How to survive in the wilds of the Cheshire countryside

when you’ve not finished the kitchen of your cottage and can’t find anything more than a tin opener and earthenware pot.

Plug in the microwave.

Go to Gerry the village butcher and buy four chicken thighs. Open a tin of cream of mushroom soup and a tin of Roma (Plum) tomahhtos. Mix contents of tin in the earthenware pot, chop up an onion with the only knife you can find which is the good bone handled Sheffield steel dinner knife you bought at the 50p shop that says, “by appointment to His majesty” on the side.

Add onion.

And a bit of salt.

Deposit chicken pieces and cover with the goop.

Cover the pot with a plastic bag because you can’t find the lid, and put it in the nuker for 45 minutes.

Dinner is served.

Eat it straight out of the pot.

The next day:

having found a knife and bought some vegetables, take the remaining piece of chicken and the leftover goo and put them in the skillet you got at the St. Alban’s parish jumble sale. Add a handful of Brussels sprouts, a bit of cut up sweet potato which you can now cut without hazard having bought a paring knife. Cut up a carrot and add five slices of English bacon (called backbacon in Canada, and, inexplicably, Canadian bacon in the US) and a teaspoon of sugar to counteract the saltyness of the bacon. Slice an apple into four pieces.

Simmer together for ½ an hour.

Dessert is yoghurt with rose hip syrup.

Oh, baby!