Progress Report

This search of mine for the good life does not always move forward smoothly, recently I seem to have been plagued by a series of annoyances although I suppose one of them could be called a tragedy.
On Friday, when I went to give the chickens their afternoon corn, there were only two birds waiting by the gate. This was unusual, the birds do often wander, particularly to join the other chickens in the next door garden but they are nearly always back for tea and if one is laggardly, the sound of the other two enjoying their nosh, normally brings her running. I was concerned but hoped she'd return in time and took Jess onto the valley for her late afternoon walk. We had not gone far, before I came across a sorry pile of familiar feathers, so I presume that Edna had gone wandering too far from the safety of the garden and met a grisly end at the hands of a fox.
The other annoyances were much more mundane and mainly seem to feature Dog ie Dog ate half a bowl of bread dough left to rise on the kitchen table,with the inevitable follow up: Dog suffered diarrhoea on the kitchen floor. Then there was Dog upset at being left in the kitchen whilst I put Oliver to bed managing to hurl herself at the kitchen door and dislodge the screws from the bottom hinge leaving the door hanging on by a whisker.
Monday's annoyance was to get halfway up the street before realising I had a puncture. Kind neighbours dropped Oliver and I at his nursery, leaving me to walk the two miles home. It could have been quite a nice walk had it not been for the cold, cold wind and my being in such a hurry when I set out, not to keep kind neighbours waiting that I forgot my scarf and gloves.
Today I was expecting to be able to make a much more upbeat report as I went on the first of three courses on setting up your own business but a lot of it was stuff that I was familiar with already, from when I had my chutney business. The first half of the session seemed to be trying to  prepare people for long hours and risks and stresses of running a business. There were some interesting points though, including the pros and cons of being  a sole trader compared with a limited company and on choosing a business name. I'm expecting next week's talk to be much more practical as there is someone coming in from HMRC to give us the lowdown on what is tax deductible and what we must do if we want to employ somone.