I was going to point someone to the recipe on which this was based, but in fact I’ve varied it so much they’re really different cookies, so here it is:

1 cup of gluten-free oats
1/2 cup gluten-free white flour
1/2 cup of tapioca flour (not essential to have this type of flour, but makes them chewy)
1/2 cup of buckwheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
125 grams of margarine (or you could use butter)
4 dessertspoons of golden syrup
Teaspoon baking powder
Two tablespoons boiling water (or thereabouts)

Mix all the dry ingredients, melt margarine/butter in microwave with golden syrup, dissolve baking powder in water and mix into this, then mix into dry ingredients.

Bake in oven around 180C for about 20 minutes.

They’ll be soft out of the oven but will harden up as they cool.

1/4 cup cornflour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup rice flour
1/2 cup margarine
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut
Teaspoon of lemon juice

Mix dry ingredients, melt margarine in microwave, mix, make into balls and flatten wiith a fork

Bake for about 20 minutes in 180 degree oven.

Based on this recipe.

Was pleased to see in the Independent a very decent piece on the England women’s rugby captain, which only occasionally slips into the “gosh, girls are really playing” mode.

Catherine Spencer’s comment about not being recognised without mud in her hair takes me back to my rugby days – well my one rugby season.

I played for the really-not-very-good University of New England (Australia) team, which only made up the numbers with some “friends of players” who’d been talked into it without wanting to be there. Which meant when you got to the wings there were some players really not at all keen to tackle anyone.

I was No 8, a position for which I was way, way too slow, but we had a surplus of second rowers, which was probably where I belonged.

The mud line reminded me of my sporting fame moment when the local television stringer – who’d worked for me when I’d been news editor of the local daily paper – turned up to film a game, and was absolutely delighted to film me at the end of it, with a face as red as a desert sun, and hair that had reached the indescribable stage. (I do hope that tape has been safely confined to history, since I was also so high on adrenaline I was probably incoherent.)

Probably fortunately, I’ve forgotten the score of our biggest thrashing, when we played Newcastle Uni, which actually had Australian team members playing for them. One of them was a centre, who I recall only from the back, chasing her fruitlessly down the field…

File under nostalgia…

I just did mine, and found that I’d been charged for “American Express Card Defence” (one of those services that allow you if your cards are lost or cancel all your cards with one call), despite my having cancelled it in 2008 because the service was so crap.

After 20 minutes waiting without answer on their telephone line, I rang American Express, to learn that “sorry, they have accidentally charged lots of cancelled people – but we will refund your money”.

What would have happened, I wonder, if I hadn’t noticed and hadn’t run up? (This was a charge made on September 30 – so they have had plenty of time to correct it themselves.)

Beware!

Have been having a big autumn garden tidy up and replanting, on my balcony and in the communal pots in our informal community vegetable garden.

Found that a poor, struggling aubergine plant that barely reached 20cm in height had somehow produced a single offspring almost as large as itself (and found cherry tomatoes had insinuated themselves in every crevice and corner).

What I’ve replaced them with is the “mini veggie garden” from this seller, which arrived very greenly wrapped in hay (now forming a “fleece” around the seedlings.

It is quite a selection: broad beans, spinach, red dandelion, a range of winter lettuce, rainbow chard and more … we should be a well-nourished council estate, at least on the nourishment found in leafy greens, if they all flourish!