Mr Bumble

Think his first name is Sven, Nils or Thor. He's a Swedish Flower Cock which daughter Kate & family brought to the world from eggs she got from a German breeder in Ireland.

A once-endangered farmyard breed in Sweden, they look to be making quite a comeback, quite possibly through the attention on Sweden's Greta Thunberg and her environmental protest movement. Kate's new (used) family Volvo is nicknamed "Greta".

We had been hatching a plan for Kate to take back some eggs from Germany so that she could get some different DNA into her now expanding flock of around 10. However, at the last moment, she discovered uncooked eggs are banned in aeroplane cabins and they only had hand luggage. We had even wanted to use the opportunity of our airport tour last Thursday to bribe the people at security to allow the eggs through without frying them in an x-ray machine but the total ban meant we didn't need to.

I suspect we might try posting some eggs next spring when the weather has warmed up a bit - eggs can manage fertile despite not being sat on/warmed for around 5-7 days.

Talking of being warmed - I hope the anorak Charlotte was wearing was for some other reason than it was cold - however, given the toasting she got last week with the hottest days on record in Germany, not surprising.