Have you ever thought to do the mathematics?

How many years have you been coming here now?

So that is fifteen summers you have been here and when you are here you are here for more than two weeks and in those fourteen days how many times are you out catching fish?

Feck there are days I’ve see you go out more than the once as if you are trying to catch up on yourself. And I know they are a fickle fish and you are not going to catch a few every time you go out but most times there will be at least one on the line.

So we can say that over your fourteen days you might be out there on at least seven of those days catching fish. So how many fish do you catch when you are catching them?

There will be times you are out there by yourself and you take twenty minutes to have forty of them in the bottom of the boat. And then there will other times and there are four or more of you in the boat, some of them children, and there are three lines over the side and you are swapping them round so all can have a turn and the feckin’ things get caught up and tangled. And then if you catch a fish there is such a squeal of voices that the fish left down there in the water will feck off back down the bay and all you are left with is the one fish and your tangled lines and disappointed children

Now if we cut those numbers in half that makes an average of twenty fish that you catch when you go out there over the course of your seven trips. So that is one hundred and forty fish you have out of the water over your summer. And you have done that fifteen times so that is two thousand one hundred fish you have taken out of the bay.

And over those fifteen years has there been a day when you have missed out on a trip up here to the pub? That being the case shall we do the mathematics on your good pints?

Better weather so I have been out in the garden. I should have left the planting of the primroses until today. When I did it yesterday it was in thick and heavy the rain.

There is still some wind today but no rain and there patches of blue sky and if the sun were to come out it could almost feel warm.

It was a week or so later into the year last February that I wrote about the fifty snowdrops I planted and my worry as to whether they were going to flower. Some of them are out already and from the kitchen we can see the small white bells under the apple trees. More of them seemed to come out whilst I was outside.

On going outside and into the garage to fetch a fork I was faced with the question as to how the large road sign got in there. I suspect that the answer is currently in Paris but I will need to wait a couple of days to find out.

In the veg plot I pulled the last half dozen or so small beetroot that were left in the ground. The cavolo nero is still going strong so I will leave that in for another few weeks. I cleared the other beds and dug them over. The biggest problem appears to be the horseradish I planted a few years ago. It seemed like a good idea at the the time but the roots spread under the ground  and last summer we had horseradish coming out of the ground in odd spots. As you pull the roots from the ground they snap easily and each bit will potentially take if it is left in the ground. I did the best I could and every so often the sharp smell would catch at the back of my nose. I put all the pieces of root back in the ground near the compost bin. It would be shame not to have horseradish in the garden it just needs to know its place.

The greenhouse is a mess but I will leave the tidying up of that for next weekend by which time I hope to have some seeds to plant.

There were some dried plums in the plum tree.

Today I have had a quiet indulgent lunch just by myself.

Being the second Saturday of the month The Farmer’s Market has been on in New Ferry. So I was down there buying a chicken for supper tonight and tomorrow night and choosing what to have for lunch. I had been planning on lamb but then I spotted a pack of pigeon breasts, just right for frying quickly and then eating with salad and toast and a sweet/hot dressing. But they were £4.99 which seemed a lot for pigeon breasts so I went with four lamb chops.

I also picked up some primroses to add some colour in the garden for this grey February.

The lamb cooked very quickly.

To start I mashed up some garlic with salt and black cumin in our wooden pestle and mortar.

This mixture was then smeared over the lamb chops together with some olive oil and plenty of pepper.

A frying pan went on the a high heat and more oil was added. As the oil started to smoke I put in the chops shaking the pan as I went. There two long thin green chillies in the fridge so I put those in as well.

I turned the heat down once the chops had started to take on some colour and continued to cook them for another five minutes or so.

To eat I put a large dollop of Greek yogurt on my plate and drank a pint of good beer.

I could have licked the plate.

Listening to more Doug Paisley and getting ready to go out in the wet to plant the primroses.

Spend five minutes furtling around in the bottom of the freezer and there is usually a partridge to be found. I will buy one whenever I see them on sale and if there is no intention   to cook it immediately it will get squirrelled away for a Friday evening like tonight.

It was a particularly good one.

Having taken it out last night to defrost I spent twenty minutes leafing through various books to see if I could find a different way to cook it before again realising that keeping it simple would be best. So that meant roasting with some potatoes.

For the potato I cut it into rounds about half a finger thick. I then put these in the bottom of a small roasting dish in which I had melted some butter with a mixture of olive and groundnut oil on the stove. I left them to take on some colour giving them a turn every five minutes or so until they were almost cook through.

The oven then went on. I put the partridge on top of the potato and put some more pieces of butter on its breast and tucked a quartered red onion around.

That went into the oven for about 25 minutes. I basted it once. And as I think I may have mentioned it was very good.

For those who get down this far and are interested the new Doug Paisley album is almost as good as the the partridge. And with Garth Hudson on organ.