Men, especially those with sedentary desk jobs, often talk in romantic terms about physical labour. Cutting down trees, mowing enormous lawns with a push mower, wrestling bears, chopping down trees^*, that kind of thing. These activities are rugged and, well, manly. They make your chest swell, as the sweat, good honest sweat, forms on your brow. This isn't namby-pamby gymstuff, it's work. Hard work.

Since we no longer have a coal fire, it's been a couple of years since I approached hard romantic work. Even that - lugging twenty 20kg bags of coal down a flight of steps - didn't take more than a few minutes, so it hardly counted. Today though, I shovelled three tonnes of soil off the pavement into a raised bed, and it has served to confirm my opinion of this hard work business as just wishful self-delusion. I do not feel rugged, romantic, or manly. I just feel knackered.

*Last time I needed a tree chopping down, I paid my brother do it, what with his exciting selection of chainsaws, safety harness, appropriate insurance and years of training and experience. He probably thinks this hard labour thing is bollocks too.

And with that, the Sunday night rural murderfest that is Midsomer Massacres turned startlingly postmodern.

Went to quite a posh party a week or so ago. I should probably qualify that a bit. There was plenty of booze, for instance, but it was decent wine and there were wine glasses to drink it from. Later on, I was given a glass of port. Although the party wasn't fancy dress, I was introduced to a judge. There was terrific food too, lots of it and all of it home-made. (The sole exception were the samosas, which it is perfectly acceptable to buy in.) We took this stew, and I feel slightly smug that which such good competition people have asked for the recipe.

I had a splendid conversation with a woman who stalked across the room toward me, brandishing her plate. She was a former producer on Pebble Mill at One, responsible for, among other things, pairing up the Cooking Canon and Rabbi Blue. Scoff if you want, but that was bloody TV magic. Stephanie, this is for you.

This recipe looks a bit long and fiddly, but that's deceptive. Every little stage takes five or ten minutes, so there's time to prepare as you go. There's no need to spend twenty minutes chopping before you begin, just get everything together and start.

Forage around and gather up:

• some olive oil
• 500g of baby onions
• a whole bulb of garlic
• a tin of tomatos
• two tablespoons of harissa paste - harissa is a Morrocan chilli paste that you seem to be able to get pretty much anywhere these days
• a cinnamon stick
• 900ml vegetable stock
• 2 or 3 large baking potatoes, peeled and sliced into wedges
• 500g of pumpkin or squash, peeled and seeded, cut into chunks
• 150g of baby corn
• 150g of sugar snap peas, mange touts or whatever
• 350g of cherry tomatoes
• 2 tablespoon of cornflour
• a handful of fresh mint
• a handful of coriander leaf

You'll need a large, heavy-based pan. Large, maybe as large as you've got. I use a Le Creuset cocotte approximately the size of a baby bath.

1. Peel the onions, but leave the whole. Cut the garlic bulb in half horizontally. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan. Fry the onions, and the bottom half of the garlic gently for 5 minutes or so, until they've softened a bit and nicely brown.
2. Tip in the tin of tomatoes. Add the harissa, cinnamon stick and the stock. Bring it up to the boil, clang on the lid and simmer for ten minutes.
3. Add the potatoes. Bring back to the boil, cover and simmer for another 10 minutes.
4. Tip in the pumpkin and baby corn. Cover and simmer for five minutes.
5. Add peas and cherry tomatoes. Simmer for another five minutes.
6. Gently fish around and hook out the garlic bulb and the cinnamon stick. The garlic flesh will be cooked and soft. Scrape it out, mash it up, and stir it back in. Throw the papery bit away.
7. Mix the cornflour with a little water. Pour it in, and stir gently while everything thickens up.
8. Chop up the mint and coriander, throw it over the top.
9. Carry enormously heavy pan to table, and serve with cous cous, warm bread, or anything else which will soak up the juices.

The chilli is rounded and warming rather than hot and spicy, and the whole thing is lovely, cuddly food. I usually make it with butternut squash because I think it has a better texture than pumpkin, and I generally put in much more then 500g too. A typical squash will yield over that anyway, and I usually use two. As with most cooking, there's no need to be too precious about the quantities. It's a big hearted dish - it can take it.

This recipe comes originally from an issue of BBC Vegetarian Good Food. I don't know which one, because we've only kept this one page. The recipe is by Lorna Brash. Perhaps she once worked on the nation's favourite lunchtime viewing?

XPath expressions can include runtime evaluated variables - /one/two/three[@id = $sku] for instance. Normally you only see them in XSLT stylesheets, but they're there in the spec as little library extension point.

Committed a few changes to implement variables, together with the start of the scaffolding to allow apps to hand in their own variable resolvers.

The docs list the various events, but don't actually tell you in what order to expect them.

Answered call

OffHook
DestSeized
DestSeized
OpAnswered
TpDisconnected

Unanswered call

OffHook
DestSeized
DestSeized
TpDisconnected

Line engaged

OffHook
DestSeized
DestBusy

Invalid number

OffHook
DestSeized
DestSeized
DestNotObtainable

Note that both the line engaged and invalid number cases, the HangupCall method must be called following DestBusy/DestNotObtainable, which in turn raises a TpDisconnect event.

There are a couple of events that I could not trigger and the documentation is sketchy as to when they actually do fire. DestInvalid is, apparently, fired when "the destination device is invalid for the request function" and OutOfService triggers when "the device is out of service". Trying obvious things like making up bogus phone numbers or ringing switched off mobiles causes the DestNotObtainable.

After placing a call on hold using the HoldCall method, the HangupCall method has no effect until the call is taken off hold with RetrieveHeld. If the calling party hangus up while on hold, the call does end and a disconnect event is raised as normal.

The CTC documentation describes two events which can be fired when the call is disconnected, OpDisconnected and TpDisconnected. OpDisconnected is fired when the other, called, party hangs up, and TpDisconnected is fired when your end hangs up the call. That's what is says anyway. In practice, I found that TpDisconnected is always raised when the call ends, regardless of who hung up and OpDisconnected is never raised. This might be a misfeature bug in the ActiveX control, a pecularity of the switch I was using or plain wrongness in the documentation.

Inspired by the exceedingly-funny-even-though-it-shouldn't-have-been School of Rock, towards the end of last year I embarked on a programme of "rock education" with the Bean. We started slowly, listening to Virgin Radio (the nearest thing to a rock station this country can deliver) in the car for instance. Initially I would pronounce on the tracks, Little mate, this rocks!. He would express his pleasure or displeasure with a thumbs up, thumbs down or a half-way waggle. His own taste developed pretty rapidly, not entirely in line with my own I'm pleased to say, and we reached something of milestone last week. Coldplay's Clocks came on. The Bean listened for a couple of minutes before deciding. It's trying to rock, he said, but it's not really rocking. It's kind of middling rock.

Middling rock. Coldplay in a nutshell.

If a call fails to connect because the line was engaged or unavailable (and presumably invalid or out of service), the application must ensure that the HangupCall method is called. The HangupCall will then cause a TpDisconnect event to fire. It is safe to call HangupCall from the DestBusy/DestNotObtainable/whatever event handler.

If HangupCall is not called, the telset seems to be left in some kind of indeterminate state and subsequent MakeCall invocations will fail. If a TpDisconnect event was raised (for example when the call was not answered) it is not necessary to call HangupCall, but doing so is benign and a further event will not be raised.