Music wise the Bank Holiday weekend has been dominated by the Duane Allman boxset Skydog that arrived in the post on Friday. There are only 10,000 copies and it is going for silly prices on Amazon. I was able to find it substantially cheaper on ebay. I put in a low bid and rather to my surprise three hours later it was mine. I got edition no. 21.

I first heard The Allman Brothers Band when my room mate, Neil, at Randolph Macon College played them on his cassette player. Randolph Macon is in Ashland, Virginia and I was there for five months to learn a little of the world before going to University proper back in England.

Neil must have been somewhat bemused to find himself sharing a room with someone from England and his strange musical taste. These were pre-Walkman days and I took over with me a bag of ten or so albums to keep me company. I was able to buy a cheap record player to play them on and even bought some more records whilst I was out there including Nuggets and a compilation  of songs from Ralph Records home of The Residents. I have no clear memory of the records I took with me but I suspect they will have included The Doors and Echo & the Bunnymen. I have horrible suspicion that there might have also been some Dire Straits.

Neil liked The Allman Brothers and he played them to me on his cassette player and I can remember the sound of the organ and Duane Allman’s slide guitar. I think it must have At Fillmore East the double live album which is probably their best record. Back home the record was in the racks of Penny Lane Records in Chester but I never got round to buying it.

I eventually bought it on CD and it has been a pleasure ever since. There is a lot of long hair, mutton chops, wailing guitar solos and songs that go on for twenty minutes or so. That doesn’t really do it justice. It is especially good to listen to whilst cooking when a wooden spoon or sharp knife can be brought into use as a piece of air guitar.

Duane Allman didn’t just play with The Allman Brothers and I picked up second hand two double album anthologies that attempted to bring together some of the other things that he played on with Wilson Pickett, Delaney & Bonnie, Lulu, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis to name but a few.

There is some duplication between those two anthologies and the Skydog collection but there is a whole lot of other stuff on Skydog as well including some of the stuff he did with Eric Clapton as Derek & Dominoes and hefty doses of The Allman Brothers Band.

A large part of the enjoyment is the sheer variety of music on offer, a treasure trove of southern r’nb and soul and every so often an Allman Brothers workout some of which do go on for for twenty minutes or so and cutting through it all the tight visceral sound of Duane Allman’s slide guitar.

All perfect music for opening the back doors kicking back in the sun and opening a cold bottle of beer.

It almost felt like the first day of summer so it seemed like a good day to light the barbecue.  When the sun came out it was hot enough to think about putting a pair of shorts on and getting out the flip flops.

I had bought a small leg of lamb yesterday so all that was needed was for me to butterfly it and give it a marinade of garlic, paprika and olive oil. The butterflying was easier than anticipated and was soon done with a sharp knife. It seemed a pity I could not find something to do with the bone.

To accompany the lamb we had some boiled new potatoes and the artichokes.

The artichokes were the highlight of the meal. I pulled off some of the tough outer leaves and pared back the hard skin on their stalks. The exposed flesh was then rubbed with a lemon quarter to stop it from colouring. The were steamed for about 40 minutes.

To eat them I peeled off the leaves sucking at the small nugget of flesh at the the bottom. As the leaves came off they became softer and easier to eat until all that was left could be be taken in a couple of bites.

I find it difficult to let more than a couple of weeks go by without a visit to Rightway. If you haven’t got one of their stores nearby you are missing out. Ostensibly they are a DIY shop but it is a lot more than that. It sells fireworks when you want them, enamel tins for making proper pies, odd pieces of garden equipment, a wide range of bird feeds and food, odd things you might need for a fire, proper metal coal scuttles and useful plastic boxes.

This afternoon I was after a plastic box. Whilst I was in there I picked up a pack of seed potatoes.

As I was paying a woman rushed in and picked something off a rack near the till and asked in a rush, ‘Does this glue anything?’ She had in her hand a tube of Superglue.

The assistant who wasn’t serving me looked at the woman. ‘More or less.,’ she said. ‘But it depends on what it is you are glueing/’

‘It’s tooth,’ The woman said. ‘The dentists are closed and I need to glue back a tooth.’

The assistant paused for a second.’ I’m not sure I would recommend it for that.’

So three excitements this morning.

The first was when the greengrocer Kazim gave me a kar of mango jam he had made from the recipe I had given him last week. He had added some of the blacks seeds from a cardamon pod for flavour. It it looks deep, sweet and tasty and will good on toast tomorrow morning after my kipper.

In the supermarket I was buying beer for myself including some bottles of Franziskaner Weissbier – 3 for £5.00 being too good to resist. I joined the queue at the checkout and lifted out my shopping to put on the black belt to the till. As I lifted one of the bottles out its cap caught on the metal side of the trolley and pulled off so a stream of foamy beer covered me and the floor. I held the bottle up in my hand as beer gushed out. The man in front of me turned and winked and tipped up his hand.

I was back in Birkenhead before lunch meeting Galen on his break from Wards. As I walked back home I passed the grocers again and noticed a tray of artichokes that I had not seen before. I bought four. We’ll have them for lunch tomorrow.

Of such things, I guess, are Saturday mornings made.