I cannot say sorry

for our attempts at cultural genocide

for 200 years of squatting on your land

for breaking treaties with you and your ancestors

for deliberately poisoning your children with arsenic laced flour.

for the hurt and devastating harm caused by introducing

alcohol into your communities.

for failing to acknowledge your existence.

for failing to acknowledge

the depth, strength, diversity

of your culture.

for stealing your children.

for the missionaries "saving" your souls.

for introducing a thousand diseases

into your lives.

for building carpets of concrete and asphalt

across your beautiful land.

for failing to understand the affinity

we need have with this fragile country.

for trying to exterminate your languages.

for the languages we did exterminate.

for decimating your population

by any means we deemed appropriate.

for the massacres.

for the murderers we let loose amongst you.

for having twenty more years of life in me

because my skin is white.

for all that has been lost on the rivers of time

for all that will never be recovered

from the dust

with the last breath

of your dying men.

for all the pain

I will never know

you have

lived through.

for my

governments

attempts

to consign

your lives

to pits

of history.

for..........................................

Strawberry Chicken

Ok I admit it, I rarely read the fine print in anything, contracts, insurance forms, customs declarations or recipes books and so I have found it my difficult task to inform relatives of having poisoned their loved ones after a particularly harrowing dinner party, but since most have recovered to near full health if not total feeling in all limbs, no enormous drama, and hence this recipe.

Its meant to be Raspberry chicken, but shit strawberry/raspberry, its all fucking fruit, and no one since that bitch Eve, has died or received a permanent disability eating fruit. I cant even remember what the original recipe consisted of, I only glanced at the title and thought “Holy friggin cow, I got a punnet of strawberries in my hand and the gaping part of a defrosted No. 12 chicken sticking out of my pants” (don’t ask, its been a long time between drinks, okay). So the mind began to trickle across from its preoccupation and found it cogitating in a swirling morass of cooking, as is my want.

Take one lump of chicken breast, or at least one per person you are cooking for, any less and really your guests are going to look at you the way some of mine look at me after a hard days drinking with anybody who will buy me a glass of mint flavoured ethanol, when I open a packet of twisties and say “Just put em in the friggin microwave with a kraft cheese stick, and you have a balanced friggin meal, im off to bed with a bucket.” Some of my friends are just plain cunts when it comes to me feeding their cheap asses.

Oh yes, that’s it, the chicken, you have it in your right hand (remember your left is should be used for other activities, picking, wiping etc, as the Koran says, and Allah is all mighty and wise), place it in a large bowl. Ignore it for a few minutes, just look away, pretend it doesn’t exist, its not a fucking Zen concept, you have other shit to do, okay, lust for such luscious creatures is neither sick nor unhealthy in any sense and just because its illegal in the food court at Myers (and hell its does not explicitly state this anywhere in the store, and Mr. Baleyou has since apologised to me personally, after a fashion), doesn’t mean that in the privacy of your own home, you cant do as you friggin well please. Ignoring all desire frothing from your loins, place in a blender, the strawberries, a generous quantity of pepper, a dollop of balsamic vinegar and some parsley. Blend to a smooth watery paste, pour over the sweet tender young chicken breasts and leave it alone for at least an hour, and preferably twenty four hours, any time less than an hour and you might as well go out and get KFC and tell your guests you discovered the eleven secret herbs and spices after years of trial and error.

With the chicken marinating overnight, go back to your dreams of a better life doing wot ever it may be that you do, and generally after you buy me a drink, I will take a slight interest until the flagon is empty.

Fire up the hanabashi, filled as it should be with chips of good redwood or some exotic tropical wood (see your neighbours outdoor furniture for the more flavoursome woods), place the chicken breasts upon said hot beast and char ever so slightly until you think its done, generally about five minutes for each side, or as I like to time it, two full glasses of a spritely spirit from the outer labia of mother Russia.

This dish can be eaten on its own straight from the hotplate (if you don’t feel like washing up stupid friggin plates) or can be chopped up and tossed through a poultice of baby spinach leaves with the rest of the marinade and then eaten between the thighs of a strongly flavoured Armenian woman.

Salut.

Peita Panna

The Swedes are acknowledged worldwide as a relentlessly dull and insipid people, they live on mountains permanently covered in snow, yet their only form of heating is to throw cold water on hot rocks while clad in towels. So it is not at all surprising that food evolution has long since passed over them, they are the fossilised remains of the culinary dark ages. One more slice of bread atop their herring snacks would create a sandwich and so rejoin them to the world of true gastronomy. Of course if they could turf the pickled fish altogether, they and their other hill top tribes would probably discover a sense of humour. Really the less said about Saabs and their bankers (who couldn't’t find an account if a big black dog were to be manually inserted in….. anyway I'm rambling here) the better.

Peita Panna, which in the native tongue (a mix of low guttural whines, French-Guyana and a German with a speech impediment, so not a great deal of joy for the listener there) means something akin to “I Just Woke Up, So Fuck Off”, a dish for those who have alighted from bed after a BBQ which started at midday and ended an hour after dawn the following week.

Firstly collect all meat scraps (roast beef, sausages, chops, chewed bits in the sink), dice into smaller easier to digest chunks, ensuring that teeth marks, saliva and pieces covered in diced carrots are discarded.

Fire up the beer glazed barbie, decimate some potatoes, toss them onto the hotplate with a piddle of olive oil, a scrunch of salt, sprigs of rosemary and anything else that may appeal at that time of the day. When the potato's are almost done, throw the meat into the midst and fry an egg on the side.

Combine in a shallow bowl with some fresh parsley and top with the runny egg.

Slowly eat, open another beer, pour a snifter of chilled vodka diluted with a dash of fresh lime, kick back and watch sport unfold before your red blotchy impersonation of a decent human being and try to remember who the hell the dead woman in your bed is. You have six to ten hours before anyone misses her and connects your name to the sordid affair, so lottsa time to concoct an impressive story and clean the carpet.

With peita panna the best bet is to remain sedentary for a good six hours, while your stomach works out the best orifice to expel this grand meal from. To ensure this happens the Swedes generally eat while watching a tape of Bjorn Borg playing, which

induces sleep at an astonishing rate.

Salut.