RECENTLY, my daughter Jo and granddaughter Sophie stayed at the farm. Sophie helped me muck out the chicken hut and lay a fresh carpet of straw for the hens to scrat in before they deigned to lay an egg in their nest boxes.

Millie our Jack Russell is always an enthusiastic helper on these tasks. She loves the opportunity to rummage through the straw for possible hint of a rat. Now the hens always seem to harbour an itchy friend or two, or possibly 200. Despite regular dustings with flea powder and the opportunities that they have for dust baths, you usually find your hands have attracted a tiny mite.

So when Sophie suddenly erupted in a number of small bites, who was to blame? Why me, of course, for having a couple of flea bitten dogs and some even more flea bitten hens. I immediately reached into my trusty store of flea powders to dust and spray the hut and hens down and dab flea killer on the back of the dogs necks.

Strangely I, who is usually seen as a delicious fresh meal for any blood thirsty insect, had not been bitten at all. But I still hung my head in shame for inflicting my lovely little granddaughter with flea bites.

Until that is Sophie’s spots turned blebby and they also popped up in her hair and all over the rest of her body. I was exonerated. So were the chickens, so were the dogs. And the fleas too. Sophie had chicken pox. And so it turns out do many of the little friends who had all attended the same birthday party just prior to Sophie’s visit to the farm.

As she cannot attend school until she is deemed to be not contagious, I have been roped into baby sitting for the next few days. John has been left with meals for the foreseeable future and I am in charge of one, very bossy, and rapidly improving, granddaughter.

But I am still not apparently completely trustworthy. A list appeared on the kitchen table just before Jo and husband Matt left for work. There is considerable doubt it appears as to whether I am not only to considered capable of looking after Sophie, but more apparently their new kitchen units.

Along with instructions not to scratch the kitchen doors, not to put metal cans on the worktop or hot stuff either, I must only apparently use a specific pink cloth on said worktop. How have I ever managed to rear any children never mind run a house and a farm. Will I, never mind Sophie, survive?