URBAN HENS
People often ask whether I grew up in the country and used to keep chickens as a child, but nope: I was born in Barking, brought up in East London and have been a city girl all my life.
It was only recently that my father told me of his childhood growing up in East London during the war and maybe this points towards my love of hens. He remembers his own father coming home one day with three baby chicks for him to look after. He was delighted with his new pets, oblivious to his mother's persistence that the animals were to be well fed and cared for with the sole aim of supplying an extravagant Christmas feast to