The curtains were closed again in the pub but this evening the men had been cheered by a change in the weather. It had started to rain rain the previous night and had continued through the day. It was a thick heavy rain that came down in sheets. It scoured the loose earth from the hills and ran down to the sea turning the water a dirty brown. The streams ran full and the roads were slick with it.

The men had walked through it to get to the pub and their coats and hats were piled up in a chair. It was warm in the pub and with the wet brought in by the men there was a heavy fug in the air. It smelt of the rain, the moisture coming off the coats and the heat rising from the men and their jumpers as they sat in their corner.

There were eight of them again. The man with the black beard was stood by the bar and in front of him was a silver bucket filled with a dozen mackerel. They were large, heavy and sleek. Their colours took off from the metal and the sharp light overheard, grey, silver, blue and green and then as the eye passed over them pink and yellow.

The men sat round the table were talking and their faces bent in to each other the talk bubbling through them. No-one mentioned the mackerel but they all knew they were there. They acted as a quiet reproach to the talk that had gone on the night before.

A man could catch mackerel in February al that you needed was a desire to be at them and the right piece of sparkle on your hook.

‘So was it wet out there?’ Tom Cronin asked him.

‘Feck you know it was wet. If it is raining here on the ground it will be raining out there on the water and on the water the rain has further to fall so it comes down harder. You know that as I do. But if you are in the boat what difference does some rain make. So long as you don’t fall in you’re as wet out of the water as in. But you will be wanting to know where and how I went about catching them.’

‘You have to look at the water in the rain and see how it flattens out and goes straight. I think the fish like the sound of it. I looked out over the boat and I could see them there in the water rising up as if the rain was food from the sky. There were hundreds of them out there. There was no quickness about them and it was if they were rising to the surface to be close to the sound of the water.’

‘I put my line in the water there, just feather and hooks, and I could drag it through the water through where they sat and there was not one fish that would have a go at it. They were big fish, big like those in the bucket but they were not wanting to take a bite. So I let the line drag in the water and and I looked about me for something I could put on a hook to catch their eye.’

‘When you are out there on the water like that there is feck all in your pockets that is going to help. I had some coins and an old bottle top that had been in there for a month and nothing else. There wasn’t much to be catching fish with with that.’

He grinned then. ‘ A mackerel when its mind is set to it will eat anything but if the fish isn’t hungry then there is no persuading it. These fish weren’t hungry and they weren’t going to be caught by the flash of some silver in the water. Watching the hooks and the feathers it was almost as if the fishes were blind and nothing was catching their eye. So I pulled out the hooks and cut off the feathers and then rubbed each hook through something that smelt.’

‘I’m not going to stand here now and tell you what it was. But you know that a mackerel’s nose is as quick as its eye and if there is something there to catch at them they’ll bite even if there is no silver in the water.’

He looked down into the bucket. ‘These fish they smelt and they got caught. You can help yourselves if you want. They’ll all be good to eat even if it is only February.’

Some of us went to see John Grant last night.

Have I mentioned John Grant before? He used to be in a band called The Czars. They released three or four albums of bruised brilliant music before splitting up amidst the usual recriminations. Three years ago he re-surfaced with the help of Midlake and produced the album of 2010 in The Queen of Denmark. It was more bruised music overlaid with lush 1970’s soft rock.

I saw him play at the Latitude Festival that year. It was early/mid-Saturday afternoon and I was relaxed with my beer. He was on the big stage with a small band in front of a vast empty field. Later that summer he played in a small club in Liverpool and we missed it because we were in Ireland. But Kevin went and he still has on his phone a short video of John Grant singing Chicken Bones with the audience helping out with the words.

September 2011 we say him play in Halifax Minster. There was good beer again. He played a few new songs that evening and notwithstanding all the swearing the music suited the vaulted ceiling of the Minster.

So we saw him last playing in Liverpool at The East Village Arts Club. The last time I had been inside the building it was called The Masque and we were there to see Ella Guru. There were probably only a hundred people there.

It was a lot busier last night. The place had been given a paint job. It must be an old theatre with steep tiers for standing rising up from the stage. There were about three or four hundred people there and with the heat the walls were perspiring.

Given the somewhat conflicted nature of some his music the audience was made up of all sorts although there was a preponderance of the usual men of a certain age with beards.

I had read that some of the more out there electronic music was putting people off but that didn’t happen last night and when the big beats kicked in and the lasers the place started to get the feeling of a large club.

There were a number of highlights including all the different people singing along to the chorus of GMF. But for the swearing you could imagine the song taking on a life like Everyone Hurts and being played at funerals. Maybe it does anyway. I hope so.

Lunch today was pitta stuffed with lamb, cucumber, green chilli, tomatoes and yogurt listening to more John Grant the kids singing along.

There is nothing like some Biblical weather to scare the cats. The morning started off badly with a queer pink sky that seemed to be made up from a light reflecting back up off the ground into grey clouds.

`halfway through the morning I could see it starting to rain and a wind started to whip up. I tried to go out over lunch and was beaten back inside by thick heavy rain that tried to soak down into the skin.

The weather seemed to ease off this evening until about 10.30 when there was a flash of lightening that took the kitchen by surprise. The cats had been supine up till then on the kitchen floor enjoying our inability to work out the controls on the underfloor heating. As the thunder cracked they were up and about one of them hiding down in a cupboard behind a pile of plates.

I opened a door to listen. I could hear the wind quickening through the trees and then the sound of rain against the trees drawing closer in a rush of sound until it was down upon. This was a deluge and I found myself walking through the house checking for leaks.

Earlier in the evening I ate the last of the food from The Farmers Market – two lamb steak from Wales. I cooked them in a frying pan with a dash of cayenne pepper and ate them with fried potatoes and rocket. They were giving and delicious.

We had more of the remains of the large chicken this evening as promised in a Vietnamese stir fry with Nuoc Cham.

Nuoc Cham is a hot pungent bright red sauce made with red chillies and garlic pounded with sea salt to a paste in a heavy pestle and mortar. The recipe suggested taking the seeds out of the chillies but as it was only going to be me who would be eating the sauce there didn’t seem much point. Once the chillies and garlic were ground down to a rough paste I stirred in some lime juice, caster sugar and fish sauce. That was put to oner side.

rice was cooked in some of the chicken stock I made on Sunday evening. I put with the water as it came to the boil a large chunk of ginger and a stick of lemon grass. These were fished out once the rice was cooked and a lid was put on so it could steam gently in on itself.

For the sir fry I heat oil in the bottom of the wok. I then threw in a finely sliced onion and some cooked green beans and cooked them on a high heat until the onion was on the cusp of browning. I then added the chicken and gave that a few minutes on the high heat.

By now it was time to start shouting at kids to clear the table and get out the forks and plates and whilst they were at it fetch me a beer from the basement.

Once the chicken was cooked through I stirred in the rice with some sliced spring onion and mint leaves.

The stir fry was then piled into bowls and eaten with forks. I ate mine slathered in spoonfuls of the red Nuoc Cham.

The recipe came from Diane Henry’s Food from Plenty. I must cook some more Vietnamese food. I really enjoy the pungent with the hot and the sweet and the sour.