Another Friday night and looking forward to spending my Saturday helping to prepare for an 18th birthday party in the basement. the last time there was a party my Guinness toucan got stolen and was pictured on Facebook before being returned on to the door step the following day. A bottle of Marie Brizard anisette was not so lucky and was found empty on the floor. I had bought for the sole purpose of making an Elizabeth David recipe for a sauce to go with boiled lobster so I still hope that whoever drank it spent a long time in the land of regret. It has taken two years but I am now able to be philosophical about it.

Over lunch there was a quick trip to Lunya to buy some ingredients for supper this evening. We will start in a few minutes with a plates of Padron peppers and tinned Don Reinaldo smoked mackerel. I will try put out my mind the thought that the mackerel will have been sucked out of the water somewhere off Iceland as part of the the mackerel wars.

We will follow all that with a great dish of sausages cooked in fat from the ox’s heart with cider and lentils. They are all cooking slowly on the oven and should be ready in about 20 minutes. I will be off soon to find a good bottle of Spanish red to go with the.

In the meantime I should mention that when I got into the car to go home I switched the ipod to shuffle and the first song to come up was Lady Day by Rod Stewart. Well you don’t get better than Rod back in the day when he was good. After that I had The Flaming Lips followed by electrlane. So I had a shiteating grin going through the tunnel. Given the good food I will be giving over the listening for the rest of the evening to Rod when was good. Listening to him now sing I would rather go blind.

So after the post earlier in the week on dredging for scallops Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was on Channel 4 this evening talking about the exact same subject although he was talking about the seas around the Isle of Mann rather than the Western Isles. I thought he did very well diving amongst scallops the size of a good dinner plate without taking one back up to the surface for dinner

His recreation of a sea floor full on a life on the beach at Weston-super-Mare was effective especially when the tractors came to drag their gear over it demonstrate the sort of destruction that goes on hidden under the sea’s surface.

We are hopefully going to Ahakista for Easter (so long as kids can be persuaded that 5 days watching the rain come down with no internet will not be boring). We should be therein time for the end of the scallop season and if I am able to buy some from Tommy I will ask him about the fishing for them in the bay.

I can remember years ago being in Arundel’s one afternoon years ago. Mary was behind the bar and there was a man in there having a cooling pint of lager. He had come in a black van which was parked at an angle outside the pub. He was probably performing some errand further up the peninsula and he had called in to cool himself down for a while and to talk. He had a sharp quick voice and I had to concentrate to keep up.

For some reason the talk turned to scallops, the winter season for them and how best to cook them.

Mary said,  ‘I like to cook them on an open fire. Wait ’til the flames have died down a bit and put them there amongst the ashes. Put them in curved side of the shell down. They’ll open in the heat and the juices are lovely.’

The man left in his black van soon after. Mary said she had not seen him before.

Late last night all I could post was a description of being out mackerel fishing by Peter Anson. I have picked up a couple of books by him in odd second hand book shops over the years. He writes about fishing and fishing men but the great joy of his books are the illustrations. Careful line drawings of boats and the men who sail in them.

He was the son of a rear admiral and became a monk. He lived his live trying to balance a love for the sea and a love for the church. He is perhaps more famous for his drawings of churches and their interiors but it is his books on the sea that I enjoy. There is intricate detail in his drawing of the rope and line, each in its place, the tied engines for an old sailing boat.

It is always good to have something in mind when you go into a second book shop. On the moment I keep my eyes open for the names Dorothy Hartley and Peter F. Anson.

“Look to your lee’ard line!” he cried. “They’re up for it!”

He hauled a mackerel aboard, and, catching hold of the shank of the hook, flicked the fish into the bottom of the boat with one and the same motion that flung the side overboard again; and after it the lead. Wedging the mackerel’s head between his knees, he bent its body to a curve, scraped off the scales near its tail, and cut a fresh lask from the living fish. He is tender-hearted by nature, but now: “That’ll hae ‘em!” he crowed

The mackerel bit hotly at our new bait.

Before the lines were properly out, in they had to come again, flop-flop went the fish on the bottom boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the bottom boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour, its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died and stiffened.

Suddenly the fish stopped biting, perhaps because the rising sun was shining into the water. The wind dropped without warning, as southerly winds will do in the early morning if they don’t come on to blow a good deal later. The Cock Robin wallowed again on the water. “We’m done,” said Tony. “Let’s get in out o’ it in time for the early market. There ain’t no other boats out. Thees yer ought to fetch ‘leven-pence the dizzen. We’ve made these day gude in case nort else don’t turn up.’

Fishermen and Fishing Ways by Peter F. Anson

So ten days later the laptop has been restored and the cat is still alive.

I am not sure what the nice people in The Computer Clinic on London Road did for the £300 cash. For all I know they stuck it on a radiator for a few days and switched back the clock and left it that. But the screen is cleaner and it actually lights up when I turn it on so I should probably not ask too many questions. In the meantime I am keeping my glass of beer a respectful distance away and the kids are not being allowed anywhere near it.

On food I have been nibbling the ox’s heart and it is delicious.Having cooked it slowly for about five hours over Sunday afternoon I left it to cool down and then sliced it up and put it into a container in the fridge downstairs. I think that the quiet 24 hours did it good and now tastes like a good bit of cold roast beef (I had to pause there to nip downstairs to the basement for another small taste). I have a long journey on a train tomorrow with various work colleagues so I look forward to the expressions of horror that will no doubt follow when I produce my sandwiches.

I am sure that my friend with a black beard would enjoy them. Standing next to him he has finished telling me how a mackerel gets its black stripes. We have refilled our pints and it is quiet in the pub. Mary has gone through the doors into the kitchen and we are by ourselves. Without the presence of Mary it feels quieter and there is an unusual awkwardness about the room.

He breaks the quiet ‘ How many fish do you think are out there. Feck look at all that water it cannot be empty now. We do our bit of fishing now and then but you know we only itch, itch at them. We may get a few hundred or so but there are thousands down there Christ there must be millions to fill out all that water.’

‘As I have said if you fall amongst them they will eat you. I have heard of them pulling all the flesh and muscle from a man before his friends could pull him from the water and he was nothing but bones. But that was a long way from here.’

‘But you look on those men on the pier and you look at their boots. There was a time a fisherman would put some lead in his boots and couldn’t swim the quicker to be taken down to the bottom.’

‘But there was a man once. It may have Frank Hegarty’s uncle they say he got saved by the mackerel. They were so thick in the water and were churning it so that when he fell in they carried him back up again until he could be plucked in back into his boat. Now I can remember Frank’s uncle and he was a big feckin’ man but no amount of mackerel would keep him out of the sea. It was a night out in the pub that saved him and not the feckin’ fish.’