Lunch today was a tomato soup made very quickly.

Writing this early evening the day seems to have spent rushing to places in the car listening to Thee Oh Sees but half having in mind the scene towards the end of Goodfellas as Henry drives round manically with a police helicopter following him and a raft of good music overhead.

The ingredients were bought from the greengrocers. Four bags of plum tomatoes at 99 p each, an aubergine, garlic and onions.

I put together in about ten minutes before having to rush out again. Large pan on the oven and heat olive oil Slice an large onion roughly and through in. Try not to let it burn. Squash garlic and throw in. give it all a good stir. Chop up the aubergine and throw in. Now take some cumin seeds and crush them to a powder and throw those in as well.

This will all take about seven minutes. If it has been hot enough the onions should have started to soften and iof you have been quick enough to stir hopefully they won’t have burnt.

I didn’t have time to chop the tomatoes so I just ripped open the bag and threw them in as well and then slashed at them with a sharp knife to start releasing their juices. A large bunch of parsley was then added and left it all for an hour.

By the time I came back it had all cooked down to a pulp.

I put it through a fine sieve and we ate it with sour dough bread from the greengrocer.

Did you hear about the feckin’ idiot they started to call Jack Mackerel last summer. He came here for his two weeks and he had determined to catch some fish. He had the small house there round the point and he and his family were there. There was a boat with the house that was tied up to a buoy at the end there with some oars and after a day or so watching boats from the pier come back with their buckets of mackerel this man settled on catching some of the fish himself.

He had a family there with him and they weren’t wanting to go out and catch fish. They wanted the sun to shine and to be on the sand on a beach making castles. But this man wasn’t having any of that. I think he was afraid of enjoying himself.

He took himself down to Wiseman’s in Durrus and he bought himself what he would need. A bright new clean orange line, some hooks and feathers and a weight. He took all that back to the house and tied it all together with the best knots he could. He then clambered out to the boat and got it off the buoy and took himself out in the water.

He came in here later to complain on what a fool he’d been because he’d thrown the line over with a great lead weight and it pulled so hard on the line it unravelled his knots and the hooks and the feathers went straight to the bottom before he had a chance to feel the weight of the feckin’ thing. They’ll be lying there still and there will be good mackerel that get caught on those hooks.

But that didn’t stop him. He was back in Wiseman’s and this time he doubled up on the hooks and weights that he bought in case he lost them again. He tied better knots and he went out on the boat again and he didn’t get far before he threw the line over and he sat back and waited. He didn’t pull in the line but just left it lying in the water and he got lucky then because after a minute or two the line started to twitch and he hauled it in quickly and he had two bright mackerel in the bottom of his boat.

Of course he had nothing to hit them with so he took himself back to buoy and he wrapped the two fish in his shirt so as not to lose them back to the sea and he carried them back to the house to show his family and they ate them that evening.

Well after that he was hooked as hard as a mackerel and he was out there every day to try and catch some more. His family would go off and leave him and after a few days there would be shouting but he would row his boat out and throw the line and wait and for the next seven days he would catch feckin’ feck all. And the longer he caught nothing the longer he would be out there and there would be more shouting from the house as he left in the morning. He promised them their tea one of the days and there was feck to eat in the house so his children only had bread and butter to eat that night.

After those seven days he came down here for a pint. His family came in as well and they sat there in the corner by the fire and the man stood by the bar here to talk. He looked out of the window and could see the sweep of the bay and his boat on its buoy and and the place where he took out his boat and caught no fish.

Tom Cutter was sat in his seat under the bar and he looked up the man. The man’s face was red and hot with the days that he’d been out on the water with the sun beating down.

‘Have you caught many fish?’ Tom Cutter asked him. He said it so fast that the man didn’t catch the words at first and he had to ask Tom Cutter to say them again two times before he had them and when he caught them the man thought of the men who had been stood at the bar here watching him catch no fish and so he laughed about it and said that he caught two fish his first day out and nothing since.

Tom Cutter spoke slowly now. ‘That boat is a small one but if you want to catch mackerel you need to take it further out to the bay round the point beyond where you can see from here. It will take you an hour to pull the boat out there but if you pull beyond Reenmore you can see Kilcrohane Castle with all its windows knocked in and there is a channel there where the fish gather. Line your boat up so you can see green grass through the windows of the castle and the green grass beyond and at the same time you need to be able to see the red door of the house that sits at the end Reenmore. Put you boat there and lay out your line and you’ll catch mackerel there. But take a big bucket to put the fish in and a stick to knock them on the back of the head.’

The man he went back to his family to tell them about the talk that he’d had at the bar.

He left going out in his boat again for a few days but then we were stood here one evening and we saw him at the oars of his boat pulling it back from Reenmore Point. He had been out all day and his wife had been here earlier worried about him being out so long. Tom Cutter went out for the wife in his big boat and it took him tem minutes to find him and he he rowed himself to the point off the Castle. It had taken him two hours to get there and Tom Cutter told him he was an idiot for the mackerel to go out there in a boat with only oars. But the man waved Tom Cutter away and shouted back that he was catching the fish and he was okay.

So we watched him row back and tie his boat up at the buoy. He was tired and his shoulders were let down with the effort.

He came back up here again with his family and he had a great silver bucket of the fish with him. He’d caught 40 he said and each time his line had gone in it had trembled again and there was more of the fish in the bottom of his boat. He’d caught two big pollock as well. He’d gutted them all and his hands were still dark with the stain of their blood and white specks of dried scales were mixed with the salt on his arms.

‘We go home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We can’t eat all these so please help yourselves.’

He had some bags with him and he put the fish in and passed them round. There wasn’t a man that refused him.

Tom Cutter told him he was an feckin’ idiot again for taking that small boat out so far and then he bought him a pint to go with his first. The family moved away from their corner and they sat with the man at the bar and Tom Cutter bought them a drink as well and the man he bought some more drinks before making his way with his family back to their house.

And after he’d gone someone asked if anyone knew his name and where he came from. We all shook our heads and Tom Cutter said we should call him Jack Mackerel for his devotion to catching the fish.

Here is someone else writing a story about mackerel. It is good to read that the blathering is not restricted to this blog and was going on a hundred years or so ago when the story was written and that someone else’s eye has been caught by the spinning silver of the fish. I would put it down to ardent spirits.

The angler is a mighty spinner of yarns, but no sooner does he set
about the telling than I, knowing him of old, and accounting him not an
uncommon but an unconscionable liar, begin (as Bacon hath it) “to droop
and languish.” Nor does the languishing end with the story if I am
compelled to sit it out, for in that state I continue for some hours
after. But oh! the difference when someone who is not an angler relates
a fishing adventure! A plain truthful man who never dined at an
anglers’ club, nor knows that he who catches, or tries to catch a fish,
must tell you something to astonish and fill you with envy and
admiration. To a person of this description I am all attention, and
however prosaic and even dull the narrative may be, it fills me with
delight, and sends me happy to bed and (still chuckling) to a
refreshing sleep.

Accordingly, when one of the “commercials” in the coffee-room of the
Plymouth Hotel began to tell a wonderful story of a mackerel he once
caught a very long time back, I immediately put down my pen so as to
listen with all my ears. For he was about the last person one would
have thought of associating with fish-catching–an exceedingly towny-
looking person indeed, one who from his conversation appeared to know
nothing outside of his business. He was past middle age–oldish-looking
for a traveller–his iron-grey hair brushed well up to hide the
baldness on top, disclosing a pair of large ears which stood out like
handles; a hatchet face with parchment skin, antique side whiskers, and
gold-rimmed glasses on his large beaky nose. He wore the whitest linen
and blackest, glossiest broadcloth, a big black cravat, diamond stud in
his shirt-front in the old fashion, and a heavy gold chain with a spade
guinea attached. His get-up and general appearance, though ancient, or
at all events mid-Victorian, proclaimed him a person of considerable
importance in his vocation.

He had, he told us at starting, a very good customer at Bristol,
perhaps the best he ever had, at any rate the one who had stuck longest
to him, since what he was telling us happened about the year 1870. He
went to Bristol expressly to see this man, expecting to get a good
order from him, but when he arrived and saw the wife, and asked for her
husband, she replied that he was away on his holiday with the two
little boys. It was a great disappointment, for, of course, he couldn’t
get an order from her. Confound the woman! she was always against him;
what she would have liked was to have half a dozen travellers dangling
about her, so as to pit one against another and distribute the orders
among them just as flirty females distribute their smiles, instead of
putting trust in one.

Where had her husband gone for his holiday? he asked; she said Weymouth
and then was sorry she had let it out. But she refused to give the
address. “No, no,” she said; “he’s gone to enjoy himself, and mustn’t
be reminded of business till he gets back.”

However, he resolved to follow him to Weymouth on the chance of finding
him there, and accordingly took the next train to that place. And, he
added, it was lucky for him that he did so, for he very soon found him
with his boys on the front, and, in spite of what she said, it was not
with this man as it was with so many others who refuse to do business
when away from the shop. On the contrary, at Weymouth he secured the
best order this man had given him up to that time; and it was because
he was away from his wife, who had always contrived to be present at
their business meetings, and was very interfering, and made her husband
too cautious in buying.

It was early in the day when this business was finished. “And now,”
said the man from Bristol, who was in a sort of gay holiday mood, “what
are you going to do with yourself for the rest of the day?”

He answered that he was going to take the next train back to London. He
had finished with Weymouth–there was no other customer there.

Here he digressed to tell us that he was a beginner at that time at the
salary of a pound a week and fifteen shillings a day for travelling
expenses. He thought this a great thing at first; when he heard what he
was to get he walked about on air all day long, repeating to himself,
“Fifteen shillings a day for expenses!” It was incredible; he had been
poor, earning about five shillings a week, and now he had suddenly come
into this splendid fortune. It wouldn’t be much for him now! He began
by spending recklessly; and in a short time discovered that the fifteen
shillings didn’t go far; now he had come to his senses and had to
practise a rigid economy. Accordingly, he thought he would save the
cost of a night’s lodging and go back to town. But the Bristol man was
anxious to keep him and said he had hired a man and boat to go fishing
with the boys,–why couldn’t he just engage a bedroom for the night and
spend the afternoon with them?

After some demur he consented, and took his bag to a modest Temperance
Hotel, where he secured a room, and then, protesting he had never
caught a fish or seen one caught in his life, he got into the boat, and
was taken into the bay where he was to have his first and only
experience of fishing. Perhaps it was no great thing, but it gave him
something to remember all his life. After a while his line began to
tremble and move about in an extraordinary way with sudden little tugs
which were quite startling, and on pulling it in he found he had a
mackerel on his hook. He managed to get it into the boat all right and
was delighted at his good luck, and still more at the sight of the
fish, shining like silver and showing the most beautiful colours. He
had never seen anything so beautiful in his life! Later, the same thing
happened again with the line and a second mackerel was caught, and
altogether he caught three. His friend also caught a few, and after a
most pleasant and exciting afternoon they returned to the town well
pleased with their sport. His friend wanted him to take a share of the
catch, and after a little persuasion he consented to take one, and he
selected the one he had caught first, just because it was the first
fish he had ever caught in his life, and it had looked more beautiful
than any other, so would probably taste better.

Going back to the hotel he called the maid and told her he had brought
in a mackerel which he had caught for his tea, and ordered her to have
it prepared. He had it boiled and enjoyed it very much, but on the
following morning when the bill was brought to him he found that he had
been charged two shillings for fish.

“Why, what does this item mean?” he exclaimed. “I’ve had no fish in
this hotel except a mackerel which I caught myself and brought back for
my tea, and now I’m asked to pay two shillings for it? Just take the
bill back to your mistress and tell her the fish was mine–I caught it
myself in the Bay yesterday afternoon.”

The girl took it up, and by-and-by returned and said her mistress had
consented to take threepence off the bill as he had provided the fish
himself.

“No,” he said, indignantly, “I’ll have nothing off the bill, I’ll pay
the full amount,” and pay it he did in his anger, then went off to say
goodbye to his friend, to whom he related the case.

His friend, being in the same hilarious humour as on the previous day,
burst out laughing and made a good deal of fun over the matter.

That, he said, was the whole story of how he went fishing and caught a
mackerel, and what came of it. But it was not quite all, for he went on
to tell us that he still visited Bristol regularly to receive big and
ever bigger orders from that same old customer of his, whose business
had gone on increasing ever since; and invariably after finishing their
business his friend remarks in a casual sort of way: “By the way, old
man, do you remember that mackerel you caught at Weymouth which you had
for tea, and were charged two shillings for?” “Then he laughs just as
heartily as if it had only happened yesterday, and I leave him in a
good humour, and say to myself: ‘Now, I’ll hear no more about that
blessed mackerel till I go round to Bristol again in three months’
time.'”

“How long ago did you say it was since you caught the mackerel?” I
inquired.

“About forty years.”

“Then,” I said, “it was a very lucky fish for you–worth more perhaps
than if a big diamond had been found in its belly. The man had got his
joke–the one joke of his life perhaps–and was determined to stick to
it, and that kept him faithful to you in spite of his wife’s wish to
distribute their orders among a lot of travellers.”

He replied that I was perhaps right and that it had turned out a lucky
fish for him. But his old customer, though his business was big, was
not so important to him now when he had big customers in most of the
large towns in England, and he thought it rather ridiculous to keep up
that joke so many years.

Last night we had spare ribs.

There were two packs going cheap in the supermarket so I picked them. I emptied the ribs into a large metal roasting dish and settled on what to slather them with.

I started with chilli sauce and then some more chilli sauce, but a different kind, soy sauce, Worcester Sauce, tomato ketchup, salt & pepper and a few good spoonfuls of honey. This was all mixed in so the ribs were covered.

At this point i needed time. time to put them away for a few hours or even overnight to let the flavours soak in and then time to put them in a low slow oven to cook until tender.

But there was a boy to be fed and it was early evening so time I did not have.

They were thrown into a hot oven and I gave them a cooked turn every 20 minutes.

They were done in an hour if not slightly over done and charred at the edges.

We ate them with greasy fingers pulling at the meat with our teeth.