Apologies shipmates for the paucity of postings just recently, I seem to have been suffering from a touch of writer's block.

Anyway on to better things welcome to some new friends Twistedenglishrose, DeadGirlDiaries, NultygoestoPartick and Wildliferescue, good to have you on board or even back on board!

On Sunday Mrs F, Old Nick and I fancied something to remind us of those two weeks we spent in Mexico, many years ago and it wasn't going to be a dose of Montezuma's revenge.

First off some Fajitas (this will easily do three of four)

The base for Cook's Fajitas is essentially a Chile con Carne.

Heat some oil in the pan, add a few black onion seeds and let them sizzle a bit, then add a chopped onion, five or six chopped chiles (seeds and all), four smashed and chopped cloves of garlic and fry till the onions go translucent. Chuck in a pack of beef mince, brown off a bit add two teaspoons of mustard, a heaped teaspoon of garum masala, two teaspoons of Spanish pimenton (or paprika if you can't find pimenton, but Ithink the smokey flavour of the pimenton gives an extra edge to the flavour) and adash of Worcester sauce.

Then chuck in a can of drained kidney beans and a can of chopped tomatoes and a beef stock cube, add some water and cook off for about 20 minutes (mind you if you have time to let it cook longer do so - it will taste better) then add a good handfull of freshley chopped coriander.

Once the chile has reduced take a pack of tortilla wraps and fill with a generous dollop of the chile and a good handfull of grated cheddar then roll them up and put two fajitas per person on the plate. Add a dollop of sour cream and chive dip and a dollop of guacamole (OK I bought them both from a supermarket but if you have time to clean your blender guacomole is easy to make)then finish off with a dollop of home made salsa.

Salsa

Easy to do and tastes miles better than that rubbish you get in jars. You can also vary the flavour by using different herbs.

Take about 15 cherry tomatoes (if you can get some of the orange ones they give it some good colour) chop em up and put them in a bowl. Add about half of a finely chopped red onion (don't waste the other half put it in the chile) and a good handfull of freshley chopped coriander plus a finely chopped green chile, mix it all up and drizzle some lime dressing over it. ready to go.

Lime dressing

Juice of half a lime, dash of olive oil and a tiny squeeze of harissa paste

Drinks

Well don't waste the other half of the lime cut it into wedges and stick em down the necks of some Mexican lager like Corona or Dos Equis

Music

A bit of ZZ top I think just to get you in the mood

Well perhaps that's the reason we can't use the bloody gents again.

Given the thousands of quid spent refurbishing the floor is it too much to have expected that to have included the toilets.

Why do Marks and Spencer print a picture of potatoes on the front of a clear plastic bag of King Edwards?

Why not just print the word potatoes on the bag and let us look at the real spuds within, or could it be that the spuds in the bag are useually just not as nice as the overprinted spuds?

But on a more serious note I thought Marks were trying to prove that they were making an effort to be more eco-concious with their packaging, here's some advice guys, ditch the picture and you can avoid using so much ink. Over a long print run that adds up and it might save you a few bob too.

Another thing, why does so much supermarket stuff have a clear plastic tray and a card wrapper with the product info on it? You can see the stuff inside, I bought a tray of Spanish meats from Sainsbury that was complety enveloped in expensivly printed (full colour process including special metallic ink) cardboard. Well the meat was lovely, but the cardboard went straight in the recycling bin.

Here's an idea, either overprint the plastic with all the best before, salt and fat warnings etc or use a sticker. That way you don't need the cardboard part at all, cuts down on print production, distribution costs from printer to packager and means that although I have the same amout of domestic non recyclable rubbish as before the recycling guys have less stuff to take away from my house and process.

We could save a lot more carbon emissions if the supermarkets packaged things a bit less, but then Mr Broon would rather slap some more tax on something like travel than make a real contribution to climate change.

Here at Weird Inc's fabulous new HQ, the newly refurbished Gents Khazi has been awash with er liquid for the past two days. Having had my fingers well and truely burnt over the soap issue I thought there is no way I'm reporting that and taking ownershop for getting it fixed.

Well some other mug has so of course our maintenance people have rushed to tape a piece of A4 with the legend Out of Order scrawled in black felt tip to the door.

"So what to do when you are on diuretics for your blood pressure Spudsey?"

"Use the disabled"

Brilliant advice as ever but why does that red cord keep saying to me:

"Go one give me a pull me to flush"

Manfully I have resisted the urge so far

Incidentally have you ever noticed how sheepish able bodied people look when they exit the disabled toilet, even when the only other alternative is shitting themselves, curious isn't it?

Well the US TV writers strike goes on and apparently there are dire consequences ahead for some UK broadcasters as they run out of the six month buffer stock of US programming.

BBC and ITV aren't too worried as they don't show much US programming, but Channel 4 and 5 are having to consider the radical idea of replacing the likes of Ugly Betty, House and CSI Whatever with, wait for it domestically produced programming.

Before you get too excited though it looks like its mostly going to be more tired lifestyle programming (yawn) and overlong shows with Justin Lee Collins (Aggghh).

I'd like these broadcasters to step back and think about this idea though. If they can't afford to produce decent comedy and drama programming, how about showing more films - including those in a foreign language. There are plenty of of interesting movies coming out of France, Spain and the Far East for example, not to mention a huge back catelogue to plunder.

To those in charge of our broadcasting networks I'd just like to say we are not all illiterates who can't read subtitles.

On the plus side I was pleased to see that ITV have dropped many of those rip off late night phone in quiz programmes, but lets see that time used for some proper programming we can record and watch later.

"I need to get some birthday cards, do you know any good shops?" Cook asked.

"They do good cards in Anne Summers" says Machine Gun Betty

Hmmn Maybe not as its for my mum!

This exhibition is billed as a Once in a Lifetime experience, well I felt a bit cheated as we actually saw very little of the treasures from the tomb of the boy pharoah. Ok there were a few staffs, a canopic jar, a couple of sticks of furniture and some shabtis, but nothing like the magnificent stuff that came over before and certainly not the death mask that is being used to sell the event to the public.

As far as the exhibition experience goes there are rather too many queues and the information is pitched fairly low (I mean come on, we have already seen this discovery of the tomb stuff in countless documentaries), which I guess is what you get when history is packaged as entertainment. You would learn far more from a trip to the British Museum and it won't cost you £20 a go.

The gift shop is a bit rubbish too.

As London Transport can't keep the Jubilee line open for people going to and from the O2 on a Saturday Mr Livingstone, just how do think London is going to cope with the Olympics in 2012.

In case you hadn't noticed there are several large exhibitions, multiplex and an ice rink there at the moment, not to mention the bloody Spice Girls and the only links to it are by dangerously overcrowded bus.

Now one of Ken's great ideas was for there to be no parking at the new stadia to discourage people from using their cars. Well given the fact that he can't even get people around London on a bloody Saturday how will London Transport cope with two weeks of events.

Umm Londoner's no more Walnut Whips for you, but all is not lost perhaps if you could also fork out for a Curly Wurly a week for the next million years, then Ken's PR team could design some hoardings to tell you everything is just great, that would be alright then wouldn't it.

As I had to be home today for a delivery I thought why not give the Leading Wench a treat and cook her something nice and warming for when she gets home from a hard days toil.

Sticking the mighty Ghostdance on the computer I chopped two small onions, a green chilli and six cloves of garlic and chucked them in the pan with some olive oil over a low heat. While they were frying away I cut half a turnip into small cubes and chopped a carrot, chucked that in then added some dried herbs and a bay leaf.

Now the meat, there was some lovely stewing steak in the supermarket so I trimmed the worst of the fat off, cut it into chunks and chucked it in the pan to brown. To this I added two teaspoons of dijon mustard, one of dried paprika and a couple of twists of black pepper. Once the meat was browned in went a can of chopped tomatoes, a beef stock cube and a bottle of Fuller's Porter.

I left this to simmer away in a covered pan for about two hours (stewing steak can be rubbery if not cooked for long enough)giving it the odd stir and adding a bit of water to stop it from going dry. With one hour to go I put on some jacket spuds and with abouty 20 minutes to go as Mrs F said she fancied some spinach too slung some pellets of frozen spinach in the stew.

Lovely so it was too served up with a jacket spud.

I rarely post music but this amused me. Rasputina he he, two girls with cellos and a drummer play Heart's soft rock classic. If you like Anne and Nancy Wilson look the other way

Tried to stay awake and watch this last night on Film Four.

All I can say is that I knew that pony trekking holiday in the Forbidden Zone was a bad idea. I hope they had remembered to take out proper holiday insurance.

How does this work? Bank goes down the tubes requiring pots of cash from the government to prop it up. Yes that's our money. Then the bank's top execs give themselves bonus payments that in some cases are reputed to equal their saleries.

Could they have done this if the bank had failed? And how come they deserve a bonus if the bank is so strapped for cash that it hands out a begging bowl to the Bank of England? I bet its a different story for workers lower down the food chain.

Little wonder they have been told that they forfeit the cash if they talk to the papers

First week back at work for many of us and wasn't it all just a big pile of crap.

I know let's all get shit faced, well I would too if I wasn't an ancient hypertensive, still a few drinks are good for high blood pressure.

On the plus side I have lost about six pounds since I have been on the medication.

Must go and put the guinea fowl in the oven.

While driving through East London this morning we passed through the Ken Livingstone Memorial Games Park and traffic chaos as usual, only to discover that the fence surrounding the huge pile of dirt is now being expensivly clad in yet more laminated boards to show all of us happy people what a smashing idea the Games are.

Now how many more Walnut Whips (a very retro knid of confectionery if I may say so Ken) are Londoner's goung to have to fork out for to pay for these lavishly designed and no doubt very expensive bits of window dressing for Livingstone and Coe's folly. We all know the games are going ahead, whether we wanted them or not, and we all know its costing us shedloads of public money, but why is more of our cash being wasted on this kind of puffery.

Oh yes, some advice just in from Cook, Gravy and Tartarre Image Consultants Ltd. "Its always a good idea to make a client think everything is great by spending a lot of his money on vanity products, (especially logos) and then charge him lots for telling him about it too."

Well imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of my posts had been linked to another site. The post, Heraklion or Bust was written while we were in Crete last year and told the tale of our trip to the Island's capital.

Well Izzicarhire.com must have enjoyed it as they have linked it to their page on Crete, describing it as "a bit more relaxed and food orientated guide about Heraklion".

Relaxed? in Greece sure, but thay obviously haven't been with me while passing through one of those overpriced hellholes otherwise known as Airports. Speaking of which I got my ever so generous cheque for £2.80 to cover the parking at Stansted, while we were imprisoned at the carousel for an hour waiting for our bags to turn up, from those charming people at Swissport today.

Is this the end of the Case of the Tardy Baggage? who knows?, I was quite pleased with the creativity of the writing that came out of it, especially after having suffered a major dose of writer's block which has stalled my other two writing projects since September, but perhaps it has now run its course. Of course the tiredness and lack of concentration I had been suffering from may also have been to do with the recently diagnosed hypertension. Once I get the results of last week's tests, hopefully I can do something about that. However since I have been on the medication I do feel a little better. The knee on the other hand is still giving me gyp, but I am just going to have to live with it.

Despite the trauma of his recent liver transplant and a new job as a Yeoman Warder of the Queen's bling, Spudsey is back on the sauce as this recent picture taken by Shipscook's official photographer shows.

Somehow I have a bad feeling about this.

Received a letter this morning from the General Manager of the baggage handling company that held us for over an hour at the carousel at stansted on December 16.

Whereas a simple we are very sorry here is a refund for the cab drivers tip and parking would have done, this individual felt that he had to explain how our flight was the only one that his company messed up on, so really they had performed very well. So sorry Mr Troup but when it happens to you it is no comfort to know Swissport did so well with every other flight. This two page epic was supported with printouts of pie charts to show how great his company was too. Might impress shareholders but not the guy who got held up with his family nor any of the other passengers that were left kicking their heels.

Further to rub it in he 'found' that Swissport were not responsible for the extra expense incurred even though they were going to be generous enough to send me a good will payment to cover parking. In my book if I can't collect my baggage because the handler hasn't bothered to collect it from the runway its the handler who has caused the extra expense. He then went on to say that he could not sanction the gratuity I felt honour bound to give the cab driver for hanging on for an hour.

To me that just demonstrates the utter contempt that people in the Air Transport business hold their customers in, despite all the what I know now to be meaningless puffery about customer care on their website.

However I draw a small degree of comfort from knowing that it has cost Swissport far more to deal with my complaint than the compensation that any reasonable compnay would have felt honour bound to cough up.

Stepping once more through the mirror we were propelled into an ornately furnished living room. All around us were signs that the occupant had spent some years in the middle east.

Water colours of Egyptian scenes covered the walls, while a pair of crossed Arabian scimiters occupied the oak panelling immediately above the fire. The mantle piece and every available surface were littered with curios and antiquities looted from inumerable ancient tombs.

Immediately before us sat a swathy individual in a high backed winged chair, wearing a puculiar combination of conventional evening dress and a red tarboosh, smoking a hookah. My immediate thought that this gentlman must be either an Egyptian or a Turk was confirmed by his first utterance.

"Welcome to my humble home gentlemen, I am Kerim Bey, what can I do to help such an illustrious gathering of slueths?" the water bubbled through his pipe as he puffed away.

"Ah mon ami I am most pleased to meet you again" the little Belgian said "I understand that you were recently on flight from Edinburgh to London?"

Bey nodded "yes it was necessary to return here in order to revive my colleague." Laying aside his pipe and stepping out of the chair Bey crossed the room to a brightly painted Pharonic sarcophagus.

"Behold! he cried as he opened the door to reveal the wizened form of a man long dead.

"Kharis was entombed many ceturies ago for daring to love a Princess above his caste, now only that rare conjunction of the stars last night combined with a reading from the ancient Book of the Dead and an infusionn of the sacred tanna leaves can revive him to exact revenge on those who so recklessly plundered her tomb."

"But surely he should be out of his jolly old casket then?" added Broadstairs.

"Curse me for a fool, but I entrusted my Scrolls to Bumsted Airport's baggage handlers and could not retrieve them in time to cast the spell to revive him"

"But what about the tanna leaves?" Holmes asked

"Sod that, have you seen how much they charge for a cup of tea there."

Eight fucking hours to get home, many of them in the recently refurbished comfort of Edinburgh Airport. Now for some bizarre reason at Edinburgh BAA have decided to have the interesting shops (like Scottish dept store Jenners and Borders) before you go through security. Once you get through there is only a branch of Dixons and two branches of WH Smith neither of which have a decent book between them.

On the plus side the toilets are not designed to the same requirement to inundate your genitalia with icy cold water when you sit up straight that those at Stansted are. some of them have that quaint olde worlde device called a handle.

I was hoping to write another instalment of the Tardy Baggage tonight but I'm too knackered after our epic journey so will be off to bed in a minute. Blood tests to determine the cause of my hypertension tomorrow so nothing to eat until then.

The detectives stood before the full length mirror in the anteroom of the Sporting Club Square Apartments.

"We must wait for the correct alignment of the stars and planets" the time and space travelling detective uttered as he checked his pockets for essentials. "I have some Balkan ovals, a lighter and a small flask of single malt, Dr Watson I take it you have your trusty service revolver."

I nodded adding "And I took the liberty of asking Mrs Hudson for enough cold tongue and chutney sandwiches to go round, Sir Sefton", holding up my carpet bag for all to see.

Just then the surface of the mirror appeared to quiver like liquid mercury as the moonlight streaming through the skylight turned from watery yellow to an icy cold blue.

"Gentlemen the time has come to boldly step into another dimension, one beyond the normal realm of your experience, do not panic stay close to me and you will come to no harm." and with that Brake stepped through the mirror as easily as a hot knife passing through butter. Holmes followed next, then the dapper little Belgian and his companion with myself bringing up the rear.

We found ourselves in a massive hallway illuminated with flaming brands, before us a huge stairway led up to the balcony festooned with, armour, hunting trophies and antique oil paintings. Standing at the very top of the stairs was the figure of man in full evening dress and a long cloak lined with scarlet silk.

"Wellcome to Castle Dracula gentlemen", he uttered in perfect unaccented English, "I have been expecting you"

Much to my evident surprise Holmes replied to the saturnine creature, "Good evening cousin,we have come to enlist your help in unravelling a great mystery, one in which I know you share an interest."

The Count nodded sagely "I know what you mean I had three caskets full of my native soil on that bloody flight and I'm dying for a kip."

While I was sitting bored out of my tiny, at Stansted Airport, the other day I filled in one of those wee questionaires about how much we all enjoy standing in endless lines waiting for things and paying top line prices for stuff. Today I got a reply.

My first point about the security searches taking far too long was met with the expected standard press release response. Didn't really expect any thing else.

My second about the choice and cost of food and drink was riposted with an its the same as the high street, well yes except that if I want a simple cheese and pickle sandwich on my local high street I can get one for £1.40, I don't actually want to pay more than that just because it also has cress and rocket in it.

My third point was about the loos. You see they have installed these clever photo electric cell flush buttons, but they are placed right behind your back in the place where you sit down to drop the kids off. So if you are of a certain height (ie an average male) should you sit up straight you set it off delugeing your bum and the family jewells with water from the cistern, which ain't pleasant. I pointed this pretty basic design fault out and their response was....

"Our toilets are designed to BAA requirements, but we are looking into the design"

Well BAA hopefully the new design will not require half a roll of bumwad to dry your parts.

We are presently sitting in the Moff's lounge and in true Victorian fashion we have a bottle of Tesco 799 penny gin and Moff is playing some delightful music on the computer (well technology marches ever onward) while to complete the picture Old Nick entertains us with readings from Roger's Profanisaurus.

My head felt like it had gone six rounds with Rocky Marciano when I came round. It was the kind of ache you get after sticking your head in a cement mixer full of hyper active monkeys on methedrine for an hour, after being whacked on the back of your noggin with tyre iron.

I was in a dark tiled room with my hands and feet tied to the frame of chair. The only light a bare electric bulb hanging from the ceiling.

"So you have decided to rejoin us at last Mr Harlowe." a sibilant voice hisssed in mildly accented English

Seated before me was a tall Chinaman, dressed in long black oriental robes, it was the devil doctor Few Menchew. His piercing green eyes bored into mine from the dome of his long shaven skull.

"I must apolgise for my means of inviting you to my little lair, my lascars can be somewhat enthusiastic in their administration of of the thuggee scarf and cosh." he stroked his long Manchu whiskers.

"We have been watching you for some time Mr Harlowe, and I have a simple question for you if you would be so kind to help me. I have for some time been anticipating a delivery of the seeds of the purple lotus flower, a narcotic so deadly that it will enable me to commence my plan for world domination. It was on this flight. You havn't seen the suitcase have you?"