The Bank Holiday will be a tester. I am not on Court duty or police station duty for the whole weekend (although I do have to go to police station on Monday). As a consequence of this unusual stretch of freetime, I am trying to think of ways of getting drunk. I believe I will be able to persuade someone to buy me beer in exchange for potatoes/ runner beans. Also I know that after Dad's 60th birthday bash, there are two polypins of Summer Lighting and Crop Circle leftover that no one else wants to drink (they are certainly past their best, but I am fairly desperate). By the way - don't think cupboard is bare. There's a lot of potatoes in there, and I haven't had to consider the "Celebrity Meatloaf" or tinned "Meat" balls yet. There's honey, flour, yeast, powdered custard, powdered Miso soup, instant gravy, cornflour, sugar, rapeseed oil - and other stuff - a world of possibilities.

My Mushroom growing kit is finally showing signs of life (See photo)!

Also made a soup the other day out of all the veg that had gone funny (lettuce, peas, carrots etc.) I bunged them all in the pressure cooker and it made a very nice soup. The pressure cooker is amazing - it performs some kind of magic on food - you can pretty much shove anything in there - and it seems to turn out quite well (the exception being the time I tried to make soup using mainly gone-off red wine from one of those boxes).