There’s nothing like a cheese and prune sandwich when you’re looking for a bit of adventure in your life.

I tried that new recipe for my Saturday lunch and it worked – do try it!

I’ve always had a passion for experimenting with food. One of the great regrets in my life is that I never learnt how to play any musical instrument. I have a lot of creativity in my head at times and I would love to be able to set that to music.

So instead of music I compose with food – I imagine how different combinations of textures and flavours will sound to my tastebuds.

And I must have a bit of knack for it because I rarely get failures. The only unmitigated cocophany was a tongue and marmalade dish I tried when I was seventeen. Even my dog Scamp turned his nose up at it – the follies of youth!

At this point you may be alarmed if I told you that owning a restaurant is one of my three goals in life.

I guess I should have gone for a cybercafe when they were in their heyday. They are a bit old hat now. Curiously there was never a successful one in Coventry. There were two brief flirtations.

Back in around 1996 there was a rather ramshackle attempt at one in a mobile phone shop on the Foleshill Road. That closed unceremoniously after a few months owing us £80 – luckily one of only two bad debtors in five years of business.

The other attempt was a short term venture in the Herbert Art Gallery as part of the Centenary of the Car celebrations.

Cybercafes almost seem a thing of the past now. It is now so easy and increasingly so cheap to get on the Net why go and pay £5 an hour or whatever.

And if you don’t have the Net at home many libraries offer a cheap or free service. In Coventry we run a whole platoon of free European funded public access points across Foleshill and in the next few weeks Hillfields.

I’ve tried to throw you off the track with all this talk of cybercafes. You might still be wondering what the other two goals in my life are.

Well I’m doing one now (but it may not be quite what you’re thinking) and I hope to do the other quite soon. You’ll have to keep reading my diaries, intermittent as they are, to find out more.

I do have a fourth goal that I will tell you about – that’s to live in a big house with a white balcony. I’m not sure where that vision comes from. I think it’s a cross between some distorted Gone with the Wind type imagery and memories of chasing lizards up the whitewashed walls of an Algarve villa I holidayed in as a ten year old.

On a more down to earth note I was confronted with a pure dilemma of the generations today.

We took our two young daughters to Spencer Park in Earlsdon. Mivi at two and half is at an age where she has buckets of energy to burn off.

Unfortunately there are very few places where she can safely gallop around without stepping in something or falling on broken glass.

In Spencer Park there are two clean, smooth bowling greens – unused at this time of year. Having such closely cropped grass means any potential dangers can be easily spotted. A perfect exercise ring for an energetic youngster.

A little blue ball and a frisbee completed the picture.

Then came along two old ladies who complained that we shouldn’t be playing ball games on the bowling green.

I must confess I hadn’t spotted the prohibitory notice. We moved on to the general area with longer grass.

It only took 30 seconds before I spotted the first doggie dropping, and then another, and another.

Playtime over.

So there is the dilemma.

Do we let Mivi play on the safe bowling green and irk our older citizens?

Or do we move to the pooh ridden play area and risk all sorts of nasty consequences?