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Well, what an exciting week we’ve had! (No, not really. I just thought it might make things a bit less tedious than normal).

The highlight of the week came on Monday when I got to work to find an envelope on my desk addressed to me and marked “Private and Confidential”. Normally, Christine, our administrator, opens all my post and files three-quarters of it in the small, square bin in the corner of the office. This is because, essentially, three-quarters of the post I receive is from suppliers who want to sell us something or persuade us to purchase something on behalf of all our schools. So, Christine deals with these and files them in the bin for me. Those marked “Personal” or “Confidential” are most often requests for references and Christine very properly puts them unopened on my desk for me to deal with.

When I picked up this letter, however, I could see that it was from “Oxfordshire County Council” and my immediate reaction was one of excitement and delight – could it be that Oxfordshire was going to take advantage of the rapidly declining economic environment to shed some of their more useless dead weights? Could it really be my P45? Had the powers that be finally realised that they would be considerably better off without me? How large a redundancy settlement would I receive? I was trying to do the calculations as I opened the envelope.

Perhaps you can imagine my sense of disappointment, then, as I extracted the contents to discover that it was not, in fact, my redundancy notice. Rather, it was a letter congratulating me on my “excellent” contribution to the work of Oxfordshire County Council over the previous year and an invitation to drinks and “nibbles” with the Chief Executive and the Leader of the County Council.

Now, I knew that the Council had this policy of inviting employees to “nominate” their colleagues for “awards” of this nature but for the life of me I cannot imagine who had nominated me. I guess they might have been tempted to do so as a joke, presumably never imagining that it would get this far but it did. And now I have a chance to spend a couple of hours with the Chief Executive sipping what will undoubtedly be some fine wine and nibbling some nibbles of some description. The great news is that the reception happens to be on the evening of our anniversary so at least that’s saved me having to come up with anything. I thought I would take Pen down to Oxford, have her sit in the car for a couple of hours while I get completely rat-faced drinking and then she can drive me home at the end of the evening. And, if I get sufficiently rat-faced, I could presumably insult or assault the Chief Executive and earn my redundancy after all. I’ll let you know how it all works out.

Another weekend of great rugby on the television; Scotland played South Africa, the Irish hosted the All Blacks and England squared off against Australia. I won’t spoil Sandy’s enjoyment but you can almost always guarantee a cracking match whenever the Aussies and England square off.

We’re off to Oxford this afternoon to see the “Earth from the Air” exhibition at Oxford Castle. You can get a feel for what it’s all about here.

Love to you all,

Greg

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Apologies for the length of the following. Stick with it though.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES:

# Frequent flier coupons
# One medium paperclip (not plastic coated)
# One movie ticket stub

Now, remember that chocolate-chip cookies are supposed to be a nice relaxing kind of food, so the first thing you'll want to do to make them is to go somewhere where you can kick back and relax. Ecuador is good, so use your frequent-flier miles to pick up a round-trip ticket there. The stewardess will hand you a couple of bags of peanuts, but don't eat them, since we're going to need those for the cookies.

You'll find yourself sitting next to an attractive woman who teaches archaeology at Cornell; she'll explain that she's going to Ecuador to try to find her father -- a biochemist by trade, but he dabbles in archaeology as a hobby -- who went down there to find the lost pyramid of Sesquichachloride, well known in archaeological circles as the fabled storehouse of the god Valhequesal who, according to myth, rode down from the skies on a pillar of fire bringing with him a wealth of powerful but somewhat failure-prone magical devices that, according to the priests of the day, were pretty darn all-around nifty.

Now her father, after examining several stone tablets depicting the god Valhequesal, discovered that he is always shown wearing a curious bracelet on his left wrist that looks surprisingly like a digital watch, leading him to the conclusion that Valhequesal did actually exist, but he was really an advanced space traveller with comparatively poor taste in accessories, and that the lost pyramid of Sesquichachloride must contain his spacecraft and untold other devices from his world. About this time, the stewardess will bring by the main meal and you'll want to be sure to save the little packets of salt and butter that come with your meal -- the woman next to you will be too worried about her father to eat and so you'll want to take her packet of butter and go ahead and keep her crackers too.

When you get off the plane in Ecuador, just go out to the front of the airport and try to locate a cab. There won't be any, for some reason, so you'll go inside to inquire about where transportation might be found and some guy will stumble against you and when you look at him, you'll notice that he's been stabbed in the left side and is bleeding pretty profusely. With a weakly shaking hand, he'll thrust the key to a safety deposit box into your hand, gasp something about "be careful of the poison ivy" and expire messily on the floor of the terminal. You'll decide that maybe waiting for a cab is the better part of valour and head back outside -- on the way, though, be sure to stop at the concession stand and ask for a half-pound of chocolate chips. The clerk will measure the appropriate amount and put it in a bag for you. Be sure your movie ticket stub is visible in the handful of change you pull from your pocket to pay her. She'll reach down under the counter and then surreptitiously drop a roll of microfilm into your bag along with the chocolate chips, then hand you the bag, saying, "On the house."

At this point, speed is of the essence -- get back outside the concourse before a swarthy man with a moustache strides up to the snack shop holding a movie ticket stub. Moments later he and the clerk will run out the door looking for you, just as the woman who sat next to you on the plane drives up in her rental car and offers you a lift. Cheerfully accept, and hop in before the man with the moustache flips off the safety on his gun. If all goes well, you'll both be out of the parking lot and on your way before he has time to squeeze off more than one shot -- and he'll miss on the first one anyway and the woman driving the car will think it was just another vehicle backfiring. She'll be kind enough to offer to let you stay in her hotel room, but she'll need to stop off at the bank first to take care of a little business. While she's talking with the bank representative, you casually wander back to the safety deposit boxes and open the one that matches the key. In it, you'll find a fair-sized paper bag containing bags of flour, sugar, baking soda and a large bottle of calamine lotion; take this along with the folded piece of paper lining the bottom of the safety deposit box. Go back to the lobby just as she's getting ready to leave.

Once the two of you get back into the car and start driving, unfold the piece of paper -- it's a map leading to somewhere deep in the Ecuadorian jungle. Look more closely at it just as your companion notices the map, gasps, nearly runs the car off the road, and exclaims "That's my father's handwriting!" From this point on, it's pretty straightforward -- just trek through the jungle with her for a few days, evade the occasional drug lord and that guy with the moustache, locate the hidden temple and descend down a long pole into its depths, and locate the treasure room.

There'll be a large golden idol in the northwest corner with huge rubies for eyes, a golden bowl in his lap, and a bird's nest on his head. Put the butter from the plane into the bowl and stir until softened. Get the gold cup to the left of the idol and add two cupfuls of sugar to the butter, stir until creamed. And two eggs from the next, one Swiss army knife spoonful of baking soda and two-and-a-half cups of flour, being sure to remove the large plastic bag of cocaine that was hidden in the bag of flour first. Mix well, add the peanuts from the flight and the chocolate chips from the bag, pocketing the microfilmed list of drug contacts first, and place by Swiss army knife spoonfuls onto the silver tray propped up against the back of the idol.

Once the cookie batter is on the tray, your companion will ask to lick the bowl, but in doing so will bump against the gold torch held in the idol's right hand and there will be a low grinding sound as the stone block that forms the doorway to the drug smugglers' lab slides out of the way and you'll see her father chained to a lab table being forced to refine drugs for the smugglers. While they're having a beautiful and happy reunion, pick up a strange device from the outer room and bring it into the lab where there's better light for a closer inspection. Be sure to bring the cookie sheet too and set them next to each other on the lab table. Your companion and her father will be trying to figure out how to get him unchained while you note that the device in question is clearly of extraterrestrial manufacture and appears to be some sort of highly powerful laser cutting device -- except that it shows signs of being dropped, breaking the actuator wire and misaligning the front partial mirror.

Tell them to be quiet for a moment as you use the fish scaling blade from your swiss army knife to realign the partial mirror to one quarter wave and then unfold the paperclip, using it to reconnect the high-voltage trigger to the laser firing mechanism. Have him stand back while you use the high-powered laser to cut through the chain holding him to the table and, incidentally, the wall on the other side of the room, alerting the drug smugglers to your presence. They'll burst into the room and one will fire a pistol at you, missing you but hitting the laser, forcing it permanently on and cracking the rear reflector, bathing the area -- the cookies in particular -- with high-energy radiation. Now get chased around the interior of the temple for a while and, just after the second brief romantic moment where you kiss her and think, "Gosh, for someone who's been running around the Ecuadorian jungle for nearly a week, her hair's not greasy at all," the cookies should be done.

Run back through the drug lab, grab the cookie sheet, noting that the cooling system for the laser has failed and it's about to explode, and run to the outer room where the three of you scale the pole with the bad guys in hot pursuit. By the time you reach the top of the pole, the bad guys will be halfway up it already, so uncap the bottle of calamine lotion and pour it onto the pole, causing them to fall back into the temple as you and your companions escape into the jungle depths just moments before the entire secret temple explodes, destroying the drug smuggling operation along with all the extraterrestrial artefacts.

By now the cookies should be cool enough to eat. Enjoy. Your companions will have a few too, wistfully sighing over the loss of so much knowledge so senselessly, as you take another cookie and notice that the metal sheet you baked them on has etched onto it the plans for what appear to be some sort of space drive.

Anyway, this is the best chocolate-chip cookie recipe I've ever tried -- I've made it dozens of times and haven't had a single bad batch yet.