Mrs Jones knows that help is on the way

But what about the rest of us?

Tomato ketchup accounts for ten per cent of all vinegar made in North America.

The address of the Supreme Council of 33 degree Freemasonry in England is 10 Duke Street, St James's, London SW1. But it's a secret.

The giant bamboo, not a tree but a species of grass, grows to a height of 30 feet.

The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped produces a Braille edition of Playboy.

St John's Wood is the only station on the London Underground network which contains none of the letters which occur in the work mackerel.

The tragedy of help is that it never arrives.

All across London, telephones are ringing in empty rooms.


sf: Vurt, Jeff Noon
crime: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L Sayers
if you don't know it: Young Man With A Horn, Dorothy Baker
listening to: Vaughan Williams Symphony no 8, Barbirolli, Halle Orchestra
lunch: grilled pork dumplings, spare ribs soup noodles. dinner: mozerella tortelloni in a tomato sauce with roasted sweet red peppers, red onions, black olives and basil

Shh! Moscow Rules

Just recommendations tonight, because I want to watch Smiley's People, which starts in a minute. I will write about le Carre soon, or perhaps James Kennaway, whose The Cost of Living Like This is today's book to discover if you don't know it.

sf: Dune, Frank Herbert (well, some of them have got to be obvious)
crime: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle (ditto)
work of great genius: The Compleet Molesworth, Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle

lunch was beef hofun at Jenny Lo's Tea House
dinner was chilli and rice
music: Chopin watzes and etudes, Tamas Vasary

Char siu pork noodles

I bought a jar of char siu sauce in Chinatown, but you can make your own:

Equal measures of: brown sugar, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, mixed with double measure honey or golden syrup, shake of five spice, shake of msg, slug of something (sherry, vermouth, brandy), dash of rice vinegar.

Marinade a pound and a half of pork loin, in thick slices, for at least 8 hours. Hang them in the oven (200C) over a bain marie for 20 minutes (use a skewer and stick it in a shelf on the top rack, or use those S-shaped hooks). Take them out and brush on remaining marinade and, if not sticky, a bit more honey. Turn heat down a bit and give them quarter of an hour more. Take them out and let them cool. Boil noodles. Slice very finely the following: spring onions, ordinary onions, big knob of ginger, half a dozen cloves of garlic, chilis. Slice any of the following that you have: carrots, peppers, baby corn, green beans, mange tout &c &c. Get out large handfuls of frozen peas, soya beans, sweetcorn &c &c. Open tin of waterchestnuts, jar of bamboo shoots in chili oil (you'll only want a couple of tablespoons of it, but the rest keeps at room temperature for ages) and a bag of beansprouts the size of your head.

Heat 2 tablespoonfuls of sesame oil in large wok (one of the big Vietnamese aluminium ones is ideal, except that it gets too hot to touch) on very high flame. Dice pork into fairly small bits and chuck in with garlic, ginger and onions. Then add everything else bit by bit, moving the thing the whole time. You may need to chuck in a splash of soy sauce, water from the kettle or a little oil. You can also crack in a couple of eggs at an early stage so that they clump up the way they do in egg fried rice. Serve with chili oil, chili paste and jasmine tea to drink.

Ungrateful 4-year-old doesn't like it; make her cereal and eat her portion yourself. Go off to smoke and write letter to GP demanding he doesn't upload your details to centralised NHS database: www.TheBigOptOut.org