Open Writing

A fresh breakfast egg, gathered in from your own hen run half-an-hour before breakfast.

An egg that has been boiled just right, not too much and not too little, served with toasted soldiers made from slices of home-baked bread.

Ah, bliss!

We had eggs galore during my boyhood, and that was during the great war of the 1940s, when eggs were scarcer than winter sunshine in England.

Of course, we kept our own hens in the croft beside our village home. Around 20 of them, White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds.

Most folk then were making do with egg powder, a ghastly concoction that tasted of molten rubber mixed with wallpaper paste.

We had eggs for breakfast every day. Eggs to give away, and eggs to barter for home-cured bacon and pork roasts.

But hens don’t look after themselves.

“Are we carrying out an experiment?’’ said dad, before going off to work.

“How do you mean?’’ said I, knowing what was coming.

“Seeing how long hens can survive without water?’’

“I’ll do it when I get home from school,’’ said I.

That meant knocking out the wooden bung in the ancient stone sink which served as a water trough in the hen run, scraping away a surprising amount of gooey green slime, then carrying half-a-dozen buckets of water from kitchen to trough.

Then there was the dropping board, the broad plank under the hens’ overnight roosting perch.

“If it isn’t cleaned soon that Rhodey cock will be scraping its crest against the hen hut roof,’’ dad pronounced.

So I had to clear away the droppings with a metal fire rake. Not the ideal build-up to a ham-and-egg tea.

That Rhodey cockerel had its eye on me. A nasty, beady eye, which revealed nothing but malice towards little boys. It used to attack me whenever I went into the hen-pen, flapping its wings, clawing its way up my chest as it tried to peck my face.

Gaining in confidence, the Rhodey tried the same assault on dad - and that was its downfall. It ended up in the cooking pot.

We ate it.

I’ve just been looking at pictures of some eggs that will never be eaten. Carl Faberge’s fabulous jewellery eggs made for the Russian Tsars Alexander and Nicholas.

Faberge was the most famous court jeweller in history. In 1885 he suggested to the Emperor Alexander III that he should make an egg with some surprise in it as an Easter gift for the Empress.

In Tsarist days Easter was a great time in Russia. Everybody kissed everybody else, saying “Christ is risen’’ and receiving in reply the words “Verily. He is risen.’’

Easter eggs symbolised new life and hopefulness.

Faberge made an egg for the Empress which at first glance was an ordinary hen’s egg. But inside it were miniature surprises wrought in gold and platinum, precious gems and enamel.

From then on Faberge made an annual Easter egg for the Russian royal family. They are among the most astonishing and appealing pieces of jewellery ever made.

Some of the Imperial eggs eventually came into the possession of Malcolm Forbes, founder of a New York-based publishing empire.

Mr Forbes died in 1990. Now his family are selling his collection of royal eggs at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on April 20.

Just one of them, the Coronation egg, is expected to fetch $24,000,000. It is made of gold-covered guilloche enamel, mounted with a trelliswork of diamond-studded imperial eagles. Inside is a velvet-lined compartment containing a model of the coach in which the Empress Alexandra made her grand entry into Moscow.

It’s one of the most fabulous things you ever saw - and if it was on display in a museum in England I would feel compelled to make an annual pilgrimage to pay my respects to it.

Mind you, it’s a long way from those Rhode Island Red eggs that I used to collect from a hen-hut in the village of Whitley.

Do you know, I’m feeling peckish. Think I’ll have a boiled egg for lunch.

Allow the water to boil, pop in the egg, and leave it in the pan for precisely four minutes…