Home-comfort chicken and leek pie

Ingredients:
A little bit of oil
1 stick celery
1 small onion
1 carrot
chicken
salt and pepper
any other herbs you have loitering (thyme, sage, marjoram, whatever. Not rosemary as it's too strong)
a knob of butter
a spoonful or two of plain flour
milk or cream or creme fraiche - whatever you have lurking in the fridge.
Some leeks - say 2 or 3 depending on big they are
Some parsley if you have it - doesn't matter too much if not
Potatoes
Butter
Any left over cream or milk

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees or 160 if you've got a powerful fan oven.

Peel the potatoes and put in a pan of cold water with salt. Bring to the boil and cook them while you poach the chicken. Don't worry about over cooking as you're going to mash them anyway.

Chop up the celery, onion and carrot and sweat in oil on a low heat until soft. Don't take too much time about it.

Take some chicken - like a packet of legs or wings, or those bits which are bigger but still not very expensive. If feeling very fragile you can do with just breast. I'd get the ones with the skin on though, because I believe that gives the broth better flavour.

Once the vegetables are soft add the chicken and whatever herbs you've got and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a low heat for about 15 mins, less if breast meat is used. You'll see the chicken poach quickly and just stop cooking when it's cooked through.

Take out the chicken (careful! Hot!), take off skin and chop into pie-size pieces. Keep the chicken stock for something else later.

Chop up the leeks crossways into little discs, as thinly as you like. Use as much of the leek as you can - I like the green flecks in the pie.

Next heat the butter in a pan and when melted add the flour, stir carefully, making sure it cooks nicely (smells like biscuits) but don't let it burn. Add the milk or cream or whatever and stir like crazy. Whisk if you need to get rid of lumps. Throw in the leeks and cook in the white sauce, adding more milk if you need to, for about 5 mins. They'll be cooked through I promise, but you have to stir them to stop the sauce burning. Add the chicken and some chopped up parsley if you have it, season with salt and pepper and put it in your pie dish.

The potatoes should be ready by now - if ready earlier, just drain and put back in the pan with the lid on to keep them hot. Mash them up with whatever you've got - butter, cream, a touch of milk (not too much) or my fave, creme fraiche. Add lots of pepper and some salt if needed.

Spread the mashed potatoes over the pie filling, spiking it up with a fork so that it catches and toasts nicely when cooking.

Cook it in the oven for about 45 mins.

Breathing clouds

According to the people who know, clouds are not fluffy duvets in the sky that you could roll around on for hours, if only you could get up there. They are just swirling patterns of condensed water vapour.

So they say, when warm, moist air rises into the atmosphere, it hits currents of cooler air. This causes the water droplets to condense and create white puffy shapes that look like cats' faces and trailing blankets, dragged along the sky by invisible celestial toddlers. Well, at least that's true for those clouds that look like the kind of thing angels and Greek gods would sit on.

Today I was pottering down the road, thinking about nothing much, and my breath was making smoky funnels in front of my face as I walked. Then it hit me, I was breathing clouds. As the warm moist air came out of my mouth, it hit the colder air around me and condensed into momentary cloud shapes, before joining all the rest of the air - or perhaps rising to meet the other clouds in the sky and add a tiny comma to their plump shapes.

And don't think that because they only last for a few seconds before floating apart that breath clouds are not real clouds. Apparently even the big ones have an average lifespan of only 30 minutes anyway. It's all the confirmation I needed to believe that I am indeed a force of nature. Thor, make way.

Patriarchy and the Chilcot Enquiry

Watching TV footage of the Chilcot enquiry last night (well, I say watching, I was footling about on the internet as I listened) I heard Tony Blair say he had no regrets about the invasion of Iraq - needless to say, in my amazement I didn't even look up from browsing Spring jackets. The crowd roared with wounded anger, sensing this was their cue for a speaking part. Again, not a flicker from me. I had found a rather nice denim model, not too pricy.

Now comes the interesting bit, Sir John Chilcot's voice boomed out "Be Quiet!" over the audience of bereaved parents, wounded soldiers and rabble-rousing journos. And there it was - immediate silence. I looked up from my idle browsing in irritation.

I had recognised it too - cutting through my random jumble of thoughts like a scythe. That bloody voice of male authority - deep, self assured, audible and commanding in even the loudest room. It was as if a silver backed baboon had lumbered into the savannah.

There's a certain quality of a certain kind of voice that resonates within all the rest of us and calls us to attention. The headteacher, the doctor, the successful businessman explaining his love for Pink Floyd on Desert Island Discs (making you think, simply through the suggestive power of his sonorous vowels, that maybe you love Pink Floyd too). They know they're right and they're always in the right, even when they're wrong.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've grown up with this voice telling me what to do and it makes my teeth grate and the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. More than that, it makes me want to do wild rebellious and disruptive things, like run my nails down blackboards, throw my computer screen out of the fourth floor office window, jump around in front of moving traffic, whooping and tossing traffic cones.

This may all sound a bit unhinged and disproportionate to anyone out there reading, and if I wasn't busy contemplating paintballing The Oriental Club, I'd probably agree with you. But what disturbs me most is that I have the strong suspicion that if I'd been in that crowd, I too would have sat back down quietly, clutching my papers in impotent rage. Because I'd know that if I wanted to play with the big children I had to play nicely or go and sit outside.