I’m blessed with having a number of caring friends who often surprise me with their generosity. Recent gifts have included fleece’s, scarves, choocolate by the barrow load and…well…a raw chicken.

Yesterday I returned from the day job to be greeted by my wife who said ‘There is a very strange parcel in the kitchen for us.’  And sure enough, there was.  A chicken from the supermarket with a cryptic note attached.

Now, I’m OK with weird stuff. I like to think of myself as being a connoisseur of weird.  But a gift of a chicken is something that whilst generous is rather odd! My wife mentioned that it had been left with a neighbour, and at this point I decided that a visit to see the neighbour might be a good and sensible thing to do.

The game of ‘take in the parcel for the neighbours’ is frequently played in the neighbourhood.  On a really busy day we can get a good version of ‘Pass the Parcel’ going, where I take in a parcel for the house next door, the house opposite takes in a parcel for me, and the recipient of the original parcel end up taking a third parcel in for the house opposite.  But a raw chicken must be a first.

My neighbours had taken it rather well; I think their son was perhaps a little ‘WTF’ about it, but from the description I think I know who my anonymous benefactress was. I shall respect their desire for anonymity, but am more than happy to equip them with a shopping list if they wish to make a regular thing of this generosity. 🙂

Having ascertained that my neighbours weren’t too traumatised – fortunately they aren’t vegetarians and are used to me being a little odd – I returned home to pop the chicken back in the refrigerator to await it’s fate.

Strange things go through your head at this point; they were soon dispatched as being silly, but a few days ago I read an article which detailed some of the many dozens – if not hundreds – of attempts by the CIA to bump off the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro.  Everything from the bog standard bombs and bullets through to the poisoned cigars. Momentarily I started wondering whether I’d upset anyone enough to make them want to wipe me out with a dodgy chicken?  Or is it an exploding chicken? Maybe, like, Sir Francis Bacon, I would meet my maker via the assistance of a chicken?

As I write this, the chicken is cooking. To our anonymous donor, thank you; the chicken smells delightful.  Jarvis the cat is wandering around sniffing – he may be 21 years old with declining mental faculties but his sense of smell is pretty darn awesome. The chicken will be eaten with chips, and maybe some garlic bread left over form last night’s pasta.

And should I die…I rely on my friends to hunt down the mysterious chicken donor of Old Sheffield Town.