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2001-09-06 - 9:18 p.m.

�On the day that your mentality�catches up with your biology�come round.�

Illegal immigrants have started coming through the Channel Tunnel at, I�m sure, great personal risk. I don�t have strong feelings either way about this, but what gets me is that these people see Britain as some golden promised land with fantastic opportunities and hot and cold running stately homes. I�m a white British male with a degree and I�m not even progressing too quickly. They scraped some poor sod off a supermarket carpark that happened to be under the flight path of incoming planes � him taking a nasty fall when the landing gear came out and knocked his frozen body from its hiding place. I mean, is it REALLY worth it? You�ve already risked life and limb getting as far as France! Why not just camp out in the Dordogne? Good weather and decent cheap wine! I�m being flippant of course, but I just can�t see that Britain = glorious paradise equation.

��Cos I want the one I can�t have, and it�s driving me mad. It�s written all over my face.�

I�m not often given to public displays of culinary endeavour, but for some reason I went berserk in the meat aisle of the supermarket (I�m a social vegetarian) and the stack of poultry in my fridge needed depleting. The rare chance to have a leisurely lunch inspired me to experiment with little-used ingredients, which of course basically means stealing from my housemates� condiment supplies, but good food was at stake, so I�m sure they�d understand. I�m quite the instinctive chef, going with what I can easily secrete from random packages � in any case after a while, and with the brown rice getting about as soft as brown rice ever does, the poulet was a satisfactory shade of browny-red and I didn�t gag at the �dicing with salmonella taste testing� stage, so I reduced the heat and got out my plate. Ah, what a luxury to have the time for a lovingly prepared repast instead of the usual hastily-snaffled sandwich. I�m not sure which exact expletives I employed when the phone suddenly rang and I tipped the whole thing onto the floor, the succulent morsels stopping only on their way downwards to coat my t-shirt in their distinctively coloured coating, but it wasn�t pretty. Today�s lesson is that brown rice is not to be eaten on its own, no matter how much soy sauce you douse it in.

I think I misquote P J O�Rourke in saying �There�s only one secret to great bachelor cooking � not caring how it tastes.�

�A double bed, and a stalwart lover for sure�these are the riches of the poor.�

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