Two eggs.
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Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
Let me guess…
Tomorrow’s post will be “one egg”. (unless there is some december effect…)
My bet is on two eggs. Plus something on the weather
I am going for two eggs and a goat update.
“Want to come back to my place? We could talk. I could make scrambled eggs and coffee, and we could watch the sun come up”, I read on the novel I’am translating now. Surely if he was addicted to this blog, this guy would offer his prospective lover something other thay scrambled eggs for breakfast, fed up as he would be with eggs day in, day out. Even he could see the beautiful rising sun as a huge and dripping fried egg!
Pingback: George Orwell: Egg man (koo koo ka joob)
Orwell fans (and egg lovers) might be interested in the following excerpt from a letter Orwell wrote at this time to his friend Jack Common, who was looking after his cottage at Wallington in England while George and Eileen were in Marrakech. The letter was written on 12 October 1938, so we are a little ahead of it now, but it does show that George was an incurable egg-obsessive:
“I hope the hens have begun laying [i.e. back at Wallington]. Some of them have by this time, I expect, at any rate they ought to. We’ve just bought the hens for our house, which we’re moving into on Saturday. The hens in this country are miserable little things like the Indian ones, about the size of bantams, and what is regarded as a good laying hen i.e it lays once a fortnight, costs less than a shilling. They ought to cost about 6d. …”
Presumably if George had got his hens up to 2 per day, he was doing something right.
FYI the letter is published in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol 1 of 4 vols covering 1920-1940
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Two eggs bad, four eggs good
Thanks Stephen – interesting.
This is all making me appreciate the dilemma my mother-in-law had during the war (WW2), she kept hens in her very small London garden. Rationing in the UK meant that she could either keep her hens, and use her coupons to buy food for them, or get rid of them and use her coupons for eggs. She decided to keep her hens. So in a good week (lots of “two eggs” days) she got more eggs this way, in a bad week (lots of “no eggs” days) she lost out.
George~~
I wonder, when you were a toddler, did you meet an egg under the table? And was it then that you realized that it was an egg? And that its name was Egg?
I need more clues!
:shock:
One egg. No egg. Two eggs. One egg. Et cetera. Le Sacre du Printemps (Russian: Весна священная, Vesna svjaščennaja) when played on a calliope.
Next: Three eggs.
art brennan—> I’m still under the shock of the first “two eggs” post, I’m not sure I’m ready for such a revolution.
Plus, if the eggs actually are the manhood metaphor mentionned earlier in the comments, what the hell could “three eggs” mean? (and would “four eggs” mean Orwell turned gay?)
His poor wife is probably purchasing the wretched eggs to keep his spirits up.”Behind every great man…” etc etc.Gets up @ 3 AM while George is dreaming of ???
From his letter ( “the hens here lay once a fortnight”) Hawking has calculated for us that he has 1.5 times 14=21 “bantam hens”
That coyote head otta be clean and shiny by now…
Good research Stephen…give us more when you can.
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Whoa. So this is one or two eggs from his whole flock?
Haven’t checked in for awhile. Hard to say what to say.
Re this egg business. Is he sending coded messages to Graham Greene?
Tantalus and I
Know the bitter pill of dreams
toyed with. Today two.
FWIW, I’m remembering three chickens as the size of his Northern Africa flock. So we might see “three eggs” some day.
I live at a bit lower latitude than the UK, and here our chickens tend to stop laying for a month or so in early fall as the days get shorter, and the hens molt. It wouldn’t be surprising if hens were better layers closer to the Equator.
Also FWIW, when one has hens, one collects and saves the eggs for meals, rather than eating them in real time. So maybe someday we’ll see “made one omelette.”
Two Eggs tomorrow FTW.
Yokozuna–I don’t think the manhood metaphor holds. Too many one egg days. There is probably a reason for the count, but we may not know that reason until all three chickens have laid an egg on the same day.
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quote:
“18.10.38
By orwelldiaries
We have now lost 3 fowls in addition to the one which was presumably pecked to death. Symptoms all the same – loss of power of legs & head drooping. Evidently paralysis, tho’ attributed by the Arabs to a black parasite infesting the birds. Cause & effect uncertain here. The Arabs’ treatment is rubbing with a mixture of charcoal ash, salt & water. Seems effective, at any rate two which were slightly affected seem better to day° & able to run about. The remaining 8 fowls seem now in good condition, but their appetite is very small even allowing for small size. They will never eat maize unless boiled, & do not care greatly for mash.”
he has 8.
quote:
“12.10.38
By orwelldiaries
A lot cooler. No snow now visible on the Atlas, but perhaps obscured by clouds.
Have installed the hens & goats. Hens about the size of the Indian fowl, but of all colours, some with a species of topknot, white ones very pretty. These are supposed to be laying pullets but have not laid yet. Twelve brought crammed together in two small baskets, then sent on donkey back about 5 miles, at the end of which one fowl was dead, apparently pecked to death by others. ”
so he bought 12, 1 died en route, 3 died later from lice or something, so the count of 8 seems to be the current flock.
Spoiler Alert: I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but George also told Jack Commons in the letter that he and Eileen are planning a trip to the Atlas Mountains “some time after Xmas”.
So this definitely gives us all SOMETHING to look forward to beyond this endless cycle of egg-counting. A change of scenery. Travel tales. Maybe snow. Observations of poultry-farming in the Atlas Mountains, that sort of thing.
I’me sticking with 21 hens
Furthermore,in the absence of refrigeration (Morrocco 1938) I bet he boils those eggs up pronto.
When I was a boy I had a special egg cup….When you could firmly slice off the egg top…well it was a great satisfaction.Am I running on here??
Reread his letter…its around 20.I believe 3 of them died earlier…
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Now I’m thinking 8 hens: on 12.10.38 (the very day of his letter to Jack Commons, so he must have been pretty excited about it) he reports having taken delivery of two baskets of pullets that had been sent 5 miles on donkey back. Tightly packed in the baskets, a dozen birds, including one apparently pecked to death. Then, a few days later, the death by some kind of disease of three more. No further casualties reported.
If only we had Jack’s diary so we could monitor the Wallington flock!
dave: you’re right, he probably ate most of his eggs as you suggest.
next : no egg
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“Two eggs”. Not very exciting… but hey, it’s better than “Last week, four brands of Chinese eggs were found to be contaminated with melamine, and agriculture officials speculated that the cause was adulterated feed given to hens. No illnesses have been linked to melamine in eggs.”
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Sorry for the 5 chicken miscount. Do we all agree there are 8? Perhaps chickens should not and cannot be counted before or after they have hatched. Only eggs should be counted. 3 will be recorded on December 3.
Perhaps?
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