After my last experience with rice, I decided to get straight-back in there. Bought some more, and cooked it with beans and stuff. Managed to overcook the rice, which I haven't done for a while.

I've been thinking about why I've started to each so many beans recently; then it came to me. I've got salad obsessed recently. My fridge is smaller than my freezer. Salad goes into the fridge, beans the freezer. It's all perfectly logical.

How the world has changed. Once upon a time, rice was my main staple. I used to eat tons of the stuff. Nowadays, I have a more varied staple diet: noodles, pasta, bread, wheat, cous-cous, rice and, of course, the occasional tattie. While I was cooking some rice last night, I noticed to my dismay that it had got some infection — small mites by the look of things which, fortunately float obviously on top of the water.

I've had a 10kg bag of rice in my house for most of my adult life, but I fear now that I have seen my last. I shall be buying 2kg bags in future.

The mites were incredible though; it's wonderful to me that a thing so small, smaller than this comma, can be a complete multi-cellular organism. Wonder what species they were?