My first attempt at a very simple recipe my Mum used to make fifty years ago.

Little kid: “I like onion and cheese [crisps]!”

Me: “Cheese and onion pie?”

Little kid: " Eugh!"

Cheese and onion pie going in the ovenCheese and onion pie out of the oven, cookedSlice of cheese and onion pie on a plate

I recently read: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy (of the band Wilco) 📚.

It’s full of practical if fairly obvious tips on how to write and get your creative muscles going.

Here’s a poem I wrote based on two books I regularly read to my little kid at bedtime.

Handwritten text of a poem titled "Astral Bodies" explores cosmic and anatomical themes.

This lovely tree by the bridge over the canal near my kids’ school at Toplocks is gone.

A tall tree with a textured trunk is surrounded by branches and leaves, against a backdrop of blue sky and clouds.A tall tree stands beside a house, surrounded by greenery and a cloudy sky.

Yesterday’s Mac* ’n’ Cheese went down well with me and big kid. It’s one of his favourites.

*Penne

A casserole dish filled with creamy baked macaroni and cheese.A baked casserole topped with melted cheese in a rectangular dish.A plate of cheesy penne pasta is garnished with parsley.A handwritten recipe for mac 'n' cheese includes steps for cooking macaroni, making a cheese sauce, and baking it.

Sausages

Lincolnshire sausages are the finest sausages you can get.

I remember as a boy, fifty years ago, my grandmother making sausages at home for the local butcher. Sometimes, she would let me feed the sausage meat into the machine and then turn the handle to push it through into the skins.

A special treat then was boiled sausages for breakfast. The skins would fall off, and we ate them with white bread soaked in the soup or broth they created in the pan along with a dash of English mustard.

In later years, my Mum would travel to Boston in south Lincolnshire from her home in north Lincolnshire specially to buy sausages from the butcher who made the best Lincolnshire sausages.

She would freeze them and pack me off with ten or twelve wrapped in old newspaper whenever I came back to visit from university or when I first moved to Manchester and then London.

I haven’t had a proper Lincolnshire sausage for many years now. The ones we get now are made in Hampshire. They’re nice enough, better than any other variety of supermarket sausage I’ve tried, but you wouldn’t want to boil them.

They’re pretty versatile. They’re great with mashed potatoes and gravy, in a special Valentine’s casserole, in a Yorkshire pudding, with xmas dinner wrapped in bacon, in a bread finger roll with (or without) onions and ketchup, in a sandwich or, as my kids like to eat them, cold on their own in the bath after school.

Six cooked Lincolnshire sausages sizzling on a baking tray

The more his curiosity took over, the less control he had

Every time someone mentions Croissant (for cross-posting) I hear big kid’s Mum telling him, “You can’t have croissants for breakfast every morning!”

Four year old every few seconds: “WHAT. THE. HEEE-EEEELLLLLL???!!!”

Big kid has written a list of all the things that make him angry.

Top of the list is bananas.

Hats Off!

Sat on a bench in a children’s playground, a older couple approach me. The man is wearing a Union Jack bobble hat, points at my cap and says, “Were you in Vietnam?”

Now, I’ve heard this or similar many times online, always from Reform, but never in person.

“It’s The Clash”, I said. “London Calling.”

“And Jeremy Corbyn. For the many, not the few.”

“Oooh! Jeremy Corbyn! We wouldn’t be in this mess if he was in charge!” He said.

Then his wife asked me if I knew how to share a story about Chesterfield to all her Facebook friends.