Simple

Another Diana Henry winner -- I love her recipes. Bung chicken, diced potatoes, onion wedges, and cauliflower florets in a roasting tin, pour over olive oil, toss with your hands, and then stick it in the oven and go away. After half an hour or so, scatter with parmesan and give it another 15 minutes while you drink your apero. Washing up minimal too! 

For years we've moved our furniture around twice a year because we like sitting by the fire in winter and by the open windows in summer. Today we thought laterally, and by turning one piece of furniture 90 degrees managed to transform our use of space. So glad to get S's computer and associated mess of papers off the dining table! To achieve this we also lugged the hand-made table we inherited from our friend M up the stairs; it fits the space as if made for it, and it's nice to have it in use rather than in a storeroom -- reminding us of the many hours we spent sitting round it with him.

Not so simple: this evening we actually made it to the Cineclub, which we've missed for months. The film was the documentary Sonita, in honour of International Women's Day. It's an extraordinary true story; Sonita is a 15-year old Afghan girl living in undocumented exile in Iran with her older sister. She dreams of becoming an Afghan Rihanna and raps to her friends in the courtyard of the child refugee centre where she is a cleaner. The bad news: it's illegal for women to sing in public in Iran. Worse: her black-clad mother arrives from Afghanistan to announce that she's going to sell Sonita to an older man for $9,000, because she needs the money to pay for Sonita's brother's bride (yes, this is how marriage works in Afghanistan).

The good news: Iranian film maker Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghani happens to be filming a documentary about the refugee centre. She becomes friendly with Sonita and the film ends up being about Sonita. Rokhsareh films her at home with her family, in the street, in the recording studios where Sonita tries to persuade producers to take a punt on a teenager who can't perform in public.

Then comes the moment where instead of merely observing, Rokhsareh becomes an actor in the drama. Faced with the threat of Sonita disappearing to Afghanistan forever, she pays Sonita's mother $2,000 to allow Sonita to stay in Iran another six months. That done, she makes a rap video of Sonita performing her own composition about forced marriage and posts it on Youtube. From there: thousands of fans, a $1,000 prize in an online music video contest, Skype calls from the US -- Sonita's life is radically transformed. Rokhsareh's actions might seem ethically dubious, but you cannot blame her for seeking to help a person she has become so fond of.

It all seems like a bit of a fairy story, but it really happened. Of course Sonita is just one very lucky, determined, and charismatic person (albeit at the price of possibly never seeing any of her family again). Her friends and sisters are still being sold to pay for their brothers' wives: a ridiculously pointless circulation of money if anyone stops to think about it. Sad to see her mother defending it because it's all she's ever known. You have to doubt that Sonita's rap video will make any difference.