I'm coming briefly out of semi-blogretirement for a couple of purposes.

Firstly, to say that the Daily Linguini is not (contrary to scurrilous rumours which you may have read on the front pages of the international press) closing down, derelict, moribund, hors de combat, or otherwise subject to imminent disappearance. It is merely taking an extended leave of absence due to illness / work stress / early mid-life crisis / unexpected technical delays / fat electrons / wrong kind of snow / tectonic plate movement / alien invasion / civil war / eating too much curry last night [delete as appropriate]. It will return when it has had enough of living the simple life in Peru, where it has been spending the past few months in a hippy shack in the high Andes with a grizzled yet friendly old Tantric yoga instruction manual and a couple of young and impressionable ladies' magazines from Belgium.

Secondly, to have a good old rant about the state of today's youth, since all I seem to be doing with my spare time these days is engaging my precocious youngsters in fiendishly tortuous arguments, designed mainly to encourage them to eat their vegetables, tidy their rooms, put down the spider they are torturing, or stop driving their bicycles over my feet. It is a terrible state of affairs when one's own children use unassailable logic against one; it should not be allowed. One finds oneself reaching desperately for the Argument From Parental Decree in such circumstances, which is something one vowed never to do but is a bugger to avoid when said offspring are cocking their heads winningly to one side and saying, "But Mummy lets us jump on the table..." Bring back compulsory military service and start them at the age of two, one says.

And lastly, to say hi to the few people who still (occasionally, when they're in the house by themselves and there's nothing good on telly) check this blog and have had the delightfulness to say that they have missed me. Hi, you guys. You are much appreciated and I wish you happinesses, luckinesses and voluminous bags of radiant flowers falling seraphically from the heavens. Failing that, may your public transport services run on time, may your friends and/or significant others bestow thoughtful gifts upon you, and may your inboxes never randomly delete crucial messages.

Why is it that when I'm cooking an evening meal I can think of a hundred new ideas to try out, but when I'm making my daughter's school lunch my imagination shuts down? It's either:

- roast chicken sandwiches
- ham sandwiches
- cheese sandwiches
- roast chicken and pickle sandwiches
- ham and cheese sandwiches
- ham and pickle sandwiches
- ham and pickle and cheese sandwiches (really pushing the boat out)

She REALLY likes sandwiches, okay?

Don't look at me like that. I put some fruit and veg in as well.

This week (okay, month) I have mostly been zombified, goggle-boxed and otherwise utterly addicted to the sheer geniosity that is Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii.

(1) If you are the proud owner of this game, I salute you, and draw your attention to several excellent rehabilitation facilities which to my certain knowledge are only a Google search away.

(2) If you own a Wii but have not yet made the foray into the latest conceptually-stunning universe of the world's best-loved pixellated Japanese-accented Italian plumber, please do so at your earliest opportunity, and then once you have resurfaced several sleepless weeks later, refer to (1).

(3) If you do not own a Wii, you are either very sensible, or have been living in an isolated cave in Borneo for the last 12 months. If you have no great attachment to your social life and need giraffesquely minimal amounts of sleep, I highly recommend buying one.

Have been spending the odd few minutes (well, OK, about seven hours) over the last few days engrossed in an enjoyable new online pastime - it's called Just Three Words, and it's hosted on the ballooning behemoth of byte-based social networking that is Facebook. If you've already signed up to the aforementioned globe-devouring website, give it a try. (If you haven't, then congratulations! you're one of a dwindling minority of web-enabled citizens who still retain some smidgeon of control over their private data!) It's particularly well-suited to bloggers, as it is of a creative-writing nature. Be prepared for a deluge of hilarity, mirth, addiction and excessive surrealism.

Sautéed wardrobe kidney, anyone?

The release a few weeks ago of the results from a major international cancer study included the following terrifying snippet:

"...in particular, researchers say people should stop eating processed meats, such as ham, bacon and salami..."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Me, live without salami??

Inconceivable!!!

I am finding myself thinking more and more, recently, that the simplest things in life are often the best:

• I enjoy fresh ricotta and spinach tortelloni with a straightforward tomato-and-herb sauce more than a ten-quid bowlful of fettuccine alle vongole from a fancy restaurant
• taking my kids to the park for a runabout and a splash in the puddles is more fun than schlepping them out to some franchised play area with padded floors
• the humble English cottage pie has become my favourite comfort food
• a good game of Scrabble beats an hour of impressive graphics on the Playstation hands-down
• wearing jeans and a shirt fits my self-image better than office clothing
• Yoda's hermitic exile is somehow more pure and noble than Darth Vader's overt power and luxury
• sorry about that, my colleague and I were just having a discussion about Yoda for no particular reason, and it seemed relevant in a really, really tenuous kind of way
• a plain, hardish mattress is a million times more comfortable to sleep on than one of those heat-activated, body-shape-moulding, high-tech gel mattresses
• scootching up all together on the sofa and reading silly limericks to the kids is just about the best thing ever

I still tend to use overcomplicated language, though. Dunno if I'll ever get over that one - I'm just too much of a sesquipedalianismophile. (Oo, neologism!) And you'll never stop me spreading Marmite all the way to the edges of my toast.

Saw a dead cockroach by a bin this morning, and came up with this. It's crap, but it amuses me with its crapness, so here it is.

The cockroach stops in his tracks, faced suddenly with the crumbling, soggy morsel of biscuit in the trap, the sweet-smelling cage, the beckoning irresistible final womb. He has heard the stories, just like everyone else. The young ones whisper them in the corridors, chittering to the thrillfear fascination of someone else's gruesome death. Too close. He is the someone now, the other they'll talk about tomorrow, sideways-glancing in half-excitement. His legs lurch forward, involuntary, jerking, stick-like, why can't I just stop? The heady hydrocarbon scent drags him forward relentlessly by the scruff of his genes. His mandibles lovingly crack the crumbs, siphoning the death-in-life into him. A slow, smooth blossoming of pain in his abdomen. Numbness. Inevitability. The black insect-mother calling him home. He curls up tightly, finally, almost egg-shaped, as if to say, I am reborn.

Have just bought two tickets to the BBC Good Food Show... and am now salivating like a toothless hound at the thought of all the yummy goodies with which I'll undoubtedly be burdening my yacht-sized recyclable carrier bags three weeks from now. Last time I went, I purchased (amongst other things) several yards of extra-mature cheese, a pint or two of pâté, and at least a megawatt of single malt whiskey, which left me with a nice big hole in my wallet but a very, very happy stomach. I doubt that this year will be any different. (However, note to self: avoid the dried satay broad beans. Smell delicious, melt in your mouth, turn to lead in your guts.)