Mar 10, 2026
To mark the passing of my beloved mother, Monica Allen, I'm posting something she wrote a few years ago. She told me she planned to write her memoirs, and started writing little episodes like this to get her hand in for a larger work which alas she never wrote.
My Mum’s Mum and Dad lived in Gwespyr, a little village in North Wales on a hillside overlooking the sea at the Point of Ayr.
When I was 12 years old I went to stay with them during my long summer vacation. Grandma looked after the house and the cooking and I went everywhere with Grandad and was his little helper. One day we went to the Holywell livestock market and Grandad bought a box of day old chicks. They were very cheap as the poor things had been in the box all morning. We took them home to Gwespyr on the bus. Some died on the way home. Grandad put the live ones in his warm greenhouse and gave them water with a drop of whiskey in it and they seemed to pick up but one by one they stood on one leg and then fell over dead. From then on I gave Grandad a full report. “Grandad there are 2 more standing on one leg”. He told me to stop telling him. Eventually there was only one left and it survived. We called it Fluffy. Fluffy grew up to rule the roost and bullied the hens and was always first at the food trough and stayed until he was full and pecked at any hens who came near.
During the following years if any of us kids went into the hen house for eggs and Fluffy was there he would attack us. One day I went in to get the eggs after checking that Fluffy was outside. Cousin Bernard locked the gate after me and Fluffy saw me and attacked me. I screamed and Grandad came and let me out and got stuck into Bernard.
Two weeks later while Grandma was putting the hens’ food out Fluffy came up, pecked her on the head and stole her hairnet. That was it. Fluffy just had to go. She gave Grandad an ultimatum. “It’s time for Fluffy to go.”
The next Sunday we had Fluffy for lunch. He was very tough and stringy – must have been all that aggression.
In October 1994 we were trekking through Nepal on the Annapurna/Dhaulagiri trail. It had been a stressful and difficult day and we were very tired and suffering from varying degrees of Mountain Sickness. The Sherpas suggested that we camped in the grounds of a mountain accommodation rather than on the side of the mountain.
There was a bucket shower that we could use. While we waited our turn I sat on a low wall. A chicken came up and tilted her head and said “Gwa”. I tilted mine and said “Gwa”. We gwaed on and on and then I told the chicken how awful I felt and that I wondered why I had come and would I ever see home again. I got several very sympathetic “Gwas” back. Then it was my turn for the shower and off I went. An hour or 2 later the Sherpas had cooked dinner. It was chicken. I asked them “where did you get it out here”? One of them said “It’s the one you were speaking to”.
I was quite grief stricken that I was eating my friend. I’ll always remember her. She was the only one who knew how I felt.