Feeling diminished by acquaintance and contact, I'm in retreat, wishing I could take back any bits of myself I scattered in unthinking profligacy.

Given that the lovely chap I spoke to at Random House attempted to deflect my ebook pricing questions by telling me that retailers set the pricing, it will be interesting to see what happens here.

• For some reason today I am thinking of The Magic Faraway Tree. I always wanted to go there, even if the inhabitants sounded odd and kind of dumb. One day I would like either to have a little gypsy caravan or a treehouse; the homes in the Faraway Tree always sounded so wonderful to me.

• There was more, but a headache got in the way. At least my temper seems to be improving, though.

Star Wars jokes today are about as funny and novel as zombie Jesus jokes at Easter. I really hope they make people feel clever and scintillating. I can't think of any other reason for them.

Game of Thrones, episode three. Still not sold, but it gets more compelling with each episode.

I would, actually, be interested to hear from someone who hasn't read the books. I have a feeling that a lot of the TV show is dependent on knowing the story; but, knowing the story, I can't know how well it works for one who does not.

I want to punch Jon Snow's pretty, pouty, sulky frown.

But it is Cersei I am finding really hard to swallow. Her entire point in the book is that she tries to be manipulative, scheming, brilliant — but she's abysmal at it. She is able to think otherwise because her entire life, people have been around to clean up her messes, and any time anything goes wrong she can drum her spoilt arrogant fists and rail at the world for not making her a man, because if she was a man, the world would take her seriously.

This falls apart when the people propping her up start falling away, and when we see other female characters who do have actual real power without their gender getting in the way.

Cersei is impatient, has a nasty temper, is extremely short-sighted and incapable of thinking through something like the speech she gave Joffrey in this episode.

I don't want to be like a nerd sitting around going, "Nyurgh, it's not like the source material", but so far it is demonstrating quite a profound lack of understanding of the characterisation that made the books extraordinary.

I am tracing my current ongoing malaise back to ANZAC Day. Then again, maybe I'm just being oversensitive. Who knows?

Anyway, more food talk.

My trip to the butchery on Saturday saw me venturing into unknown territory: bacon hocks. The first step was to make stock from the thing. It took a few hours, during which time I grew increasingly dismayed by the wet ham smell, but the end result was the saltiest stock known to mankind, and the meat...! Imagine if corned beef was made out of bacon.

Then, since I had potatoes and leeks, it was obvious where the whole thing was going. I added thyme, simmered the vegies in the stock, blended it all up, then stirred through the shredded meat.

I will be making this soup again, I can tell you that.

Well, the Great Mushroom Egg-speriment worked. Quite marvellously, in fact. It would have been delicious except — quelle surprise — it was overwhelmingly mushroomy. Perhaps some pesto would have alleviated the fungus flavour.

I also decided to try roasting some chestnuts. They are delicious! But also seemed determined to try and take my fingers off in the peeling process. Verdict: buy pre-peeled chestnuts. This is very important, because I would like to try sometime roast fowl (pheasant, perhaps?) stuffed with a mixture chestnuts, goats' cheese and honey. Maybe some tarragon, because it sounds like dragon.

In other news, I am feeling decidedly eremitey and withdrawn and need to spend some time forgoing social engagements while I recover my composure.

So I thought of a thing, right. Here it is. You take those giant flat mushrooms. You remove the stem. You put a bit of chopped up crispy-fried bacon in there. You put it in the oven for a few minutes. Then you open the oven, remove your baking tray and crack an egg into the mushroom. You top the egg with sage and maybe a sprinkling of shaved haloumi. You return the mushroom to the oven. You bake it until the egg is cooked.

Then you eat it.

I am determined to attempt this experiment just as soon as I have cleaned the noxious spillage from my oven.

In other news, I am flu and trying to understand some things.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we now have concrete evidence: I am in actual fact a genius. Of the super variety.

I refer you to exhibit A, last night's dinner preparations. Usually when coating meat pieces in seasoned flour, I put the flour in a bowl and roll the pieces of meat around in batches until well and evenly coated.

Last night, an epiphany!

The meat pieces and the seasoned flour went into a plastic bag, which was then vigorously shaken. Et voila! Coated meat in half the time it takes to tell!


... Yes, yes, I am aware that this is hardly a new technique to anyone but me. I was using the word genius ironically. Sheesh.

(I'm still a genius)

I have lost a frock. I do not know how.

Creative (the company) has some pretty cool gadgets, but damn the software can be annoying. It took me an hour to figure out how to upgrade the firmware, and I still can't get into app-land because I still haven't been sent a login.

Tomorrow I am going to chat with a fellow about ebooks. I am looking forward to it.

I am tired of thinking about what to cook.

I am so very exhausted. My doctor told me it's stress. I feel like I need to go away somewhere. My brain is having trouble both retaining and processing information and it's really boring.

Neither you nor I particularly care about any of this, I just needed to yell into the void for a moment.