It was just the son and me at home this evening so we ate spiced chicken in wraps with rice and salad.

For the chicken I took a couple of skinned breasts and four skinned and boned thighs, chopped them into chunks and started to fry them in hot olive oil.

As they sizzled I sliced a red onion and a red pepper and stirred them into the chicken. Spices were added; a good shake of cayenne pepper, smoked paprika and ground cumin, plenty of salt and pepper and a couple of spoonfuls of white balsamic vinegar. It was all stirred again, the heat turned down and left to cook.

As it did that I cooked the rice. Sainsbury’s do a packet of basmati and wild rice which go great with this sort of thing. Some of the kids don’t like it, complaining about the black bits, but the son doesn’t mind.

Once the rice was done it was just a question of extracting the son from his room to eat and assemblage; warming a wrap and then layers of salad, chicken and rice, and for those who wanted it cooling Greek yogurt and hot chilli sauce, and folding it up right so nothing leaks out.

They went down okay. Whilst eating we listened to an album  I must have bought 14 years ago by some people called Broadway Project. It sounded very good – all broken up sounds and disembodied voices and flutes.

You would have thought that having reached a certain age I would be able to resist the little handwritten labels that can be found at the top right hand corner of the records they sell in Probe.

But there I was today leafing through the racks to waste a few minutes over lunch before going back to the office and my eye was caught by the words “massively recommended”.

Shit. I may never see this piece of vinyl again and who knows what I might have missed. I have been in there enough times and bought something just because it was what they had playing. If this was so good I better have it. Now.

Not only was it recommended but it was also “Brilliant trip-pop…think Broadcast,, Stereolab, United States of America, Strawberry Alarm Clock”. All of which sounded like very good advice on a wet and grey Wednesday afternoon. So I made my investment and have not been disappointed.

I was told last night that I was wasted as a lawyer and should go out and open up the record shop I would have been running if I had not gone ahead and passed my Law Society Finals.

I am not sure about a record shop as such but a small place selling good food with a record player in the corner playing a random selection from what I have got on the shelves sounds quite good. Of course I would have to be the one selecting the music.

Whilst thinking on that I have been making plans to make pies with some of the battered, rusty and encrusted pie tins that have sat for the last thirty years or so upstairs at Homebaked. I have washed a couple of them out and I think they will be okay to use. They have the dark black patina that comes from having spent years going in and out of high heat and the metal is thin with use. But line them with pastry and fill them with some cooked beef they should come out good.

There was some dough left over from last nights pizza. I spread it out on a oven tray and put it in the fridge until this morning. I then took it out and put it somewhere warm to rise.

Once it was cooked it was as chewy and good as bread as it had been in the pizza. It must be the use of yogurt.

We had it with pieces of chicken cooked with garlic and bay leaves, more roast potatoes, beetroot with yogurt walnuts and dill and ratatouille.

We have spent the day listening to John Grant and The Czars.

It is worth saying that as I get older there is something worthwhile in being able to drag the kids along to the sort of music I like to listen to.

Somewhere upstairs and well hidden in the attic I have the two James Last albums which I think may be the only musical legacy I have left hanging over from my parents apart from Blondie (at Deeside Leisure Centre) being my first and Dads’s last and possibly only gig.

One of the disadvantages of being a periodic maker of pizza dough is never being able to remember how you got it right last time.

I make pizza for the family about once every six weeks and sometimes it works and sometimes it could have been better. There is never any great consistency in how I go about making it and certainly no measuring of ingredients.

Last nights dough worked particularly well so here is an attempt to record what was done.

I started with about one pound of strong white flour into which I added a good table spoon of crushed sea salt and two tablespoons of Total Greek yogurt.

For the yeast I poured a sachet of dried yeast into about a pint of warm water and stirred in a couple of table spoons of honey.

I then stirred the water with its yeast and honey into the flour and started to mix it around with my fingers. It was very sticky to start so I added more flour as I went along until I got to a kneadable mass.

When kneading bread I time myself to the music I am listening to. Last night I kneaded through the first couple of songs on John Grant’s Queen of Denmark.

Halfway through the kneading I added some olive oil pouring a good glug into a well I had made in the dough and then working it in as I carried on kneading.

Once the two songs were finished I tipped the dough into a bowl and lubricated it with some more oil. It was then left for a couple of hours on a warm floor.

Forty mintes or so before eating I took enough of the dough to roll it out flat onto a large baking tray. That was kept warm for half an hour whilst I sweated onions and garlic with a tin of chopped tomatoes. The oven was put on full heat.

Ten minutes before eating I smeared the tomato sauce over the pizza and then added some thick rounds of salami and a generous handful of mozzarella cheese. More oil and plenty of salt and pepper went on for seasoning and it all went into the very hot oven.

Whilst it cooked I showered and picked out a bright orange jacket for John Grant.

It came out of the oven blistered and hot and just as a good pizza should be.We will have to see if I can make it again.

John Grant was brilliant. He played for a couple of hours and I think everyone in the Phil would have been quite content for him to have gone on for another hour or so. I think he liked the jacket.