly and ate the majority of it himself so that by the time the Movie started there wasn’t a scrap to be had.
Meanwhile back to the man who came to read the meter. I only discovered him when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Ollie my white cockerel running across the lawn as if the wrath of God were after him.
Obviously I thought something dreadful had happened to the chickens – foxes, Hen Harriers, the dreaded mink! Switching off the radio I could hear a faint: HELP! So dashing outside I was confronted with a gaggle of chickens and a very flustered cockerel all darting in and out of the barn.
I ventured inside and there he was. A man afraid of chickens. I helped him down and shooed the girls away. Ollie was being most annoying and kept flapping at me while the man tried to hide behind me – I got quite cross and was about to tell the silly man off when I noticed that he had gone very, very white! Thinking that he needed to sit down I bundled him into his car and called the chickens to me. Biddable things they followed me to the grain bin for some food.
I was just returning to apologise for my chicken’s behaviour and explain it was because they thought he was one of the builders who always feeds them his sandwiches – he [the builder] hates the way his wife makes them but hasn’t the heart to tell her after 10 years of marriage! He has a standing order at the Village Shop for prawn cocktail ones - when to the screeching of tyres and the grating of gears I saw the meter man leave in a cloud of dust down the drive. I have no idea if he did his job or not but I don’t think he’s coming back again in a hurry.