WE have come out for a day’s fishing. It has been a long drive, setting out at what seemed to me to be the crack of dawn.

The dogs are with us in their posh new travelling cage and, for most of the journey, I had to keep popping up in my seat to check we had actually brought them they were so quiet.

That was until we stopped and the cacophony of barking to insist that we let them out now demonstrated that I need never have worried.

I have actually been down with John to the river, helped him retrieve his salmon fly out of one of the trees, let the dogs do their business and thoughtfully collected their offerings in a doggy poo bag. Lovely. I shall not do as some dog walkers in our village do and hang said doggy bags on bushes.

It is only now, four hours from home, that I have remembered a vital task I should have carried out before leaving, and which I clean forgot about in our hurry to get away this morning.

I let the hens out. John fed the lambs. And I ensured my broody..ish…hen had time to come off her nest, have a drink of water and then peck at her bowl of corn, before incarcerating her once more on the goose eggs I have set under her.

Now not being the most committed of mothers, this hen needs some persuading to sit tight. She prefers to cackle aloud , at great length and volume, on the indignity and cruelty of being forced to sit on some eggs not of her own choice.

I had spent a fortnight chucking her off various nests that she wanted to sit tight on, all in totally useless places such as a roof gutter, a plant pot and the woodpile. But give her a nice comfy nest box, three lovely big goose eggs, ample corn and water, and she has decided to be a diva about what she will and won’t sit.

But what I had forgotten to do this morning, and it could spell disaster for our goose flock expansion plans, is to refill the tray of water in the incubator.

This tray sits beneath the grid where four more goose eggs luxuriate in the heat of the incubator, hopefully hatch out in a few weeks time and are then fostered by my bolshie hen. Presuming she has managed to hatch out the three she is sitting.

It is vital to keep the moisture level in the incubator high, and by the time we get home tonight the conditions will probably not be of the tropical rainforest, but arid Saharan desert. My geese may be well and truly cooked. But as hard boiled eggs, not a potential Sunday roast.