It is thick wet snow outside. The kind of weather that makes you feel you would rather not go outside again. Hopefully it will be gone tomorrow. I had been hoping it would be dry over the weekend and there would be time in the garden for a fire in the corner but whatever happens with the snow it will be too damp and the fire will have to wait until next week.

Last night Galen and I had a frugal supper. A pack of six sausages cooked in a pot together the tightly chopped ends of some chorizo I found lurking in the back of the fridge. I had to scrape bits of mould off but I figured that would add to the flavour.

Once the sausages had started to brown I added a chopped onion, some celery and then a finely chopped carrot. That was all left to stew in its fat for a while. I scurried down to the basement to find some cider. I knew I had seen a bottle lurking in a corner, French, use by date about five years ago. I think it must have come back from Normandy. The cork came off with a satisfying pop and I poured some into a glass. I tasted it expecting vinegar but came up with a mouthful of dry apples. A good glass of that went over the sausages and I poured a glass out for myself.

Over lunch I had been to Lunya and bought a jar El Navarrico lentils. Whilst getting them precooked is cheating and more expensive they are worth it. They have a dense earthy flavour and just the right bite. There also make a good glupping sound as you shake the jar to get the lentils into the pan.

We ate the sausages and lentils with the rest of the cider.

A good Thurday night meal.

Driving to work this morning and Mr. Steingrímur J. Sigfússon Iceland’s Minister of Industries and Innovation is on The Today programme being interviewed by Sarah Montague. He was there to answer the charge that Icelandic (and Faroese) fishermen are performing a mugging job. It was not clear whether it was the mackerel or Scottish fishermen (who had used the phase) who were being mugged.

He made it all sound very unfair and basically it was the mackerel’s fault. As a result of climate change they had followed their noses to where the food was and unfortunately this was within the waters of Iceland and the Faroe islands. The mackerel were ‘grazing’ in these foreign waters and having the temerity to eat the fish that the local fishermen would otherwise be catching. This was putting out the biomass and although he didn’t quite say it the suggestion was that they were going to have to haul ever greater quantities out of the water until the balance was put right.

Reassuringly he told us that they calculated that there is now approximately 1.5 million tonnes of mackerel within the Icelandic waters. These make up some 25-30% of the entire mackerel stock. Doing some very rough calculations and on the basis that an average sized mackerel weighs about 500g that is roughly 2,000 mackerel per tonne, a total of some 3,000,000,000 which I think is about 3 billion. That of course is an awful lot of fish. But then look at a picture like this and bear in mind the technology that allows the boats to pinpoint the vast dark shoals in the water so that they can lay their nets around them.

There is a press release on the Minister’s website in which he says: ‘Not only are mackerel rapidly increasing in number, but they are growing in weight as well. Individual mackerel gain an estimated 43-55 percent in weight while in Icelandic waters, meaning a huge increase in the amount each fish consumes.’

So last night at about 11.30 I go off to bed after having finished writing a bit about mackerel and obliquely mentioning how on a good day you can haul out a few hundred over a couple of hours in Dunmannus Bay and I wake up this morning to hear on the news we have all been catching too many of them and we were not to eat them again.

Having woken up and listened more carefully and then read down the article on the BBC webpage it was not quite that bad. There are still plenty of mackerel left but if we (and that is a very big we) carry on hoovering them out of the water as some are doing on the moment then all of a sudden we could find ourselves with considerably less mackerel in the sea.

It was only a few days ago I was writing on the fecundity of mackerel and on a shoal that was measured some five miles by two. How could it be possible to diminish such plenty.

Then I go onto the Marine Conservation Society website (the organisation responsible for this morning’s story) and read about the purse seine nets that can be operated from one boat and in a week can take up to 1,800 tonnes which is the equivalent to the take of the entire handline fleet in the southwest of England in one year.

Purse seines are the nets used by the boats from Iceland and the Faroe Islands who are taking advantage of the fact that the mackerel stock has moved west and into their waters.The MCS are concerned that if the Icelandic and Faroese fleets continue with these aggressive methods then the stocks sustainability will suffer.

All of which begs the question, who eats all this mackerel. I am fairly sure that the good people of the Faroe Islands (population 49,000) and Iceland (population 320,000) won’t be eating it all. Between them they caught about 300,000 tonnes during 2012 which would be almost a tonne for each man woman and child. I suspect that a lot of it is frozen and then shipped off to Africa and the Eastern European countries.

Whilst I am sure it is cheap it won’t be that good to eat. A mackerel needs to be eaten fresh out of the sea. At best you should be eating it an hour or so after it has come out of the water. Its ability to deteriorate meant that it was the only fish that could be sold on a Sunday. It is the abundance of oils that are supposed to help with your brain power that start to break down as soon as they are out of the water. After a day or so they become like cardboard or a wet pin cushion in the mouth.

I am sure that Wards and other good fishmongers can get them onto the slab within 24 hours but if you see them on the fish counter in the supermarket they are always a sad sight, skin tight and dry and colours dim, they are not worth eating. The same oils mean they don’t freeze well.

The MCS recommend that if you are going to eat mackerel then you should be ensuring that they have been fished locally using traditional methods including handlines, ringnets and drift nets.

What is interesting is that as an alternative they suggest you should eat herring or sardine. I am fairly sure that the stocks of both these fish have crashed over recent years.

If you want to read more there a couple of good articles on The Guardian website

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/22/mackerel-off-conservationists-eat-list

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/fishy-tale-of-mackerel-mismanagement?intcmp=239

For myself I won’t be eating them again until I am back fishing for them in Ireland in the summer.

A couple of further thoughts, Jonathan Couch, a Victorian naturalist from Polperro in Cornwall described mackerel as: ‘an ever wandering race, which in addition to the habit of periodic movement, are ever led by impulse to be continually shifting their ground and thus render the pursuit after them one of the most uncertain that can be imagined.’

Lets hope that when the fisherman of Iceland and The Faroe Islands pull up their nets empty it is because the mackerel have shifted their ground again and not because they have gone altogether.

Finally I was stood at the bar in Arundel’s one evening drinking a pint and trying to follow the conversation of the men sat in the corner. The talk was so fast and the accents so thick the only word I could make out was the oft repeated “feck” every time a point had to be made, which was often.

There was a taciturn looking man with a black beard stood next to me. He turned to face me and asked, ‘Can you follow them talking?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said.

‘You were out fishing this afternoon did you get anything?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said again.

‘Well there’s nothing so scarce as mackerel when they are not there. You can go anywhere to fish for them but if they are not in the water you’ll not get a thing. And they go sometimes in the summer. Most years there will be a week in August and there will be no-one who will catch a thing. But then the shrimp start to come at the end of the month and the fish come back. Just following their stomachs they are. Greedy feks.’

We both stared down at our pints for a minute before he continued.

‘But when they are back in August you can fish for them through to November if you want them. Most men I know have had their fill by then. But if you want there will be plenty there. Come November they are big as well, all that food, but then there’ll come day and they will be gone off to the dark waters to sleep of their food before they come back in the Spring. Now I heard that one of Napoleon’s generals found where they go in the winter. He was sailing off Greenland and they came near these shallow waters and there was a strange shimmer in the mud. Well his men got out and they waded through the waters and that colour in the water was mackerel tails and they had buried their heads in the mud. Do you believe that?’

He poked me with a thick finger and then shook my hand. ‘Look I’ll get you a pint. Mary can you get Ralph a pint.’ He pushed handful of change across the bar as Mary started to pour.

‘There’s nothing to that of course, that story, but they go to deep waters in the Winter and they’ll be back again when its warm. And when you are catching them and they’re thick in the water you’ll always have too many of them.’

Mary put the two pints in front of us and took the change from the bar. We picked up our glasses and drank at the black liquid and we thought about mackerel

Last night five of us went to Gallagher’s Cheese Night. What a great way to spend a Sunday evening after having eaten the chicken with harissa sauce.

The pub was busier than it had been on Friday evening although there were a few familiar faces. The Oracle was finished so instead we went for The Hawkshead Brewery Windermere Pale. This was a blonde pale ale perfect for supping on a Sunday evening with work the following day at 3.5%. So we sat at a table, some of clutching our blocks of cheese, not really sure what was happening. There was a table laid out with crackers and chutney but no sign of any cheese. It didn’t matter too much as we had our pints to sip and there was chat to be had. We put the cheese on the table and waited for events.

Eventually Frank Gallagher came over and tapped us on the shoulder and suggested we take our cheese to the kitchen. The kitchen was a small room beyond the barbers and there there were two ladies laying out great platters of cheese. They asked me what we had brought. There was some Manchego from Kevin so that was easy but my cheese was not so straight forward. Shortly before Christmas Steve had given me four great lumps of Swiss cheese. If he had told me what they were I had forgotten. We have been eating through them slowly and they are all very nice. I had taken a hunk of one with me for the evening but all I could say when asked “What cheese it is?” was “I have no idea but I know that its Swiss.” So it was labelled Ralph’s Swiss Cheese.

There twenty five cheese in all spread out on wooden platters and all labelled. They were placed on the table next to the crackers and chutney and we were invited to dive in. We were also to take note of what we were eating so marks could be given at the end of the evening.

There were goats cheeses, Red Leicester, various cheddars, Garstang Blue,a creamy crumbly Lancashire and various flavoured cheeses including one with horseradish which I was somewhat indifferent about. I gave as my winner the Lancashire but this was before I had one of the Cheddars which was my favourite. It was strong and salty.

John had kindly brought a jar of pickled eggs to share. These were placed in the middle of the table. I could only manage to look at them.

There were too many cheeses to try them all but what we did eat soaked up the Windermere Pale perfectly so there not too many nightmares. I will be back to Gallagher’s soon.

Back at home I was just in time to watch the last hour of The Bourne Ultimatum before bed!