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Printen are delicious biscuits, originally from Aachen, Germany.  They can be found all year round but are very popular during Christmas Time. A german friend is very skilled at baking them, using cute baking tins, like bunnies. Last Easter she offered me a dozen or so which i enthusiastic ate: first the ears, then the head, then a little paw… They were great with coffee. At that time, a friend visited me with her 3 old child and i shared with them some nice, crispy Printen. As soon as i started biting the bunny biscuit poor little B. bursted into tears. "Mummy she's eating a bunny… and he was smiling at me".  Ever since that day she never look at me the same way, not even attracted by Toby, the house dog… So never use a cute baking tin if there are toddlers around… Just make plain rectangles as in this classic recipe:

Ingredients:

500g flour

400g treacle

75g raisins and a little rum

75g candied orange peel

75g candied lemon peel

1 tablespoon mixed spice (cinnamon, anisee ground)

1 pinch cloves (ground)

1 tablespoon baking soda

Treacle and almonds to decorate

To prepare:

First soak the raisins in the rum, heat, then allow the raisins to swell and absorb the rum. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and stir in small cubes of candied orange and lemon peel. Stir together the flour, treacle and mixed different spice, add the swollen raisins, baking soda and candied orange and lemon peel and mix well. Refrigerate the mixture for around 3 to 4 hours. Roll out the mixture between two pieces of cling film to a thickness of approx. 1cm, then carefully cut into 3cm x 7cm pieces.  You can make bigger rectangles if you like. Stir the treacle with water, then brush onto the Printen with a pastry brush. Decorate it with the almonds (or sugar syrup or chocolat bits if you prefer) and bake at 190°C for approx. 15 minutes.

When they're ready and cold store them in a tin box. They're good as well without the raisins (as the one in the photo).

Readers of my web-blog (which is far inferior to this one, but has its own charm), will be well aware of the definition of 'non-working'.  Sadly, however, I only have three readers (including Michael Flatley), and this tells me one thing and one thing only: that it is my duty to share the concept of 'non-workingness' with a wider audience. That way, the movement may spread beyond my front garden and into the wider world, e.g. Belgium and/or Turkey.

To help explain it, I have re-written an old post. Not because I am lazy, but because the sheer quality of my writing stands the test of time (like for e.g. Celia Aherne and James Joyce), so there is no point in 're-inventing the bloggy wheel', as Seth Godin once said. Anyway, here goes!!!

Often, I sit in my armchair, smoking a small clay pipe, supping on a glass of absinthe and inserting my tiny little monkey paw into a packet of Hula-Hoops. That is happiness, my friends; deep happiness. A happiness you can only feel if you are Truly Non-Working (in your heart). It is not to do with unemployment, holidays, being fired, or taking a day off. It is a state of mind.

What is "Non-Working"?

"Non-Working" is an international movement spearheaded by me.  When I started it, it  spread to the front door of my plush Brixton apartment and down the road a bit, but then I moved to Montreal, so now it is mainly based there (with me still at its helm). It is a state of mind; a way of seeing the world and in particular, the world of work. It is perfectly possible to go to an office every day, do a good day's work, commute a bit, have a sandwich with Colin in accounts, be paid, do your expenses, take telephone calls, wear a suit and steal stationery - in fact, do all the things that would usually add up to be "working" - and yet be "Non-Working". 

In essence, it is the strong desire to do very little (unless it's something you really like doing) and be answerable to no-one, whilst understanding that working is necessary in order to get money, which we need to live. (Unless we live in communes in trees and barter things, e.g. a dog on a string for a new jerkin.)

How do I know if I am "Non-Working"?

You are "Non-Working" if you work to get enough money to live. If you do not know where you see yourself in five years' time and couldn't care less, you are almost certainly "Non-Working". 

The benefits of "Non-Workingness"

Happiness usually comes with "non-workingness". Ironically, also, being "non-working" can often make people much better at their jobs. They are less irritatingly eager to please; they are less sycophantic; they are relaxed, and have time to think. They are often more creative, nicer to work with and better at stealing stationery. Strangely enough, they are often better managers because they, more than anyone, know that everything else is more important than work. As a result, they often inspire a strange and beautiful loyalty in their teams. 

How do I know if I am "Working"?

Oh, you'll know. (Clue: BlackBerry.)

I suspect I may be spiritually "Working" rather than "Non-Working". How do I change?

Cretin.

I have never - never ever ever - seen an image like this before in my life. To my shame, it wasn't until I looked at this image that I realized I've never seen one like it before.

It turns out that somewhere in the world, there is a black person helping white people! It's not even an ad campaign for Benetton! It's real! I've reproduced the image here (from US Prospect magazine*.) It would be amazing if anyone out there could supply maybe just one more. It could turn out that potentially two black people in the world are recorded as helping out those poor white people who can't sort their own problems out.

It's such a classical image of the UN soldier with the cute kid, swapping berets and looking off into a distance that offers Hope and Happiness and Peace, and all the things that are promised through military interventions around the world. But seeing the role reversal between black and white, I am reminded that we never do see the role reversal between black and white. It is always white soldiers or at minimum Western-looking soldiers (who we can identify with) swapping berets with black kids (who are clearly 'poor' and who we can't identify with), and so the endless void between them and us is reinforced over and over again, on the news, in the papers, everywhere. So seeing a clearly African soldier doing the whole "I bring you Peace, Hope and Happiness" thing, with clearly European recipients, is a juicy little challenge to the void in my brain between them and us...

*http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=hope_against_history

I discovered an interesting new facial care routine. Well, I say discovered. What I mean is "A thing in a box arrived on my doorstep and I feel compelled to now pretend it is brilliant because otherwise I will have to answer all manner of complicated questions."

It's always nice to receive surprises, and even more so when they appear to be quite expensive pieces of facial-buffing technology. The kind of thing that you might, say, stick a battery in, hold to your face and wait, patiently, while it foams up, rubs, buffs, polishes and makes you more beautiful than the face of god itself. And that's incredible. I mean, all that technology, all that innovation, all that power and research and time spent in development, just to reproduce a high-tech version of the flannel.  It's remarkable, the power of human ingenuity.

Still, it's great to receive something you haven't been expecting, even if it is something of questionable point. But surprises are always nice.

Which makes it sound as if I have been taking kickbacks, bribes. Accepting free samples from manufacturers in return for positive reviews or mentions in one of the blogs I write for.  Sadly, that is not the case.

No. It means I've been internet shopping while drunk again.

There's always  - no, not always, that would be too predictable - there's reasonably often this point, a few days after a really good night out, when a small brown box will arrive from Amazon. I will stare at it, frowning, slightly, wondering if there is any faint possibility that it is something sensible, like a potato peeler, or a pencil, or that copy of  'Managing Your Minuscule Budget For Dummies' that I really should be picking up sometime around now.

But no. It will be one of those things for which companies inevitably book adverts late at night, when people will be weak, or tired, or in some other way incapacitated and more likely to buy something they really, really don't need.

"Buy this" they say "in a matter of only a couple of days, every single problem you've ever had with your skin, your weight, your hair or any other part of your appearance will disappear. And it's only 19.95! AND you get a free gift!" Which is very nice of them, and very generous, but the only really fair free gift would be a badge saying 'MORON', which would, at least, help deter me from the last time.

And so I end up with revolutionary scrubs, ground-breaking pluckers, vibrating flannels and the occasional ineffectual diet pill. All plopping through my letterbox and sitting, smugly on the doormat. All, a month later, sitting on my shelf, collecting dust, mocking me and my continually hopeful - yet lazy - attitude to self improvement.

So here's the plan: someone needs to lock the internet. Not every night, just on nights when I've been out and/or had more than three glasses of wine with dinner. Or just lock that really specific programme where you can look up things that you've just seen on the television and then spooge money up the wall on them. You know the one. Google.

If someone would arrange that, that would be great.