Pillowy balls of dough love

Dinner rolls, harder than you might think to make soft.

Like in daily life just add lard to get that doughy, soft feel. Where your standard white bread recipe might ask for water, simply replace with milk. Melt in a little butter...bung in a bit of yoghurt if you like...et voila - rolls more akin to Indian Pav than crusty (yet surprisingly light) cannon balls. Perfect with soup or for soaking up gravy...or heck, just covering in butter & jam and duetting with a cuppa tea. Hmmm. mmmh.

The Clandestine Playhouse

It's late 1940s. The war is not long over. Capt Jack Holden, Dr Emilia Alcock-Smythe and the mysterious Tatiana Augustidis find themselves in a grey, cold capital in Mittel Europa. Allied forces administer the divided city barely maintaining law and order amid an undertow of sleazy racketeering, thuggery and mysterious encounters. No-one can be trusted and no-one is whom they first appear.

The three head out into the dank foreboding night to see if they can get to the bottom of a mystery invitation. Little do they know what they are letting themselves in for as they enter a strange underworld through the doorway to Hotel Sacher.

The only legal currency is allied issue ration bonds and they are in short supply. They resort to the treacherous black market.

Tatiana uses her charm to gain intel from a British army officer...Major Calloway, suspicious if for no other reason than he salutes with his left hand. Is he a boy scout in disguise?

A chance encounter with Cecil B. Grant, the British Cultural Attache - a rum old cove. Seems affable enough and eager to help...but is it just a front? And who is the mysterious balloon seller and the rake lurking in the shadows?

Having got to the bottom of 'it'...it's time for our heroes to head home to contemplate the strange evening and smoke a bowl of Sullivan's Gentleman's Mix.

But the city doesn't sleep - there are clandestine trysts in smokey alley ways, long shadows from unseen spies flicker on the walls...and there's the ever present mysterious balloon seller. Who's buying his 'balloons' at this time of night anyway?

Chutney Tombola

Forget the EuroMillions Lottery and the €650 squidizillion jackpot, it's the draw everyone (and by that I mean literally E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E) has been waiting for - The Spratticus Chutney Tombola - open to all those who so kindly and generously sponsored me during Movember to sprout a shrub a-top my lip.

See the visuals below.

1. The hallowed roll call of sponsors. I was going to etch each name into a platinum plaque but I seem to have misplaced my stash of platinum plaques...so scrap paper will have to do.

2. Into the Chicken Whisperer bonnet they go...

3. Give 'em a mungle...

4.  Hello! Who's this then?

5. Ah...of course, the host with the most...

6. SAUL BARRINGTON, please step forward.

So what's it to be Mr B?

Green Tomato Chutney or Quince & Medlar Membrillo (errr...paste)?

Thanks again one-and-all. You're all winners in my book, just Saul is a slightly more tangible winner. There's always next year!

Get Fat Get Fit

These flyers arrived through our door today in one batch.

[Clearly we live in a very classy area!!]

What next, flyers for land mines and prosthetic limbs?

Filthy Brighton

Woke up to howling gales, horizontal rain, wheelie bins bowling down the road, recycling buckets eddying like leaves in a breeze (no leaves present, probably all over Belgium) and the deep groaning of a very angry sea. A metaphor for what 2012 has in store? I hope not.

Happy New Year one-and-all!