It is a while since I have spent a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen cooking and listening to loud music. These days are usually done best with a bit of planning. The morning spent on a trawl to Wards for fish, Edges for meat the grocers and The International Store for the rest of the food. There will be a plan in mind and having got my ingredients I will more or less know what I am doing. There might even be lists involved.

Having got lunch out of the way it will be time to start. Hopefully at this point the rest of the family will have dispersed and I will be alone for an hour or two. Time to indulge in one of the few decisions I made all by myself when we built our new kitchen – speakers in the ceiling. There are two of them positioned over that small zone between the oven and the chopping board. Perfectly positioned to deliver total volume as I am cooking.

Somewhere I have lined up a long piece on the music we should listen to as we are cooking and the risks involved. Playing air guitar with a sharp knife can give a whole new meaning to sticky fingers and getting carried away playing air drums (it can be done) with a pair of wooden spoons just makes you look silly.

Anyway this year I have tried to be more parsimonious with the buying of new music but there are already a few good candidates that should speed along the cooking. Top of the list so far will probably be the new Nick Cave album and in particular Higgs Boson Blues which this afternoon had me adopting guitar hero moves at loud volume in the front room to be caught by the eye of a member of the Merseyside Police delivering home safety leaflets through the front door. Nick Cave would then be followed by Matthew E White and his take on blue eyed blissed out soul – sounding like a bastard child of Plush and Spiritulised. The next two on the list are also on Jagjaguwar and are Foxygen and Unknown Mortal Orchestra – all weird skewed guitar ridden pop – the world needs more of this sort of thing.

I am looking forward to that Saturday afternoon.

A brief aside – as I write this the rest of the family are sat elsewhere watching old episodes of Sex & the City, younger daughter closing her eyes and blocking her ears at the nasty bits.