Saturday morning started with a trip to the butchers at the back of The international store to get some lamb chops for the barbecue this evening. He was chopping up chickens when I got there with a great cleaver cum machete. It was about eighteen inches long and two inches deep. He held the pies of chicken carefully bringing the knife down in a powerful sweep the noise from which thudded through the shop. The chicken was cut up bones in all into pieces about an inch square and put into a bag hr marked £10.00 exactly.

When I asked for my chops he went into the walk in fridge and came out with what appeared to be a whole lamb. With another finer knife he started to take this apart. Peeling apart the breast, cutting round the shoulders until he held two racks of chops. He took these to the vertical electrical and ran them through before asking me how many I wanted. I winced for his fingers.

They are now all marinaded in olive oil, garlic and ground cumin.

I also bought my first box of Alphonso Mangoes. I have just lifted the lid to take in the deep honey smell of them. They almost smell too good to eat.

After that it was the grocers for fennel, onions, peppers, aubergine, coriander, dill, tomatoes, apples and bananas. `enough food to keep us going for about 24 hours.

From Ward’s I bought a squid and a bag of prawns.

There is nothing but blue sky this afternoon and I have already lit a small barbercue. Three aubergines are on there now slowly blackening and softening. Peppers will go on next and then onions and tomatoes to make a sort of roasted veg ratatouille.

Listening to the new National album with little bits of Josh Rouse inbetween. We went to see Josh Rouse on Thursday night in Leaf on Bold Street. The support was a bloke called Sean Rowe. He had a beard that is better than mine and a voice that was deep enough to mine coal from. He was very good.

Josh Rouse looked slightly too pleased with himself but then you can’t really blame him specially when he played a large part of the excellent 1972. We will be listening to more of that tonight.