It was over cast and wet at The Secret Gardens of Oxton and I had forgotten my camera so you are spared the pictures of Morris Dancing. Someone kindly pointed out that most of them had beards not dissimilar to mine. Like any man I like to carry and occasionally wave a big stick but should you ever catch me attaching bells to it and my knees then please wrap me up in straitjacket and have me taken away.

For those who don’t know The Secret Gardens in a Sunday in May when 25/30 gardens in Oxton village open themselves up to the public. This provides an excellent opportunity to nose. It is not often that you can walk into a total strangers back garden, pad across their lawn and get to see what they are doing with their veg patch and, more importantly, what papers have they got lying across the kitchen table. Because most of the kitchens look out over the garden. And if it is not a kitchen there will be a nice summer room to be looked into.

People must spend months getting their garden ready for the big day but you suspect that with some of the houses almost as much thought goes into what can be left lying around to send out the right message to all those strangers peering in.

The other small pernicious pleasure is spotted the odd clump of ground elder which tells me that someone else is spending as much time as I do in trying to keep the stuff at bay.

This year I only had time time for a couple of gardens along Victoria Mount. I came back jealous at the size of their greenhouses and the neat and ordered raised beds in their veg gardens.

There was nothing to be done in our garden as the rain came down and revision fever continued inside.

It is always going to be difficult to resist a packet of rook’s breast once spotted. They are only available for a short six week season around May. It is only the breast that is eaten and they are either shot or plucked from a nest by someone intrepid enough to climb up a tree and into the depths of a rookery to do it.

To go with them I bought a good piece of bread and a bag of mixed salad. I made a dressing for the salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some hot red currant sauce I found in the back of the frisge. The red currant sauce looked like it had been there some some time and was hard with sugar crystals.

The rook breasts took as long to took as it took me to mix the dressing into the salad and arrange it on a plate and then slice the bread into thick chunks. There were six breasts and I seasoned them lightly with salt and pepper and turned them once. Once cooked I put them on to of the salad and breads and poured over the remaining juices in the pan.

They were not dissimilar to pigeon breast although perhaps not as livery. I will certainly have them again.

I was alone as I ate them listening to the New Zealand dream pop of The Phoenix Foundation.

‘Feck but mackerel are a bastard fish. There’s no telling if they’re in the water or not. If they’re not coming out then there is feck all to do but pack your boat and go home but if they are there then there’s no stopping them coming and the bottom of your boat will be thick with them.’

‘And there is no feckin’ point writing a book on them. What are you going to do with the paper? Take it out on the water with you so the pages get damp as soon as you open the thing. Who here is going to stay at home, sit up in their bed and read a book about mackerel. You could do better and write a book about the world. You’ll have more to say and the more that you have to say the more people will read it.’

‘Give me the pile of paper and I’ll read it for you and tell you straight down the middle what you’ve got wrong and there will be some of that because you’re not going to get everything right about a fish. I’ll say a dead fish is like the book you’re trying to put together, slippery and gone just when you want it.’

‘Give it to me and I’ll read it and put the whole feckin’ thing back to bed.’

Well we are onto Thursday and it has been a strange week so far. Work doesn’t really impinge into these posts it but has been hovering in the back ground more than normal over the last few days. We’ll have to see what the next week or so brings.

In the meantime I am still spending time staring at my book about mackerel and thinking about defenestration. There is a temptation to try a bit of cut up technique at it and throw all the pages up in the air and see how they land before putting them back together. It needs a new beginning, middle and end and I am not sure if having the man with the black beard whispering in my ear as I go through it is going to help or hinder the process. Thoughts anyone?

In the meantime Galen and I went for a change and ate from Delifonseca for our late tea. I had to spend the early part of the evening shuffling through a parents evening becoming increasing embarrassed  as seemingly endless praise was heaped on younger daughter. Most of the teachers gave the impression that this was the child they always wanted and one of them even muttered about adoption.I was congratulated on having done such a good job and was obliged to point out that I always took the view that a ‘hands off’ approach was best and that it was nothing to do with me.

Delefonseca provided a small piece of pancetta, three chorizo sausages and a glass jar of lentils. These were all cooked together in olive oil with a piece of onion and carrot. It did for us both.

After we ate Galen had a shower and I pranced round the kitchen playing slide guitar on a wooden spoon to Duane Allman. Is there a time when a man should get too old for that sort of thing?