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The guide book suggested that day’s could be lost walking round the old streets of Wroclaw.

Well we didn’t spend days on it but we tramped through a good mileage of those streets this morning and early afternoon before finishing up for a lunch outside in a restaurant called Konspira, named in supper of the Solidarity movement. The menu contained a potted history of the resistance against communist rule and each dish was named for an aspect of it.

So I ate Wroclaw Konspirator’s Dinner Set – otherwise grilled pork neck with garlic butter served with homemade kopytka and fried cabbage. It was very good particularly when followed by a small cupped glass of plum brandy which brought tears to my eyes it was so potent.

Wroclaw itself is a mixture of the medieval centre which was flattened during the War and has since been rebuilt and then outside of the centre streets of late nineteenth early twentieth century apartment blocks that seemed to have survived the War but are now starting to crumble and fall apart. There has also been some interesting looking graffiti.

So we have arrived in Wroclaw and after a slightly crazed taxi ride from the airport we are in our hostel room. It transpires that the room is five beds under a six point chandelier (with one bulb blown). The walls are a deep European orange and there is a curled pattern across the ceiling.

Best of all we are two floors up from a bar. Some of us have already taken the opportunity to see it worked. It did.

Earlier the day I had done some homework and bought myself a bottle of dark beer from the new Polish Supermarket down Oxton Road. It seems they are selling something very similar downstairs.

I could find myself liking Wroclaw.

It was of course cheering yesterday to put my head round the door of Maray to find most of the rest of the family sat down and ready for a good lunch.

I had just had a ham sandwich and can of Lemon Fanta sat at my desk. I have been eating a lot of ham sandwiches over the last week or so and reckon there is a good months worth of ham to go.

My lunch time was spent scurrying from Eurochange and onto a shop to buy some bags all the time hoping it wasn’t going to rain. At one point fat drops started from the sky and a great black cloud loomed over the back of town and the bombed out church but they stopped as soon as they started.

There were compensations. I put by head into Probe with the intnetion of looking rather than anything else. But they had a copy of Robert Forster’s new album, on proper black vinyl, so I had to have myself that for the weekend.

And then round the corner from Probe there was a blue haired girl with a guitar singing Smiths song. It is strange how the words ‘And if a double-decker bus Crashes in to us To die by your side Is such a heavenly way to die’ heard sung on a crowded street can put a tear in the eye of a grown man. 

Back home that evening I decided to cook myself something sweet but feisty.

I picked up some orange flavoured dried cranberries with the thought they might go well with some chicken and chilli.

• 1 poulet chicken
• olive oil
• 1 red onion thinly sliced in half moons
• crushed garlic
• orange flavoured cranberries
• 2 sliced perky red chillies
• ground cinnamon
• salt & pepper
• a glass of white wine

I started by browning the chicken, which had been seasoned with plenty of salt and pepper, in a heavy pot with a lid. I then stirred in the onions and gave them five minutes of so to soften and take on some colour. I then added the garlic and chillies and a teaspoon of cinnamon and gave it five minutes more and then finally the cranberries.

The glass of wine was poured in and once it came up to a bubble the heat was turned down and the lid went on with a layer of tin foil to help keep in the steam.

It was ready after about 40 minutes and I ate it surrounded by just cooked mograbiah.

I have managed now to eat at least all of something that has made it out of the veg plot and all I need do now is try to eat up what is there without leaving to much go to waste.

The final bit of produce to come under the knife was a small bright red chilli pepper. It added some much needed spice to a pasta dish of courgettes with feta cheese.

With the late summer we are getting into the season where I dread what monsters may be lurking under the thick leaves of the courgette plant. As every grower of courgettes knows leave it a day or so late and the baby courgettes that would be good sliced raw in a salad will have turned to a fat ugly monster full of water and good for nothing but a bowl of indifferent soup or better still a fate left on the compost heap.

So far this year I have been able to avoid too many monsters and this evening there were four good sized courgettes that were ready for eating

A pan of water went onto boil and the courgettes were sliced into pound thick rounds and dumped in a frying pan slick with olive oil. They were allowed to soften and brown in the heat.

Pasta was added to the boiling water and I stirred a half dozen chopped cloves of garlic into the courgettes along with with finely chopped chilli. Having chopped it I was careful not to rub my eyes with my fingers.

Ten minutes later the pasta was done. I drained it and put it back in the pan and stirred in the courgettes, followed by a block of chopped feta cheese and a handful coriander (normally it would be parsley but there was none in the fridge). I stirred it until the cheese started to melt. Along the way it was seasoned with salt and pepper and once in the bowl a lemon was squeezed on top.

We ate it listening to slightly wonky Welsh psycedelia.