It has been a strange day today. Out shopping this morning the sky was blue and clear and it was warm in the sun as I walked through Birkenhead to pick up some fish from Wards. Back over lunch the sky turned grey and dirty and then black for a ten minute burst of torrential rain and hail which seemed to hurl itself against the windows in the kitchen and it came down so thick for a while you could hardly see through.

Lunch was the remains of some pork I cooked for myself last night. The recipe came from one of the Moro cookbooks.

A pork fillet sliced, and then each piece flattened and marinaded in garlic, oil, sweet red wine vinegar and some paprika. In the meantime I cooked some chunks of onion (sliced across the grain) and fennel until they had softened and started to brown at the edges.

The onion and fennel were taken out of the pan, the heat turned up whilst I flash fried the pieces of pork. As they cooked I stirred the onions back in and poured a glass of white wine over the lot and let it cook through for a few minutes.

I ate it with some small pieces of potato that had been roasted in pig fat. One of the girls said how pretty it all looked on the plate.

This afternoon I took a look at the sea over the sea wall in Moreton. It was high tide and the water was up to the base of the wall, waves being whipped up and the wind so fierce it almost blew off my glasses.

Sat here now listening to an old LP of Richard Burton reading the poems of Dylan Thomas. Needless to say the kids are complaining!