I plagiarised Philip's recipe for stuffing which he made up when he did his roast. I added a few bits and pieces to make it a little more tasty and it actually worked really well.

Philip-stuffed Chicken

• 1 chicken
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 egg
• 2-3 slices brown/wholemeal bread
• 1 onion
• 1 large mushroom
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Tarragon/Parsley/Oregano

Dice the onion and mushroom and pop them in a bowl. Break the bread up into small bits as well and add to the bowl. Pour on enough olive oil to make the mixture moist, add the juice from half the lemon then mix it all up together, adding herbs and any other things as you want.

Once it's all nice and mushy, break an egg (or two if you need to) over the mixture to bind it and mix it all up together. Once it's all clingy and nice, form little balls of stuffing and put them either in the chicken or around the roasting dish as the chicken cooks. I had enough for a combination of both.

Pour some olive oil over the chicken and squeeze the other half of the lemon on top. Add pepper and tarragon. Put the lemon remains in the dish with/near the stuffing.

Cook! Serve with green beans, broccoli and baby new potatoes in parsley.

Yum!

I took some round to Brian's in the evening for him to try and he thought it was really nice. Admittedly, he had the munchies by the time he tried it so rafia would've been welcome, but it's the thought that counts. Xav came round in the afternoon and we sat and chilled and drank coffee. I have had it confirmed that he has a crush. I shall have to deal with that but I'm not entirely sure how.

Tony called in the afternoon and I'm probably going to have a week in Quimper en route from Hungerford. Should be good fun. After a couple of minutes of chatting on the phone in French, he pointed out my French had improved - at which point I suddenly forgot how to speak French completely and had to revert to Franglais. Pah!

I have learned how to play Backgammon. It's very exciting.

Hm. The September star map I downloaded makes no mention of Orion, which is annoying because I clearly saw him/it last night. I was more intrigued by the little greeny miniature back-to-front Big Dipper I saw after following his belt upwards from left to right. Of course, it could've been a trick of the (street) light but the night was so clear and the stars so bright (even with the moon there) that I'm sure I saw what I saw. But I can't find out what it is because it's not on the map thingie. I shall have to go and do some research.