THERE, in the headlights, in the middle of the country lane, was a chicken. It was not a happy chicken. Dusk had fallen. It wanted to be in bed, but with an impenetrable hedge on one side and an unscalable wall on the other, it couldn’t get out of the lane. Cars were negotiating their way around it, dazzling it with their lights, making it agitated.

It was Friday night. We were making our way home after a restaurant review (see next week’s What’s On in The Northern Echo) through Gilling West at the head of Holmedale – the pretty dale which rolls steeply away south of the A66 from Scotch Corner.

In fact, we were making our way home to ensure our three chickens had been shut away properly at the bottom of the garden so they didn’t get foxed. Regular readers may remember some of our hen escapades, most notably with Roger the Rooster, who hatched out in our bath and grew up with anger management issues. A softy at heart, he often could not contain his exasperation with modern life and so would explode violently. He hated with a passion my gold crocs – plastic shoes – and he would pick them up from the doorstep and furiously throw them around. One morning, he tossed a croc high into the air and it landed on his head, his bright red comb sticking out through the holes.

For seconds, he blindly lurched around – “who turned out the lights?” – until he shook off the shoe.

The experience left so angry that a few days later he attacked our 6ft neighbour, drawing blood on his leg. As our 6ft neighbour has young children and may himself be roused to violence if angered, Roger had to go. He was shipped out to a farm in Thorpe Thewles.

On Friday, my wife, who takes the lead on hen-related matters, ordered that I stop the car. She jumped out to rescue the bird while I knocked on the door of the only house from which it could have strayed. A startled lady answered in her dressing gown – “I’ve just had a shower,” she said, which was understandable as it was nearly 10pm.

The hen wasn’t hers, so now the dilemma was ours. Could we leave it in the lane to foxes and cars?

Hens are strange. As soon as the sun sets, they have to get to bed before they shut down for the night. This one was flying up at the open car window, as if desperate to roost inside.

So my wife grabbed it, rammed it into a shopping bag, stuffed into the footwell, and I was ordered to drive off.

Is this theft? Could we be accused of feathering our own nest?

In daylight, it turned out to be a motley, mangy bird, bald down its gingery front and missing a toe.

But named Agatha, after Gilling West church, she is sweet natured, lays an egg every day, and is extremely adventurous – I keep having to field her from faraway parts of our village that no hen has ever reached.

I just hope she's not stolen property, not a hot hen.

LAST week, I was discussing ombré, a hairstyle in which the hair is gradually shaded from dark to light. The word has the same beginnings as an “umbrella”, which casts shade. Just when I thought hairdressing could have no further fascinations, my colleague Phil Lambell tells me that in Venice they sell “un ombra” – a glass of wine sold from a barrel which is moved around St Mark’s Square so it remains cool in the shade cast by the belltower.