cous cous alla verdura

1. 1. Mettere il cous cous in una ciotola e versarvi sopra l’acqua intiepidita. Lasciar riposare per 10 minuti in modo che tutta l’acqua venga assorbita. Intanto lavare e mondare i cipollotti e i pomodori.
   2. Tagliare a tocchetti di media grandezza i cipollotti e scottarli per qualche minuto in una padella antiaderente larga con un cucchiaio d’olio e un pizzico di sale.
   3. Tagliare i pomodori in modo da ottenere degli spicchi allungati e aggiungerli ai cipollotti in padella. Far saltare a fuoco alto qualche minuto con un pizzico di sale.
   4. Cipollotti e pomodori devono risultare solo lievemente imbionditi e non devono cuocere totalmente o spappolarsi.
   5. Con una forchetta sgranare il cous cous inumidito nella ciotola.
   6. Aggiungere i pomodori, i cipollotti e due cucchiai di olio e mescolare. Distribuire sul composto un cucchiaino di curry in polvere e mescolare di nuovo.
   7. Una volta amalgamato il composto versarlo nel piatto di portata. Aggiungere sulla superficie del cous cous un cucchiaino di curry per ogni commensale. Guarnire con i fiori di erba cipollina.
   
   

chicken breasts a la rose

The two-step cooking process for the chicken in this recipe not only gives the meat great colour and flavour but also ensures it remains moist by baking it in the wine sauce.
Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6, 200°C, fan 180°C.
Heat half the oil and half the butter in a medium saucepan.
Add the onions

and fry over a medium heat until softened but not coloured. Add the garlic and fry for 1 minute.
Add the plain flour and stir well. Add the mustard, wine and thyme, turn up the heat and bubble for 5 minutes, add the stock and bubble for another 10 minutes or until thickened slightly.
Finally, stir in honey and set aside.
Melt the rest of the oil and butter in a large frying pan, season the chicken breasts and pan fry for 3-4 minutes on each side in batches until golden brown on both sides.
Place the chicken breasts into a large ovenproof dish, pour over the sauce and then bake for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through, with no pink showing.

Ingredients

30ml (2tbsp) olive oil

30g (1oz) finest* Normandy butter

2 onions, thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1tbsp finest* plain flour

2tsp Dijon mustard

150ml (1/4 pint) rose wine

300ml (1/2 pint) chicken stock

2 sprigs thyme, leaves picked

5ml (1tsp) runny honey

6 finest* chicken breasts, boneless

Minestrone alla Milanese

VEGETABLE CHOWDER (Minestrone alla Milanese)

1/2 quart of stock 2 slices of lean pork, or a ham bone 2 tomatoes, fresh or canned 1 cup of rice 2 tablespoons of dried beans 1 tablespoon of peas, fresh or canned 2 onions

Put into the stock the slices of pork, cut into small pieces; or, if desired, a ham bone may be substituted for the pork. Add the tomatoes, cut into small pieces also, the onions, in small pieces, and the rice. Boil all together until the rice is cooked. Then add the beans and the peas and cook a little longer. The soup is ready when it is thick. If desired, this chowder can be made with fish broth instead of the stock, and with the addition of shrimps which have been taken from their shells.

This dish can be served hot or cold.

IMAGINATION is more important than knowledge

I expend a huge amount of my time  working to keep my company innovative. I’ve developed an obsession with some of history’s most creative minds in the hope that I might learn some tricks to expand my own creative productivity.

Some of the things I’ve learned are more useful than others, and some are simply too weird to try.

BUT

IMAGINATION is more important than knowledge

These strategies stand out because they have the power to change the way you think about creativity. Give them a try, and you’ll reach new levels of creative productivity.

1. Wake Up Early

Not all creative minds are morning people. Franz Kafka routinely stayed up all night writing

 For many creative people, waking up early is a way to avoid distractions. Ernest Hemingway woke up at 5 a.m. every day to begin writing. He said, “There is no one to disturb you and it is cool and cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”

The trick to making getting up early stick is to do it every day and avoid naps—no matter how tired you feel. Eventually, you will start going to bed earlier to make up for the lost sleep. This can make for a couple of groggy days at first, but you’ll adjust quickly, and before you know it, you’ll join the ranks of creative early risers.

2. Exercise Frequently

There’s plenty of evidence pointing to the benefits of exercise for creativity. Feeling good physically gets you in the right mood to focus and be productive. Exercise also forces you to have disconnected time (it’s tough to text or email while working out), and this allows you to reflect on whatever it is you’re working on. In a Stanford study, 90% of people were more creative after they exercised.

3. Stick to a Strict Schedule

It’s a common misconception that in order to be creative, one must live life on a whim with no structure and no sense of need to do anything, but the habits of highly successful and creative people suggest otherwise. In fact, most creative minds schedule their days rigorously. only by having a schedule can we free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action.

4. Keep Your Day Job

Creativity flourishes when you’re creating for yourself and no one else. Creativity becomes more difficult when your livelihood depends upon what you create (and you begin to think too much about what your audience will think of your product). Perhaps this is why so many successful and creative people held on to their day jobs. Many of them stayed at while producing their best work  on a break out money maker while they still held a 9 to 5.

Day jobs provide more than the much-needed financial security to create freely. They also add structure to your day that can make your creative time a wonderful release. 

5. Learn to Work Anywhere, Anytime

A lot of people work in only one place, believing it’s practically impossible for them to get anything done anywhere else. Staying in one place is actually a crutch; studies show that changing environments is beneficial to productivity and creativity. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. The same is true for any type of creative work. If you keep waiting until you are in the perfect place at the ideal time, the time will never come.

 When you have a creative idea, don’t wait—put it into action as soon as you can. Recording that spark of creativity may very well be the foundation of something great.

6. Learn That Creative Blocks Are Just Procrastination

As long as your heart is still beating, you have the ability to come up with new ideas and execute them. They may not always be great ones, but the greatest enemy of creativity is inactivity.

Bringing It All Together

In my experience, you must get intentional about your creativity if you want it to flourish. Give these six strategies a try to see what they can do for you.

DRESS FRIGHT THIS SUMMER

Dress casual but be the dogs this summer, polo by boss , sta prest by adaptor . Below suede by boss sta prest by mikkel rude

above tonic sta prest by relco, wear with jacket above

white jacket

THE WAY TO WIN THE RIGHT WOMAN

Woman

Winning the confidence and love of the woman you really want requires much of a man
He much exercise care and attention, look after her and live all her hardships
always make sure she has everything she needs and wants
a man must be a moneygetter for her
and above all maintain his constant love for her
but if he does that his woman will follow him through hell and highwater
all of this for the woman he loves.
Obviously you must choose the right woman, no one wants a fornicator but if you are able to choose wisely and then nurture the right woman . Much of the time it is do w3ith her family and her education.

LEAVE YOUR JOB TODAY

1.  Your body is telling you to go. If your stomach hurts, your head starts to ache, or you feel drowsy and depressed when it's time to go to work, listen to what your body is telling you. Sometimes it's out ahead of our conscious mind in knowing what we need.At home there is nothing to interest you , there is no stimulation anymore just boredom, now is the time to do something.

2. You're not able to excel. Mediocrity should never be enough; we're all capable of greatness. But without challenges and opportunities to stretch, mediocrity is probably the best you can expect of yourself if you stay.

3. You're unappreciated. The greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated. When you're not appreciated for the work that you do, it can make you question your own abilities. You deserve to feel gratitude for your contribution.

4.  You crave contentment. The best kind of happiness comes from contentment. It's the greatest form of wealth. If that sense of well-being seems impossibly far away, maybe you need to move to a more nurturing environment.

5. You have a bad boss. If your relationship with your boss is tense and untrusting, it will be hard for you to succeed where you are. Once you've done everything in your power to make it work, it is time to leave. If your boss is bad but the company is good, maybe a transfer to a different work group will be possible.

6. Your values aren't supported. If your values are at odds with your boss's or company's--for example, if you pride yourself on your integrity and you have reason to believe your company conducts its business dishonestly--it is time to leave. There's nothing more worth protecting than your values.

7. You're miserable. If you've lost interest in what you do, you're never having fun and you find yourself dreading every day and counting the minutes till the weekend, do yourself a favor and start packing.

8. You're suffering from stress. If stress is taking a toll on your physical and mental health, if your relationships are suffering, if you're having panic attacks or starting to worry that you're at risk for a serious health condition, move on. Long-term stress and low control are a deadly combination.

9. Your reputation is at risk. Too many disagreements with your boss, too many days of calling in sick because you can't handle the environment, too much apathy, and the reputation you've worked so hard to build can suffer damage that will take years to repair. Get a fresh start somewhere else before that happens.

10. You feel in your heart it's time for a change. Change in life is inevitable, and sometimes it's just time to move on. Maybe your family situation has changed, or you want to pursue an outside interest, or your strengths have. Maybe it's time to go find a new opportunity. Life does not get better by chance; it gets better by change.

Of course, if your circumstances may not allow you to leave today. Especially if you have family members who depend on your income, you may need to wait until you have something new in hand. But if these signs sound familiar to you, at an absolute minimum you can start planning your departure. It could turn out to be the best move of your life.

silk scarves china

http://it.aliexpress.com/item/Great-Gift-Mens-100-Silk-Long-Scarf-Cravat-Scarives-Double-Layer-Blue-Black-Red/32265259486.html?spm=2114.010208.3.31.tCgCdO&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_8,searchweb201602_1_10017_10005_10006_10034_10021_507_10022_10020_10018_10019,searchweb201603_9&btsid=108c52e3-4977-4cfc-a73f-8997901d82c3

biscuit coloured jackets

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While a cream suit is a perennial byword for sharp summer style, what’s striking about this year’s array is how particularly fine the jackets look dressed down and worn as smart-casual daywear.
At Ralph Lauren, for example, a cream, heavy-weave Italian silk shantung jacket (part of a Purple Label suit, £2,995) looks suave paired with washed-out black jeans (£255) and a T-shirt (£70) – this monochrome styling would make a strong impact at laid-back summer events. Similarly, at Cifonelli a cream wool/silk/linen jacket (£1,450) works fantastically well with black linen cigarette pants (£290) and a white linen shirt (£280). And at Corneliani a dressy ivory silk jacket (£1,100) with nacre buttons has a gorgeous sheen that can be offset with low-key grey cotton trousers (£250). This jacket is just one of many in a cream-dominated collection: “The spotlight is on every possible shade of white, from ice and cream to pearl and mastic,” says creative director Sergio Corneliani.
Rich cream tailored jackets from Dunhill are also top-flight. Patch pockets on a silk jacket (£1,590) lend a relaxed feel, a slubby linen jacket (£1,425 for the suit) works well teamed with a charcoal cashmere/silk Henley top (£420), while the eight gold buttons on a long and lean cream blazer (£1,425) evoke a rakish, colonial air. Canali’s double-breasted slubby, ridged cream silk/cotton jacket (£1,510 for the suit) also has metal buttons, which in light bronze with a copper-plate “C” logo deliver a vintage accent.
Turkish designer Umit Benan (who distinguished himself with several strong seasons at Trussardi) has pushed this casual look further with a collection entitled Tennis Club de Cartegena, Colombia, where tennis-inspired separates are paired with cream tailoring to strong effect. A roomy double-breasted cotton drill jacket (£1,110) looks cool with a white cotton piqué shirt (£220) and tailored joggers (£330). Incidentally, wearing smart tracksuit bottoms as standard daywear is an ever-strengthening trend.
Tailored jackets in other light hues also look good when styled more casually. At Hermès a limestone cotton/linen jacket (£1,830) feels laid-back when worn with wet-sand cotton trousers (£520), a linen top (£650) and white slip-on plimsolls (£510). And I recently commissioned a bespoke double-breasted suit (£3,600) from tailors Thom Sweeney in a light Ariston silk/linen herringbone with slubs of blush and fawn, which I plan to team with a silk T-shirt or Breton singlet. “Light-coloured tailoring can make a big impact,” says co-founder Thom Whiddett. “It’s about getting the pastel tone right – nothing too bright – and a fabric that drapes beautifully.” Highlights in the ready-to‑wear collection include a champagne single-breasted cotton/cashmere suit (£1,275).
Gieves & Hawkes also ventures into pastels and its pale mint-green wool/linen suit (£1,895) looks deftly styled with an off-white cotton T-shirt (£125) and grey cashmere scarf (£250), while a chalky pale blue linen/silk/wool weave jacket (£595) and trousers (£195) pair well with a matching cotton tee (£125) and dark blue patterned silk scarf (£250). At Marc Jacobs there’s a pastel blue cotton/silk blazer (£1,135) and trousers (£435), as well as a cream double-breasted cotton blazer (£1,155) and trousers (£435), which look great with an ultra-casual white shirt (£425) and plimsolls (£127). And finally, at Bottega Veneta there’s an especially easy-breezy take on the trend: a pale pink cotton jacket (£1,650) worn with shorts (£290) and matching soft leather lace-ups (£440).

the end of the affair

By Joan Bakewell

I have it in front of me now and it started a tumult. It is an airmail letter addressed to me c/o American Express, Bocca da Piazza 1261 Venice. It has two 10- cents stamps and is postmarked Jamaica, dated July 8, 1962. Inside are eight flimsy pages of airline paper headed: “Flying with BOAC”. The letter is from Harold Pinter. It is the first of many such in a relationship that was to last some eight years. Others followed from New York, Boston, Wisconsin, Sicily, Berlin and even Venice, sometimes addressed to Mrs White, more usually to Miss Kydd (a character from his very first play, a one-acter called The Room, commissioned by Henry Woolf, who would years later loan us his own rented room). Each letter was sent c/o a sympathetic friend who could be relied on to keep our secret. Just such a letter was to be the focus of the plot of one of his most celebrated plays, Betrayal.

It is more than 30 years now since Harold wrote that play. It was set in a period that stretches backwards from the late Seventies into the late Sixties, and drew on things that happened a few years earlier. The play portrayed many of the events of the affair between us, with an accuracy verging on the literal. At the time when he first sent me the script, I was deeply distressed to have our private affair so glaringly presented on stage. In the years since then, I have come to regard it as a brilliant exposition of loyalty, love and betrayal between people who care for each other. I have seen many productions of it and grown reconciled to what I first regarded as a judgment on my behaviour. Time passes – and now I look back on it all with fond memories.

Right now, it is being presented at London’s Comedy Theatre with Kristin Scott Thomas as Emma – the woman who is not me, but whose life corresponds very closely to an important part of my own. I went along to talk to the cast as they embarked on rehearsals. There was plenty to talk about.

Some things stay the same: men and women have always fallen passionately in love. But the world in which they live and are judged changes. In many senses, this is now a period play. Not only are the settings and locations different, but social attitudes have changed, too. The 1960s were a different world – and Sixties London was a good place to have an affair. They were giddy times, and the city’s young people were buoyant with a creative optimism that made people inclined to smile rather than frown. And people always smile on lovers. For some seven years, Harold and I met easily and often in London’s pubs and cafés. I sped around London happy as a lark in my first car, a Morris Minor, finding no traffic jams and few parking restrictions. We were so in love we felt it was worthwhile to dash across London to spend half an hour in each other’s company. The Little Akropolis restaurant in Charlotte Street became our regular haunt, and its Greek proprietor took us under his wing.

This would be trickier now, not because we might be recognised, but because the technology has changed. We made our clandestine arrangements in snatched moments from our homes or public telephones. The play refers to “the pip, pip, pip phone calls” made from a pub. There were no mobile phones, phone bills weren’t itemised, no ring-back facilities, no texting, no Twitter, no Facebook – all of which can ambush today’s lovers. Our plans left no trace.

Today there’s something cloying about people’s compulsive need to be in touch all the time. In the 1960s, husbands and wives set out for their day’s work and came together again only when that work was done: there were none of those “I’m on the train” messages telling every stranger within a 10-yard radius the details of your private life. This difference was more than technical. People had individual lives to lead and were less dependent on each other for the rough and tumble of daily living. The call from the supermarket (“Which pesto sauce do you want?”) was unthinkable. And not only because we’d never heard of pesto. People simply had to make decisions for themselves and it made them more resourceful. Harold and I were very resourceful indeed.

Betrayal opens with two people – Emma and Jerry – having a drink in a London pub: they are ex-lovers, and they are meeting to reminisce and to bring each other up to date with their now separate lives. Their conversation is in some ways similar to that between Harold and myself at the Lord’s Tavern pub beside Lord’s Cricket ground early in 1969. It contains a bombshell. Emma tells Jerry that the previous night she and her husband, Robert, agreed to end their marriage, and that she has confessed to him that she has had a long affair with Jerry. It was the moment I told Harold that my husband had known of our affair. That night the two men met: I don’t know what they said to each other. I never asked.

The point that is unique to the play’s plot, and not like my life at all, is that Robert and Jerry are best friends: Jerry had been best man at Robert and Emma’s wedding. Robert is a publisher and Jerry a writer’s agent, so they have professional links. They also regularly play squash together, then shower and go for lunch. Theirs is as close as a friendship can be between men. None of this was true of Harold’s relationship with my husband Michael, which was far less intimate. Michael was a BBC radio producer who admired Harold’s work and sought to promote it within the BBC script department and went on to direct it on radio. We both knew Harold and his actress wife Vivien socially – we dined in each other’s homes, sent holiday postcards, our children went to each other’s parties. Jerry refers to throwing Robert’s daughter up in the air and catching her at just such an occasion. Such an event actually happened, though I can’t recall whether it was at Harold’s home or my own. Neither can Robert or Jerry: the overlapping of life and fiction is tantalising.

The play moves backwards through nine scenes, each one revealing more of the affair: how the lovers had their own flat, came there in the afternoons, how the discovery of a letter from Jerry to Emma, holidaying in Venice, brought the affair to light. Michael and I holidayed in Venice right through the Sixties, and many letters flew back and forth. From then on – moving forward in the play but backwards in time – we see how the deceptions multiplied with each of the three people being complicit in the tangle of loyalties. Audiences find their sympathies shifting back and forth: many have an uneasy sense of their own dilemmas. Fidelity/infidelity in a long marriage is of universal fascination. And the play’s ambiguities are what create the tension.

Again the incidentals of Sixties life reflect those times: Harold and I had a flat in Kentish Town – 38 Burleigh Road. We chose it because at that time the place was rundown and not the sort of place where we were likely to bump into friends. In the play the location has moved to Kilburn – at the time of writing, it had yet to become popular. “Whoever went to Kilburn in those days?” reminisces Jerry. Later, when the Burleigh Road house was sold, we moved to 73 Park Hill Gardens in Hampstead, a much riskier place, but by then we were taking bigger risks.

Reading the play again and talking with Kristin Scott Thomas, I realise how Emma’s life was very much that of a woman of the Sixties. She is basically a housewife with a small child. As I was. I had married at 22 to someone who had been a fellow student at Cambridge. At the time, the theories of the psychologist John Bowlby were all the rage: that small children needed a close bond with their mothers, otherwise they would grow up damaged. So, once my daughter was born when I was 25, I gave up any idea of working. The concept of a career simply didn’t arise. I would be a wife and mother. But I was also a Cambridge graduate. I got restless for some life of the mind. I began to do a little broadcasting here and there but not much. And I began going along to Michael’s rehearsals. He was directing some of Pinter’s radio work at the time, and then I went with him to the party where I met Harold. It was where we had our first encounter. The last scene of Betrayal carries something of its force.

In later years – years that come early in the play – Emma has developed a career of her own: she is running an art gallery and can’t be free in the afternoons. Jerry is more and more busy, too, often in America. It is how the affair petered out in my own life. I got my break in a BBC television programme called Late Night Line Up in 1965. Running a family, an affair and a career was exhilarating but in the end unmanageable. As Jerry indicates in the play, how can they meet when Emma’s not free in the afternoons and he’s in America? We gave up the flat. We brought the affair to an amicable end.

What seems so odd today is that for seven years the affair remained largely secret. Slowly a number of people came to know – what with flats and phone calls, letters and close friends – but there was no gossip that reached the press. On one occasion, the filmmaker Joseph Losey remarked casually to Pinter (they were working on The Servant at the time): “How’s your affair going?” And Harold was outraged at such a breach of the understood etiquette. He found out who had talked – it was the writer David Mercer – searched him out, and gave him a thorough dressing down. People cowered before Harold’s disapproval.

There was something different about life then. People had a sense of the right to privacy that the rise of celebrity seems to have been eroding ever since. It was assumed that affairs arose from the dynamic of human relations – the unavoidable attraction of more than one other person in one’s life – and were viewed benignly until people began to get hurt. In our case, the theatre world, which is often lampooned as fluffy and shallow, proved impressively loyal. On the night Betrayal opened at the National Theatre, I was one of many guests invited to the after-show dinner celebration at La Barca restaurant. Lord Longford greeted me loudly – “They say this play is about you, Joan” – but was quickly hushed up by a flock of sympathetic friends. It had all been over long ago, and there was no need to speak of it.

In fact, it was Harold himself who made the whole thing public. In the mid-1990s, with Harold’s consent, Michael Billington embarked on a biography. Harold rang and asked me to talk to him.

“Really? Are you sure? What shall I say?”

“Tell him the truth. There’s no point in keeping the secret any more.”

So I did. Harold and I were each happily re-married by then but continued to be good friends. He felt that the passing of time had made things less explosive. He was wrong: when the biography was published in 1996, the revelations were seized on and made much of by the press. From then on, it was public knowledge. Ironically, when in 2003 I published my autobiography, The Centre of the Bed, it was Harold who was angry. He wrote a stinging letter telling me he was not happy at our relationship being “thrown open to the public”. He always liked to be in control. Such a dilemma is the crux of Betrayal.

Our friendship survived and shifted in the long years that followed. We met not often but regularly. He was always wonderful company, a great wit and story-teller, a source of quotations, ideas and laughter. He sent me the scripts of each new play as it was completed. Above all, we remained concerned about each other’s lives. When I remarried in 1975, Harold, who had just separated from his first wife Vivien, came along to the party and was the last guest to leave. On my wedding night, we sat drinking – just the three of us – until two in the morning.

Then in 1982 when Vivien died – of alcoholism at the age of 53 – he asked me if I would go along to her funeral. There were only a few of us, but it was a beautiful and thoughtful occasion. I was, then and always, pleased to be his friend.

 'Betrayal’ is at the Comedy Theatre, Panton Street, London SW1 (www.thecomedytheatre.co.uk), unt

sweet potato quiche

• Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6. Line a 20cm flan dish with the pastry. Prick the base all over with a fork and cover with baking paper. Weigh down with baking beans or uncooked rice.
• Bake for 10 mins. Remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for 5 mins. Set aside to cool slightly.
• Reduce the oven to 180C/ 160C Fan/Gas 4. Heat the oil in a large nonstick frying pan nd gently fry the sweet potato for 10 mins.
• Add the onion and cook for a further 5 mins, stirring occasionally until tender and just starting to colour. Add the spinach and cook for 1 min. Transfer to the pastry case.
• In a jug, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs and parsley. Pour over the filling in the pastry case then sprinkle over the feta.
• Cook in the oven for 25 mins or until the filling has just set through to the middle. Serve straight away or leave to cool for later.

pea croquttes

• Preheat the oven to 200C/ 180C Fan/Gas 6. Put the peas and cheese in a processor. Blitz briefly – they should be chopped but not puréed.
• Put the mixture in a large bowl. Combine with the chopped herbs, egg yolk and 25g of the breadcrumbs. Season well with black pepper. Shape the mixture into 8 croquettes. Place the remaining breadcrumbs on a plate and roll each croquette in them until evenly covered.
• Put on a baking sheet and drizzle over 2tsp of the olive oil. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 mins or until crisp and golden.
• To make the beetroot salad, whisk together the rest of the olive oil, the orange juice, vinegar and mustard in a bowl. Combine with the beetroot, shallot and orange zest. Spoon the mixture over the little gem leaves.
• Serve 2 croquettes per person, with the beetroot salad on the side.

ginger chicken

• Put the marmalade, juice, ginger and garlic in a bowl. Mix well. Add the chicken and stir to coat well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hrs.
• Spread the chicken out in a foil-lined roasting tin, then pour on any excess marinade. Cover with foil and bake for 20 mins. Remove the foil and baste with the juices in the tin. Return to the oven, uncovered, for 25 mins until brown and cooked through.
• To make the salad, simmer the beans for 5 mins, refresh under cold water and remove the pods, if you prefer. Put in a bowl with the spring onions, carrots, cabbage, seed mix and coriander, then toss together well.
• Squeeze 2tsp lime juice and mix with the oil. Drizzle over the salad. Serve the chicken with the salad and lime wedges to garnish.
  
  
  
  • 4tbsp marmalade
  • 2tbsp orange juice
  • 2cm piece fresh ginger, grated
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1.1kg pack Butcher’s Selection British Chicken Thighs
  • 200g frozen broad beans
  • spring onions, sliced
  • 400g carrots, coarsely grated
  • red cabbage, shredded
  • 100g Good& Balanced Berry Seed Mix
  • 3tbsp chopped coriander
  • 1 lime, cut into wedges
  • 3tbsp olive oil

  Method

  • Put the marmalade, juice, ginger and garlic in a bowl. Mix well. Add the chicken and stir to coat well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hrs.
  • Spread the chicken out in a foil-lined roasting tin, then pour on any excess marinade. Cover with foil and bake for 20 mins. Remove the foil and baste with the juices in the tin. Return to the oven, uncovered, for 25 mins until brown and cooked through.
  • To make the salad, simmer the beans for 5 mins, refresh under cold water and remove the pods, if you prefer. Put in a bowl with the spring onions, carrots, cabbage, seed mix and coriander, then toss together well.
  • Squeeze 2tsp lime juice and mix with the oil. Drizzle over the salad. Serve the chicken with the salad and lime wedges to garnish.

the jersey blazer from asos

BOREDOM A short story

Boredom a short story

It was a funeral as you imagine the typical funeral. Autumn . damp. few people in the rain. A cemetery on the confines of South London. a place where hardly any one went unless it was for funerals  A place you passed on dark  days and just looked from a car racing to a better destination and then totally forgot

The religious person  read what he had to read. the same things they read about everyone, you know, what a fine person they had been, how they had graced God’s good earth with their prescence, all that stuff. they’d say that about a complete arsehole or a saint.

When all was said and all was done Peter Laydon drove his defunct Mother’s Bentley back to the family home . It was a nice home, a place that had always been a safety net to Laydon. it had gables and turrets and all the trimmings of mid-Victorian London.
A huge garden out back and no near neighbours.It was near Hampstead Heath and it was perfect for a man such as Laydon whose only real passion in life was the book and books ,lots of them.
A normal day for Laydon was a quick pint at his nearest pub The Spaniards and then up and over the point of Jack Straws Castle and onto the bookshops in Hampstead Village.

 A good walk every day full of anticipation, longing and need. Even though he knew he'd see the same books over and over again. People threw books away these days or gave them to the charity shop and for some reason Laydon couldn't touch Charity books with the same enthusiasm.

 He walked into the hall and took his shoes off as his Mother always wanted him to as the marble was pure Sicilian Rose. He slipped on some slippers and left the house keys on the hall table. He went through to the kitchen, that was totally modern and totally white. He opened the fridge and took out a can of Waitrose special ale. He poured it into a glass and drank it doiwn in one go.He told himself he should go easy on the beer because he was getting middle aged spread a bit too early but he woolfed the beer down all the same then got another one.

He felt safe here . It had always been his place to hide from the world. so many rooms and so many memories of silence, not the silence of negativity simply that of people who said things when they needed to say them.
A place of refuge and the last time had been over 25 years ago. His bride of only eighteen months had left a note for him and in it she said that she didn’t want to go on with him, that she’d met someone else. It was signed Judith but in his mind he said Judith Smith.He remembered this nearly every day. He tried to understand if it was because she'd left him and he couldn't stand the snub.

He actually couldn't understand if he had really loved her. She had been quite amazing.

Later on as the years passed he’d seen that she’d become the medical head of a West Country region . She had seemed to worship him in the beginning and then from out of nowhere she’d gone.

 He sometimes called her up on the internet, called her up as in going on to the Westbridge health Service for Wiltshire. She did not know it was him. He asked her about obscure sexual stuff but she always gave a correct professional response.

 There he’d find her monthly newsletter to the people of that health area giving them advice and asking for feed back. He’d sent feedback and asked if swallowing semen was good for the health. A kind of silly revenge.
It had been here, right in Mum’s kitchen that Judith on her knees had swallowed whole the cum load of Peter Laydon . A stunning red head of 15 years old and he at nineteen getting the first blow job of his life.That was another thing that kept going into his mind all the time.

He couldn't stand the thought that she'd moved on to other more interesting blow jobs.

He’d married her when she was 18 and even though he knew in his heart that he’d married someone who was at most in love with love he’d hoped for the best.
But from the first days he knew that she was destined

for better things, the thing was she was just better than he was, maybe a better word would be acute, yes

just more acute than him.He hated her in a terrible way but longed for her teenage red golden hair now gone and replaced by a kind of boring blond red hair to hide the grey crept in.He had seen her photograph introducing herself as the head of the medical centre.

.

He was quite pleased that she’d been stricken recently with M.E. He’d seen that by writing her name on Google and the Farrington gull advertiser had proclaimed TOP DOCTOR STRICKEN BY M.E.

That was what God has fucking given you you stupid old bag he thought but he had another vision of her.18 years old and a Burne Jones vision, a thank you to men from the almighty saying this can be made too.

the M.E , well that made him feel she was human because everything she’d done since giving him the elbow had been a success if you can call med shit a  success.

She'd wander into his mind at odd moments especially at night and then he'd feel the loss.

He'd search the computer for all traces of her but it was all the same old news, nothing personal.

He had tracked her home down on Google Earth and stood below her windows, those of a fantastic Tudor period house.He had also hired an on-line private detective.He had been told that the husband was a civil rights worker. That made him feel even more contempt. 

 As Mother said leave well alone that which is not your world.

Mother said that most people did things like civil rights out of boredom.

She’d married a man with the surname of Winston . He fought for the rights of Palestinians and other stuff like that. he was also a qualified Doctor.That man was her second husband but her real husband.

Thats what she had said in her last letter to Laydon.

He’d come to hate people like Judith who he decided only had one goal in life and that was to marry a prick who was a dentist or a doctor but he knew that might quite easily not be true. Judith had seen through him. He’d never had a proper job and never needed one for living off Mum was normal. She had money and she didn’t mind him using it. But he had seen her become one of those old bags trying to cling on to their womanhood by doing all the things that women like that do.

"Need any money for the week love" She’d say as she’d be going up to the West End. a kind of ritual on a Monday morning and he’d say "If thats Ok Mum"

So she’d drop him 300 pounds every Monday and life was a gas and went on being a gas for years until now and when he thought of Judith.

Mother had gone quick, heart attack. Since she had gone he’d been eating at various eateries in Hampstead Village  not too far from his home but tonight he’d have to cook because Mother’s money wasn’t around. He decided he’d have to sort it out at the bank the next day.

He picked up the phone and rang Jim O’Dowell a friend of his Mother’s and who knew a lot about most things.O'Dowell was the proverbial out of work actor. He'd done a series once in the 70's called "Doctor

Dee" . It had gone on for two years then the star of the series George Robold had been killed in a hit and run.

And that had been that. By that time O'Dowell had cashed in on his brief fame and bought a huge villa

in Greenwich when prices were low. He was the type of actor they get when fat crinkled and boozy are needed.
Then he had had a black mass of hair but now it was totally white.

"Jim its me"

"Oh hello, how do you feel, I suppose terrible, silly question. It was a nice service though"

"well you know how I feel , I can imagine you do jim"

"Of course"

"well I need some advice"

"Ask me"

"Well Mum organised all the money and now I’ve got exactly 45 quid in my pockets so what do I do about the bank account?"

"Well you’ll have to wait till they read the will but everything will go to you I’m sure"

"Yeh but do you think the bank will give me an advance tomorrow if I go in"

" think not, so , but look I can give you a few hundred to tide you over"

"Oh thanks Jim"

"Shall I come over"?

"No I’ll come round to you".

"No don't worry I fancy coming over to Greenwich, I will leave now"

He drove over to Jim’s, it was a long drive and not easy as it rained all the way. He was welcomed by the middle aged artist in his flat near the waterfront in greenwich.the Villa had long gone, sold to American Iranians for 5,000,0000 and one fifth of that had bought the flat. It was an ex-council flat on one of those Peabody type estates that now got big bucks for location as most were built in what was then a small Victorian city and therefore located near to the centre.O'Dowell was in no way feeling guilty of

taking a dwelling intended for the poor worker.
Neo-Libs like him were mostly words and no idea

of Marx or what he really intended but they would always get upset at the word "Paki" or "Wog".

It was all the same a pokey little flat.Jim offered home made beer and gave him the money. They drank the beer chatted then Laydon left.
O'Dowell was boring, why did Mother frequent him? He stopped at a Chippie and bought take away skate and chips . Then he bought champagne at an off-licence, not to celebrate , it was his normal tipple.
He stopped at the burnt down Cutty Sark. It had been said it was a workers blow lamp that had done the trick but most people knew better. It had been hooligans or as they used to say

guttersnipes who had nothing to do every night.Greenwich council knew all too well that it had

been an act of arson by youths on the estate opposite.

He drove home and ate in front of the t.v then realised that since the funeral he felt kind of happy. Why am I happy he asked himself?

 Fuck my Mother has just been buried but I’m happy. He told himself he was seriously fucked up. He then thought about Judith ....yeh maybe she knew I was fucked up. Then a vision of her saying , pleading with him "Will you promise to always love me". And  "I’m not a virgin and I have to confess that to you.This boy I went out with had sex with me on his couch. I didn’t want to but he was kind of overpowering, does it matter"?

He was so pleased she needed to confess, that was real love, something absolutely tangible.

But it hadn't gone on long. He'd neglected her and the thing that he now felt had hammered him into oblivion was that he fucked her best friend before they'd married.

She had told him it didn't matter but of course in her heart it did.An example of her future husband.

But why had she then gone on and married him, what had been the point in that?

But then he remembered Graham and Elizabeth her parents, they were not exactly exciting although they were decent people.

The Father had been at odds with the world because no one understood

the great talent he had as a carver of wood. But wood wasn't big in the 70's.

Then it seemed like she just switched herself off. He often wondered what had gone through her mind , she had been so fucking beautiful . He was glad she was now a strained looking old bag on the internet while he had matured well. That was something.

 "I tried all possible ploys but finally I had to leave . I managed to sell all the furniture and all the other crap on e.bay, most of it was good though but never really realised its value"

He supped my mug of tea in the victory caff in commercial road with bernkie his work mate . He had found a job and stayed at Jim's flat for a bit and then the  council had given me a pokey flat on the other side of Greenwich.

"You shudda just stayed" Said bernkie

The house was sold for about two thirds of its price and some yups moved in with a kid. Thats what he’d been told. the job with the council was sweeping the streets . it was mindblowingly dull as well as hard for it had started to get cold.

He thought about suicide but didnt have the courage.Bernkie in the caff the next day said.

"When you start sweeping streets you never get out of it you know"

He asked what he meant and Bernkie replied "No one ever leaves , its the end of the road, the poncey bastards that all live ere avoid our gaze on the streets cos they know its the end of the road"

"Why are you called Bernkie instead of Bernie"

"Well my little sister couldn’t say bernie when she was a baby and she said Bernkie. Everyone thought it was funny and it stuck, it is really funny ain' it" Bernkie then laughed a lot

He thought Bernkie and his family were even more moronic than before.

 Bernkie invited him over to his place, a council flat on the Thames that Bernkies mum had had since the 50’s until she’d got ill and stuck her head in the gas oven.He’d accepted , he had nothing better to do

It was exactly furnished as you would have furnished it in the 50’s and if you had very limited worksman wages. but he was pleased to see it was clean, too clean  , exactly the same mind set  as the

hoarders who live in pig shit order.

Come and sit down yer cunt" Said Bernkie pleasantly.

He poured out too classes of beer. It was Discovery , a good one.

"Wanna see somethin funny" said Bernkie

"Ok"

He put on the video and straight away he saw it was his Mother . he was shocked .

"Gary Billman gave me this one down at the depot, He loves grannies does Gal""

 "Fuckin hell " Laughed Bernkie. "That ol slag can take some"

The Mother was being abused by what they call in the trade three BBC’s. "Thats fuckin sick ain’t it mate but its funny".

He said nothing but just sipped his beer as Bernkie laughed . Now he saw that his Mother was being back fucked by a huge BBC and he wondered what the fuck she was actually doing being a woman about town.

"Anyway I had enough of that lets watch Walker"Said Bernkie.

Bernkie switched off the video and put Walker on. No interest in porn but could see the funny side of things.

"Do you like Walker Bern"?

"Yeh I used to do Karate but I got bored mate. I always get bored. I had a bird once called Terri but she bored me. I never ever fucked her even".

"Was she upset when you elbowed her"?

"No she elbowed me"

"What did she say"?

"She just disappeared but I did hear speak she’s up Nottingham way"

"Shame"

"No mate no bird in her right mind would wanna live with me. I sweep other people’s shit so anyone interested in me must be something wrong with em".

Yeah see what you mean mate"

"Youre in the same boat mister"

Yeh I am"

Wanna Makesons mate"?

"Nah gotta go mate see you tomorrow"

"We gotta sweep WIMSDALE ROAD tomorrow"

"Have we"?

"Yeh thats where that copper was shot in the 60’s. created a stir that did"

Bernkie remembered everything and dwelt on things.

"Why"?

"Why what"

"Why did they kill him"?

"They killed him for no reason. Two greasers. Things happen for no reason quite a lot"

He said bye to Bernkie and walked across the square in front of the council flats.He stood on the embankment and looked out into the Thames. He lit a ciggie and inhaled. It was almost midnight.Then he turned and walked fast . walked home.

 In Wimsdale Road Bernkie said " You look happy mate. Thats a bad sign cos when you get happy in this job you never leave".

"I won’t be staying if I can help it"

The Naval Academy could be seen from where they were sweeping and it wasn’t a bad day. At lunchtime they went in Wetherspoons and had the 4.95 hamburger deal. They both had abbotts with their Burgers.

Bob Boulder of 56 Frimsdown House Greenwich. West Ham supporter also called West Ham Bob. Liked by cass Pennant was on Bernkies mind  .

Bernkie got another two pints in after they finished eating. Then he said.

"You know Boulder down at the depot"?

"Yeah"

"He killed his Dad in 1968 when he was 9"

"Yeah he looks the type "

"Killed him with a scouts pen knife, slit the fucker’s throat"

"Why"?

"No one knows AND Gary Billman left the job today gotta a job with the river boats"

When they got back to the depot they both showered, the depot had open showers where all the men showered in view of each other and next to each other.

"lot of queers like this job cos of the showering" Said Bernkie

"you mean they get a job sweeping up so they can see another blokes dick in the shower?"

"If you understood some of the really stupid things people do you’d understand that what I just said"

"I knew a bloke once who got a job grave digging cos he liked decomposition, the smell of it"

"Thats totally different " Said Bernkie as he washed his balls with soap. "Thats patholigal"

"Is it"

"Yeah sweeping up then getting a shower with the blokes is weird but what you are talking about is like serial killer stuff".

Greenwich of course was more or less a last outpost of the Old London. It was still strange, it was still mysterious and still imbibed something that the rest of London didn’t seem to have.

There was a sea air quality about Greenwich , something of the Shanty in it all, it seemed to belong to weirdos like Bernkie who had had his name made up for him by a baby girl and it belonged to Boulder who was seriously loony.

Bernkie in Brighton Bernkie  remembered , he had talked to a nice girl for ages.

That was obvious ever since they had gone to Boulders flat. It was like a kind of Georgian mini theatre ; everything inside was the opposite of a shit hole council flat.The strange thing was that Boulder was so dull.

"I didn’t do all this" Said Boulder. "My Brother did. He was a raving arse bandit"

"Was he" Said Bernkie on the snide smiling out the side of his mouth .

"Yeah he liked big fat Turks" Said Boulder. "Like em he did, used to fuckin pay the greasy cunts".

"Did he" Again the snide look of Bernkie

"I fuckin topped him" replied Boulder. "See I love women deep down, my bird was a false blond you know, she got fruity one night and got nude but I'll be honest with yer I couldn't get it up, I was limp like,she

was ok bout it but I think it put her off you know,cos lets face it they deep down inside want a nice hard cock. You wouldn't of fucked her though cos of the false blond thing. I think I wudda got hard if she had been wearing transparent pants though. I have to say that".

.

 "Did the Ol Bill find out"? Said Bernkie

"I didn’t really kill him but I kind of drove him to suicide" Said Boulder

"Did you"?

"Chucked himself in the Thames"

"Was you sad after" Asked Boulder

"Was I fuck"!!!!!!

"So you are glad"

"Yeah well pleased. Every time I went in the boozer I could hear em behind my back sayin theres Boulder with the woofda Bruvver, never said it to me fuckin face though cos if they hadda done I would av ad em fuckin screaming"

"Did he dress funny" ? asked Bernkie

"Used to dress like a woofda. Used to wear fuckin sequins and shit"

"Did they find his body" asked Bernkie

"Never found" Replied Boulder

"Never"?

"No never but thats enuff I ad enuff of fuckin talkin bout im lets have a drink. Gin?"

The next day Bernkie was near the Cutty Sark sweeping and said "See that Cutty Sark there, well that is an example of entrepeneurship , you got quite a nice area but not enough to get tourists to come so you get an old boat and then you complete the reason for them to come, see what I mean".

"Yeh good idea really"

"Cos without the Cutty sark no one would really want to come here would they"

"Yeh spose so"

"And have you noticed the high street ,its all eating places, all of it, thats cos of tourists and thats cos of the Cutty Sark"

"Yeh"

"Could do it anywhere ya know, take Tottenham,  no one wants to go there but if you stuck lets say a good Nelson Mandella statue there they would all go".

"Yeh spose they would but I wouldnt"

"You wouldnt but loads of cunts would,they love all that Nelson Mandella crap, he blew up kids you know"

"Did he"

"Yeh in reality a terrorist".

"But everyone says good stuff about him"

"Yeh well why do they all hate Bin Laden then"?

"Cos he was a terrorist"

"Yeh well so was Mandela"

"So if the Cutty Sark wasnt here you are saying that would be the end of Greenwich as a tourist spot"

"Yeh no cunt would come here"

They knocked off for lunch and went in the Witherspoons. After getting their beers Bernkie said " I hate this pub to be honest "

"Why"

"Cos its full of Pissy pants , ol fucks who piss themselves, the stench of dry piss is unbearable sometimes you know"

They sat at a window table and the pub was crowded . Bernkie had ordered food . After a short time his steak pie and Chips arrived,. "This is shit food really but only 5.99 so you can't grumble ".

After they went back to sweeping, it started to rain hard so they walked back to the depot, no one was expected to work in driving rain . After they had showered Bernkie said " Oh well be seeing you then"

"Yeh see you tomorrow"

"Yeh"

Bernkie was dressed and  walked out of the depot but Layden waited , he had had enough of Bernkies negative thoughts, he waited till Bernkie was well out of the building then he left and walked to The Ship, it was in a little back street with some victorian cottages now taken over by yuppies. He ordered a Pint and sat at the window looking out on the Thames as the water lapped the side of the pub