Turns out making muffins can be a social activity as well as providing breakfast. Behold our muffin-orgiastic pile of twenty eight (made in three batches) !

Having been thrust unwillingly (ha ha) from our place of work at lunchtime on Friday thanks to the snow, three quarters of the department and I retired to our kitchen to bake (well, I baked and they moaned about the state of the carpet. The hoover’s broken. Okay, they did some mashing and peeling).

Incidentally, and on a slightly different note from usual, found a lovely story about a mule in Livy’s History of Rome (44.40) this week. The Macedonians (this is before the complete conquest of Greece in 146BC) and the Romans are encamped either side of a river, reasonably peacefully. A highly inconvenient Roman mule escapes from its handlers and wanders into the river, where it’s found by two Thracians, who try to drag it onto their bank. A couple of Roman soldiers follow and kill one of the Thracians, which starts a full-scale battle.

So, other than about the mass production of muffins, we have also usefully learned this week that inconvenient mules have existed throughout the ages. If anyone knows of any other mule stories, we’d be delighted to hear them!