Overall, I think I’m winning this week (although Wednesday’s migraine was a bit of a setback!) Hopefully you’ve had a good week and are ready for some Friday reading!

1) I think I’m going to have a bash at sourdough. Hugh F-W seems like a good place to start.

A sourdough loaf is very different from what mostly passes as bread these days. In fact, it is the antithesis of the industrial factory loaf – that soft, structureless, flavour-lite bread that is produced in such huge quantities in this country. Sustain, whose Real Bread Maker Week starts today, reckons that well in excess of 90% of our bread is mass-produced either by the big brands or supermarkets. Sourdough, by contrast, is bread with immense character, with presence – bread with a point. And that’s why I think you might want to have a go at making it yourself.

2) A skater on why the undercroft should be kept as it is at the South Bank. I couldn’t agree more, spaces that grow organically are part of the culture of London, the skaters are as much a part of the South Bank as the RFH and the book market. I think that the development is missing the point of the South Bank and why people come to it.

There is no reason why the existing site cannot be accommodated into plans by developers with vision and a sense of continuity. By doing so the South Bank complex would remain an exciting, multidimensional urban space that includes all aspects of culture, high and low, street and salon, loose and structured. This is the sort of public space we need, not another glut of privately owned, heavily regulated opportunities to spend what little money we have left.

3) Harry Leslie Smith writing about his disillusionment. Brilliant. Should be compulsory reading for all politicians.

We have somehow broken our solemn bond with those warriors of yesterday and forgotten that when the survivors of the Second World War returned to their homes, they were like a tide that raised all boats. My generation’s shared experience of suffering, of witnessing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and enduring unspeakable privations as both soldiers and civilians made us vigilant when it came to demanding our peace dividend. We knew what we deserved and that was a future that didn’t resemble our hard-scrabble past. The Green and Pleasant land was for everyone after the war because we had bled for it and died for it. We demanded a truly democratic society where merit was rewarded and no one would be left behind because of poverty, poor health or an inadequate education.

4) Tips for vegetarians

5) Cooking Gazan style.

In Gaza, almost 1 million people – more than half the population – receive basic food assistance from the United Nations. The 13 women of the Zeitun Kitchen co-operative have learned to adapt to the privations of life in Gaza: shortages of power and cooking oil; Israel’s ban on many foodstuffs during the three years in which a stringent blockade was in place; the fluctuations in black market supplies through the tunnels to Egypt; the destruction of and restrictions on access to prime agricultural land; the imposition of strict limits on how far from shore Gaza’s fishermen can lower their nets 

6) Why aren’t more people unemployed? or the mess the economy’s in..

7) The reason Henry VIII’s wives had problems with live births. Maybe